Mutley2003
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Morfik experiences - Delphi programmers please
Hi,
I'd like to ask any Delphi developers who have tried Morfik to share their experiences with me.
I have read the developer's guide and played around with a little test app, and it all seems very clean and elegant .. I can write in Object Pascal (Free Pascal seems to be the underlying language), and all the AJAX stuff and server side persistence is taken care of for me. I also like the fact that it relies on Firebird and the app (although I could not see instructions about deployment) will embed that engine (I think), and the web app will run on Linux or Windows servers, or on the Windows desktop. It seems like I can embed browser-side javascript code in it too, which is something I will need to do.
So far, I have only identified a couple of issues that might give me pause
a) no support for CSS. I guess I can see why, in an app, but it does make "styling" difficult
b) the use of javascript to render EVERYTHING means that none of the text will be visible to a search engine .. OK, it is an app, not a site .. but one of the examples is a blog
Well, anyone who has haad a go with it ? (Eddie Shipman, I see you were on one of the Morfik forums a while back).
Am I wasting my time? I don't have much .NET experience, but I could upgrade to Delphi 2006 I guess and spend some time learning.
But does that have good Ajax support? I do need that. One app I have in mind more or less continuously selects information from a database in the background and queues it in a "card stack" client side.
I could write the server side in PHP and SAJAX I guess but while I do have some PHP experience, I would rather write in the language that comes closest to Delphi.
Well, any opinions would be welcome
I'd like to ask any Delphi developers who have tried Morfik to share their experiences with me.
I have read the developer's guide and played around with a little test app, and it all seems very clean and elegant .. I can write in Object Pascal (Free Pascal seems to be the underlying language), and all the AJAX stuff and server side persistence is taken care of for me. I also like the fact that it relies on Firebird and the app (although I could not see instructions about deployment) will embed that engine (I think), and the web app will run on Linux or Windows servers, or on the Windows desktop. It seems like I can embed browser-side javascript code in it too, which is something I will need to do.
So far, I have only identified a couple of issues that might give me pause
a) no support for CSS. I guess I can see why, in an app, but it does make "styling" difficult
b) the use of javascript to render EVERYTHING means that none of the text will be visible to a search engine .. OK, it is an app, not a site .. but one of the examples is a blog
Well, anyone who has haad a go with it ? (Eddie Shipman, I see you were on one of the Morfik forums a while back).
Am I wasting my time? I don't have much .NET experience, but I could upgrade to Delphi 2006 I guess and spend some time learning.
But does that have good Ajax support? I do need that. One app I have in mind more or less continuously selects information from a database in the background and queues it in a "card stack" client side.
I could write the server side in PHP and SAJAX I guess but while I do have some PHP experience, I would rather write in the language that comes closest to Delphi.
Well, any opinions would be welcome
ASKER
It seems like IntraWeb 9 has Ajax support - I have never used IntraWeb, so IntraWeb vs Morfik comparisons would be welcome.But it also seems like hosting IntraWeb solutions on shared hosting services could be a problem .. they only list half a dozen or so hosts
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ASKER
1. deployment to a win32 machine is not quite xcopy.. looks like you have to deploy Apache and Firebird - see here.
http://www.morfik.com/#1I(frmXappMain!!)I(Morfik%20Pioneers!frmXappMain%3ASubForm1!)I(frmDownloads!Morfik%20Pioneers%3AMainSubForm!%22DLCatgID%3D500%22%2C%22DLCatgID2%3D550%22%2C%22prmTabs%3Ddev2dev%22)I(frmDownloadsInner!frmDownloads%3ASubform1!%22DLCatgID%3D500%22%2C%22DLCatgID2%3D550%22%2C%22prmTabs%3Ddev2dev%22)I(frmMorfikBanner!Morfik%20Pioneers%3ASubForm1!))
(gotta be the world's ugliest URL).
Well, maybe that will be simple enough, maybe not. I guess I would not want to risk it with Mom & Pop customers.
2. deployment to a linux server might not be trivial either
http://www.morfikwiki.com/Compiling_for_Linux
- perhaps there could be issues with shared hosting services