In April 2019, the Morfik project was closed and the project was taken offline.
Timeline
In September 2005, it demonstrated a pre-beta version of its flagship product, Morfik at the Web 2.0 Conference. [2] Morfik was a major sponsor of this conference. Rumours spread just before the conference that Robert Scoble, Microsoft's lead evangelist, thought that Microsoft should buy Morfik, [4] however, this was quickly laid to rest by Scoble himself. [5] At the conference, Morfik showed how web applications could be designed for both online as well as offline use, via its 'Unplugged' vision, by demonstrating an 'unplugged' version of Google's Gmail that could function offline.
Two months later, the SD Times wrote "Morfik IDE Simplifies AJAX Development" [6] and the first version of the Morfik was released for public evaluation and testing. [7] This was followed by the opening in February 2006, of a website called Morfik Labs which was designed to showcase Ajax applications that were created using Morfik.
March 2006, marked the first time Morfik was presented at a conference presentation, when Paul Ruizendaal, Managing Director of Janus Software [8] presented a review of Morfik at Software Development GigaCon, Poland. [9]
A month later, Morfik Chess was made available on Morfik Labs. Although a few other browser-based Chess games had already been released (the most notable by Douglas Bagnall [10] ), Morfik's was the first that allowed both single and multi-player modes. Further, the single-player mode utilized one of the first Javascript-powered chess engines that could calculate moves beyond 3-ply.
In May, 2006, Google released Google Web Toolkit. [11] Due to the significant similarity to Morfik's JavaScript Synthesis Technology, significant media and blogsphere discussion commenced as commentators debated the possible relationships and partnerships between Morfik and Google. GWT's manager, Bret Taylor offered a direct response [12] to the technology issue, by saying that GWT did not use any Morfik technology. [12] The debate extended to patent rights and potential lawsuits (for example, Newswire [13] and ZDNet [14] ). Initially, various critics including PathFinder [15] questioned whether any actual patent applications had been filed, but these criticism were laid to rest when at least one of Morfik's patent applications was made publicly available by the USPTO itself. [16]
In August, 2006, a review of Morfik in the context of developing web applications solely in C# appeared in the magazine DEV. [17]
In September, 2006, Brazilian IT executive Mauricio Longo joined Morfik as Evangelist and Product Manager.
The first Professional License for Morfik was by acquired by Greenpeace International in October, 2006, and two months later, Altium deployed the first commercial application built with Morfik. It was a mashup with Salesforce.com applications which permitted a hierarchical view of all projects managed through Salesforce.com.
In March 2007, v1.0 was officially released [18] and its name was changed to "Morfik 07"). See also here AJAX Magazine: Morfik 07 Officially Available and Introduction to Morfik Architecture (Part One) In November 2008, v2.0 was officially released with an entirely redesigned interface. In August 2009, Morfik released AppsBuilder 2.1 which, though numbered as a simple point update, contained a significant number of new features such as the ability to visually create Widgets (user created controls). This was followed in close succession by the release of version 2.2 which established the new Package and Widget features formerly introduced in 2.1 as the basis on which to build controls for independent distribution.
In May 2010, Morfik 3.0 went into beta testing introducing a change in the way application and websites are designed in order to provide direct support for Search Engine Optimization and facilitate the process of designing the navigational organization of the application. Morfik 3 also further extends the Package features introduced in version 2.1, allowing for the creation of more complex widgets.
In September 2010, Altium announced its intention to purchase Morfik. [19]
In November 2010, Altium completed the acquisition of Morfik Technologies. In the same month, Altium altered the licensing model for all versions of the Morfik Web development tools making them free.
In December 2010, native connectivity to PostgreSQL is made available to Morfik users as a freely downloadable package. This add-on package also provides connectivity to MySQL and MS SQL server databases.
Ongoing development of the freeware version of the tool (Version 3.0.8.1) released in December 2010 has ceased. Official future plans for Morfik have not been provided by Altium.
