m-Power Dev Tool Gets Better Firefox Support

Published: July 14, 2009

by Alex Woodie

mrc has boosted support for Mozilla's Firefox Web browser in its m-Power Web application development tool. Last month the vendor announced that m-Power's customers can now use the m-Painter interface development tool from within Firefox, in addition to Internet Explorer. Several other enhancements in m-Power should make it easier to develop and maintain Web applications that run on the System i and other platforms.

m-Power is collection of development tools mrc first rolled out in 2004 for creating Web applications, reports and queries, dashboard interfaces, and business intelligence apps on top of existing databases. The software relies heavily on JavaScript, requires a Java application server, such as Apache Tomcat (which is pre-integrated and included with the product), and runs on System i and other major server and database platforms.

Until mrc posted an update to m-Power last month, m-Painter users were restricted to using the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser when developing Web interfaces. Now, m-Painter customers can also use Firefox, which accounts for nearly 23 percent of global Web browser usage, up nearly 4 percent over the last 12 months, according to Net Applications. Microsoft IE, by comparison, has nearly 66 percent of the Web browser market, according to Net Applications, down from nearly 73 percent a year ago. Apple's Safari makes up the bulk of the remaining market share.

m-Painter users may experience some differences in functionality when developing interfaces in Firefox compared to what they're used to with IE, mrc says.

The vendor added two other m-Painter enhancements, including a runtime calculation panel that simplifies the process of adding or editing calculated fields, and a new application import panel that simplifies the process of adding or editing imported applications into m-Power applications. In both cases, users can position the new fields or applications with their mouse, and "click" them into place.

Other enhancements added in June include a new template for maintaining data Web 2.0 interfaces, which enables users to update multiple records on a screen simultaneously. The vendor says this feature is handy for allowing users to simultaneously update multiple orders in an online shopping cart application. Also added was a reorder maintenance template, which allows users to re-order or re-sequence records with drag and drop actions. Mrc says this feature will be useful for prioritizing work orders in a production planning environment.

mrc's director of development Brian Crowley says these enhancements are designed to make m-Power more efficient. "m-Power is built around the idea that Web application development doesn't need to be difficult or time consuming," he says in mrc's announcement.

mrc stopped using version numbers for its products several years ago, and continually releases updates to customers from the Web. For a full list of recent m-Power enhancements, see www.mrc-productivity.com/mrcjava/servlet/CUSTOMERS.R00020s?run=2.

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