Rich Internet Applications - Technology Perspective
Rich Internet applications (RIA) are web-enabled applications that provide rich features
of conventional desktop applications and connect with data sources over internet. Rich internet applications have been around for years with technologies like Remote scripting, X Internet, Rich (Web) clients, Rich Web application. In order to efficiently utilize RIA, one must understand technology perspective of RIA.
RIA employs different technologies like AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), Microsoft WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) / Silverlight, JavaFX, Apache Pivot and Adobe Flex/Flash to develop application. It is important to notice that these technologies may be complementary to each other for a given application.
Rich internet applications can be enabled using different tools and middleware technologies, enabling the mixing of traditional structured information, with audio, video, images and high-interactivity into one mashed-up, user-facing environment. In general its highly user-centric.
Following is the basic process for selecting and employing RIA technology
Defining the UI Richness: When defining the UI richness, we should ask a few basic questions
* Do we have UI widgets or controls readily available to develop a UI?
* If we need new controls are they easy to use and pluggable?
* How do we add more richness and more interactive visual experiences like animation etc in web page and its controls?
* How do we populate the data by data and event binding keeping UI agility in perspective?
Security considerations: When you adapt to RIA technologies, you need to ensure that there are no security threats compared to conventional applications. Try to explore security surrounding server communications, or browser plug-ins and extensions downloaded on a client.
Selecting Complexity: Your developers have been using existing page-based models for so many years because it is easy and simple, however clumsy it might appear. New RIA technology has to be easy to learn, build, and extend. It should also interoperate with existing Web technologies.
Usability Consideration: Your clients expect the browser application to work with its all available normal browser features. In some particular cases, features such as saving images, Ctrl+F to search for content on a page, and copy-and-paste don't work in Flash-based solutions. Base your RIA usability design on human-computer interaction principles.
Some of the RIA technologies available are as follows:
JavaFX: The JavaFX platform contains an essential set of tools and technologies that enable developers and designers to collaborate, create, and deploy applications with expressive content to browsers and desktops. The JavaFX platform contains cross-platform and platform-specific runtime environments and support libraries. With Java SE 6 update 10 and beyond, you can drag-to-Install applications from your browser directly onto your desktop.
Apache Pivot: Pivot combines productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the Java platform. Pivot applications are written using Java and XML and can be run either as an applet or as a stand-alone (or offline) desktop application. Pivot includes features that make building modern GUI applications much easier, including declarative UI, data binding, effects and transitions, and web services integration.
Laszlo: Laszlo is the leading open source platform for the development and delivery of RIAs on the Web using Flash. Flash player was initially started with a small plug-in to run Flash files inside browsers. Because of its high reliability and compatibility, it is extensively used for creating flashy and animated images.
Macromedia Flex: It is another Flash-based user interface. It provides a Flex presentation server that sits on top of an application server, and generates Flash files dynamically from the server and delivers to a browser. These Flash files are executed inside the Flash player of the browser, and allow interaction with users, the execution of operations, and even the generation of SOAP, HTTP, or AMF requests to connect back to the server.
by: R Chopra
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