What Is RIA?
The term Rich Internet Application (RIA) was introduced by Macromedia in 2002 when they introduced Macromedia Flash MX. A RIA is a web-based application that is designed to provide functionality similar to a desktop applications. Some RIAs run completely inside a web browser while others are browser-independent.
Other People Are Reading
-
Features
-
RIAs provide more robust ways to interact with the user than a traditional web-based application. Traditional applications are limited to form fields, radio buttons, and check boxes. RIAs allow the user to perform in-line editing, drag and drop items and otherwise interact directly with the elements. They also allow only portions of the page to be updated, instead of having the entire page reload. RIAs also tend to be browser- and operating system-independent.
Benefits
-
RIAs can run on many different devices, including mobile devices. Many RIAs are deployed on the user's desktop, removing the need for any browser. The RIAs require a plug in, sandbox or virtual machine to be installed on the user's computer, but these applications are smaller than typical desktop applications. This allows the work to be shared between the client (user) machine and the server, it also allows the application to be available when the user is offline.
-
Disadvantages
-
Although they are not as complex as traditional application software, they are much more complex than traditional web applications which puts web developers at a disadvantage. Accessibility to search engines and other web applications may be significantly impaired. But, the most important problem will be with security. Although the applications are more secure than traditional applications, they are, by their very nature, less secure than a web application.
Frameworks
-
There are multiple RIA frameworks. Frameworks are the platforms on which the RIA is built and deployed. Adobe has the largest offering of RIA frameworks including Flash, Flex and AIR. The Adobe AIR runtime environment---the part of the framework that is installed on the client side computer--is available for Windows and Mac OS X with a beta version for Linux clients.
Microsoft has its own RIA framework called Silverlight. This Microsoft product is available for multiple browsers, including Firefox and Safari, and the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. There is even a Open Source Silverlight project for the Linux operating system.
Curl is a RIA framework designed for business use. Curl does not focus on graphics and advertising, rather on applications that integrate with business data systems. It supports the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.
Other RIA frameworks include Google Web Toolkit, JavaFX, Mozilla Prism and OpenLazlo.
Usage
-
Many different sites and applications are RIAs. Browser -ased RIAs include Flickr, Google Maps, and eBay. Desktop like RIAs include Twhirl and Tweetdeck, both applications that interact with the Twitter website, and Accelerate4Pharma, a pharmaceutical application.
-
