O’Reilly: Inside RIA

I was reminded of the Web 1.0 reality when Jakob Nielsen recently published an article entitled Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous.... This provocative piece comes at the Web 2.0 age in a different way than I am used to. In the article, Nielsen covers four elements of Web 2.0: Rich Internet Applications, User-Generated Content, Mashups, and an Advertising Based Business Model. I am going to be examining his arguments around the first element, Rich Internet Applications. Fellow blogger Tony MacDonell discussed this article from a design perspective, but I wanted to look at it from a developer's perspective.

AIR applications can be built with Flex, Flash, or HTML / JavaScript, but an AIR application goes beyond these technologies. What sets an AIR application apart? AIR applications have access to so many native elements of the operating system including the local filesystem, the clipboard, the command line, and native data encryption. AIR also integrates local database functionality and service monitoring to create powerful online and offline applications. In addition, AIR applications can leverage a powerful update mechanism and browser-based installation. AIR applications also add an additional level of control to HTML content and PDF documents. This is what sets AIR applications apart form the technologies that are used to develop them. This is the AIR API.

I just read about this a few minutes ago, so forgive me if this is old news, but it looks like Aptana has launched Jaxer. In their own words, this is: Modern web sites and applications use Ajax to create engaging user experiences: the HTML and CSS are set in motion using JavaScript running in the browser and calling back the server. To achieve this, the server needs to prepare the web page appropriately, and to know what to do when the JavaScript calls it. But the server knows nothing about the HTML and CSS DOM, nor how to handle JavaScript data, and you can't code it in JavaScript...

Where do the new RIA developers, specifically the JavaScript developers, find help and learn the tools of their trade? In this entry, Raymond discusses reference sources of the past and asks readers for help finding resources for the Web 2.0 age.

Recently, Jakob wrote a column titled "Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous". This is another one of those columns designed to get people stirred up. It addresses some of the components of the Web 2.0 movement including: rich internet applications, social networking, mashups, and advertising based business models. He builds an argument that claims that companies should not get caught up in the hype surrounding Web 2.0 while working with their current web properties. They should instead focus on getting the fundamentals, or the Web 1.0 features perfect.

Rich Internet Applications may have finally earned themselves the ubiquity it deserves since being coined by Macromedia back in 2002. My name is Jonathan Snook and these are my initial thoughts on the state of RIAs.

The term RIA (Rich Internet Application) seems to take on many different definitions when it is discussed within the Internet development community. As we prepared for the upcoming launch of InsideRIA, we thought it would be interesting to see how professionals who work in the world of rich internet development would define RIA. So we asked the InsideRIA experts as well as members of the RIA community to give us feedback on what the question "What is RIA?" means to them and compiled their responses in this feature.

A big part of success as a developer is the knowledge of how to sharpen your skills. Knowing where the best resources are is half the battle. These resources can assist you as you work to sharpen your skills in Adobe AIR.

A quick hello from Andre Charland, packed with his background with the web and goals for involvement this site and pushing RIAs and user experience forward.

I'm thrilled to be part of the rich web movement and hope you can help us here at InsideRIA spread the good word on the benefits of RIAs for end users, establish and evangelize best practices and of course build "jaw dropping" user interfaces!

Rich Tretola, the new Community Manager for InsideRIA says hello, offers his insight on the goals and future of InsideRIA introduces the team of experts of InsideRIA, and asks for your feedback to help make InsideRIA the number one place on the Internet for Rich Internet Application resources and information.