The Weekly RIA Round-Up is a listing of news, tools, and resources for developers posted each weekend here on InsideRIA.com.

FEATURED: Next Generation Visualization

While this item is technically not an application, it is one of the most advanced examples of visualization available to date. The browser version of this application utilizes Papervision 3D in Flash, but Processing was used for the actual video. Also, when you view the browser demo, be sure to remember that it is interactive. Click and drag to see the 3D environment in real time.

Google Code
Learn About the Technologies Behind the Video

View the Browser Version of the Visualization

First Flex 4 SDK Build Released

Developers got their first chance to experiment with Flex 4 this week as Adobe released the first build of the Flex 4 SDK on the Adobe Opensource site. The new SDK greatly improves on the designer / developer interaction, and many of its new features were added to support Adobe's upcoming RIA design tool, Thermo (development codename).

Matt Chotin (Adobe)
More Information on Next Version of Flex SDK

Adobe Opensource Site
Flex 4 SDK - Gumbo

Google Developer Videos

Samuel Dean at Web Worker Daily highlighted several developer videos from Google that cover many different topics including: AJAX API's, OpenSocial, and Google Gears.

Web Worker Daily
Google’s Developer Videos: From AJAX to OpenSocial

Tim Heuer on Embedding Silverlight

This week Tim gave a rundown of the Silverlight.js file that is included with the Silverlight 2 SDK, and he also addresses some issues with Firefox 3 and its compatibility with Silverlight 2.

Tim Heuer (Microsoft)
Updating Silverlight.js and Firefox 3

Bruce Eckel on Desktop Java

Bruce gives a rundown of the history of UI in Java and how it applies to the current JavaFX situation. Bruce states that the UI issues of the past are the primary reason people are not jumping to learn more about JavaFX:

"Basically, UI programming in Java has always been an afterthought, reluctantly accomodated but never really supported. It's no wonder that people are taking a wait-and-see attitude about Java FX."

It will certainly be interesting to see if JavaFX can overcome this stereotype - or if developers will forgo it for applications that have a Flex frontend and a Java backend (as Bruce suggests).

Bruck Eckel
Does Anyone Really Care About Desktop Java

Terrain Generation with Aviary

Aviary announced another exciting feature for their pattern generation application, Peacock. The terrain generation feature seems impressive. You can see many different samples of what is possible on the official Aviary blog.

Original Post: Aviary introduces browser based terrain generation

Serge Jespers Comments on Silverlight

Serge is an evangelist at Adobe who recently attended Silverlight training. Using this experience, he blogged about the differences / similarities of Flex and Silverlight. He highlighted several items that are superior in Silverlight including threading and its easy AJAX integration. He also highlighted some area where Flex provides a better solution. He stated that in many cases he felt Silverlight required more code for the same task as compared to Flex.

Read the article, and let us know what your thoughts are.

Serge Jespers (Adobe)
Silverlight: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Conclusion

As always, let us know if there are technologies that you would like to see us cover, or if there are articles that we need to look at for the next edition of the Weekly RIA Round-Up.

Read more from David Tucker.