I first began dabbling in the internet in the mid 90s, as users the amount of information available at our fingertips was nothing short of amazing but we took a huge downgrade in user experience from the desktop. We were confined to text, hyperlinks, some images and forms for input. Nonetheless the ease with which we could build, publish and view how others built pages drove us forward on the web. Today we're now at another milestone in computing with the emergence of rich internet applications, we can combine the immersive graphics, control and animation of the desktop with the connectedness and ease of distribution of the internet. Bottom line for the end user: you get the all the power, all the data at a fraction of the cost. Sounds a bit cheesy but it's true.

If you'd asked me 5 years ago if I'd use a web client as my primary email application I would have quickly laughed you of the room. Today I live in Gmail for all my email. I use a couple different online word processors and use Google Spreadsheets at least once a day for budgeting and project planning.

I'm thrilled that RIAs and Ajax have created a renaissance in the fields of usability and user experience. With very few exceptions you shouldn't even consider an RIA technology without being focused on delivering a better experience to the user. Sure there are certain technical benefits such as efficiently dividing processing between the client and server as well as reduced bandwidth in certain cases, but these should be much lower on the priority list than creating a better experience for the poor sap using your fancy new widget;-)

I got started in multimedia development with Hypercard and Director before moving into main stream programming languages like C++. I think this may be why I've always had an interest in user interfaces and the visual aspects of software. I get a real thrill out of watching a UI evolve until it's as perfect as it can be for the eventual user.

Today I'm the CEO at Nitobi a software company that is entirely committed to delivering better user experiences on the web. I co-founded Nitobi in 1998 as a 2 man web design shop in a basement. In the early days I toiled with putting websites with fancy flash intros, we've since evolved to have an enterprise class Ajax component suite (Nitobi CompleteUI), a lightweight web usability (RobotReplay) and a healthy roster of services that blend hard core programming and usability. After co-authoring a book, Enterprise Ajax with Dave Johnson and Alexei White also of Nitobi. I spend most of my time working on product management issues for our various products and evangelizing usability, user experience and RIA technologies such as Ajax.

This is going to be a big year for RIA no doubt. Almost all the major technology platforms are evolving, frameworks and tools are really starting to kick ass and UI patterns becoming more main stream. I think our standard productivity type RIAs are going to go more mainstream while innovative tools and social media sites are going to really start to transform both experiences and expectations.

I've got 5 primary goals for my involvement with InsideRIA:

1. 1. Evangelize user experience and usability


2. 2. Promote and Document UI Patterns


3. 3. Investigate the differences of various RIA technology platforms (Ajax, Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX)


4. 4. Facilitate conversations between developers and designers


5. 5. Learn how web analytics need to change to accommodate RIAs

As developers and designers we have a great responsibility to the users of our software, we must cut no corners in our mission to improve end user experience.