RIA Shootout at the Open
Posted Thu Apr 10 22:47:44 -0700 2008We're adding an RIA shootout to the Open following Ryan Stewart's
Taking Web 2.0 Offline and On the Desktop talk. I want some help tracking down the evangelists for the platforms but more importantly I want to make sure we hear from people who are actually building RIA. Have you used AIR, Silverlight, or Flex? What other options do you want to hear about?
Or do you agree with Francois that all these platforms are taking the wrong approach?
My question is whether AIR and Silverlight actually solves any problems. Web 2.0 was a major step forward in making web *based* applications a reality. Developing compiled applications and requiring users to download and install each time we make bug fixes or a changes seems to me like a step backwards.
In defence of my previous statements, here is what some some other people have to say on the subject.
"What we need is a Web browser that doesn't just serves up documents, but serves up applications: full screen native GUI, network-transparent and, most important, fast, lightweight, real-time applications" - Ric Hardacre - (Web2.0 Journal)
http://www.web2journal.com/read/315240.htm
“Are Web Browsers Ready for the Next Generation of Internet Applications? Browsers were built to display documents, not deliver applications” - Esther Schindler, CIO
(http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt/07534A1E667A85FCCC2573A9007F9891)
"The popular notion among tech industry followers is that a more capable Web browser, able to run sophisticated applications either online or offline, will make the desktop operating system less important, if not irrelevant." - David Meyer - (ZDNet UK)
http://www.builderaum.zdnet.com.au/news/soa/Windows-developers-begin-slow-defection-to-Linux/0,3390282272000066034,339279528,00.htm
Francois, this is exactly why I want to hear from customers. Who's actually built an AIR app? Is there any platform that's taking an approach that you do like? Is Prism on the right track?
RIA technologies such as Ajax, Adobe Flex/AIR,Curl, and Silverlight make sense in many cases, but not all of them. For example, Salesforce.com works just fine as a purely web interface as does other software services, but some just don't. Web email, for example, benefits a lot from a little Ajax seasoning.
In other cases, when you want more processing done on the client to avoid round-trip HTTP latency for fairly trivial operations then RIAs make sense. RIA also makes a lot of sense for data visualization where you have to process large sets of data and use advance imaging techniques.
RIA is no more a panacea than is the traditional REST architected massively hyperlinked world wide web. There are many applications that benefit from a pure web solution and there are many that benefit from plug-ins. Perhaps the first thing we need to recognize is that RIA is not really of the Web. Its not of the Web any more than is email. You may access email via a web interface, but the infrastructure that supports email and its architecture is totally different. The same can be said for RIA applications. You may access a RIA via a web page or URL, but its not really a part of the web.