{"id":227,"date":"2007-05-24T11:50:21","date_gmt":"2007-05-24T10:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=227"},"modified":"2007-05-24T11:50:21","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T10:50:21","slug":"why-rich-internet-applications-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/227-why-rich-internet-applications-matter.html","title":{"rendered":"Why Rich Internet Applications Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anne Zelenka is <a href=\"http:\/\/webworkerdaily.com\/2007\/05\/23\/open-thread-do-rich-internet-applications-matter-to-you\/\" target=\"_blank\">sceptical about RIAs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The idea is that we need more rich interactivity from our browser apps than they give us. But is this just developer fantasy, or does it represent a real end user need?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great question. I believe it&#8217;s fair to say that the all the interest in RIA, sparked by Flash and enflamed by Silverlight, is still more&nbsp;hype than real-world usage (especially Silverlight,&nbsp;still in Alpha for the .NET version).<\/p>\n<p>There are multiple issues here. In particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Will we see HTML\/CSS\/JavaScript (call it AJAX if you like) gradually giving way to browser-hosted apps running in plug-ins (Flash, Silverlight, Java)?<\/li>\n<li>Will we see&nbsp;a new breed&nbsp;of internet-delivered, zero-install&nbsp;desktop apps that will&nbsp;diminish&nbsp;our dependence on web browsers?&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have few doubts about the first of these. Ease of development, flexibility and predictability of design, performance benefits of JIT compilers, convergence between internet and broadcasting,&nbsp;richer content enabled by&nbsp;ubiquitous broadband, to name some of them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The second is more contentious. But I think it will happen. There is room for debate about what constitutes a &#8220;real end user need&#8221;; but if you rephrase that as &#8220;real end user benefits&#8221; then it makes more sense. The main reasons are offline use and better integration with local OS services. <\/p>\n<p>A while back a web app sceptic (I forget who)&nbsp;described the browser to me. &#8220;I call it Window&#8221;, he said. His point still holds.&nbsp;There is no need to do all your work within a browser box.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"wlWriterSmartContent\" id=\"0767317B-992E-4b12-91E0-4F059A8CECA8:9c766ab0-ada3-4760-b4a6-5274eb047247\" contenteditable=\"false\" style=\"padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px\">Technorati tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/ria\" rel=\"tag\">ria<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/ajax\" rel=\"tag\">ajax<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/flash\" rel=\"tag\">flash<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tags\/silverlight\" rel=\"tag\">silverlight<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anne Zelenka is sceptical about RIAs: The idea is that we need more rich interactivity from our browser apps than they give us. But is this just developer fantasy, or does it represent a real end user need? It&#8217;s a great question. I believe it&#8217;s fair to say that the all the interest in RIA, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/227-why-rich-internet-applications-matter.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why Rich Internet Applications Matter<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-software-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}