Rich Internet Applications - RIA

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are a new set of technologies that combine the powerful user interface capabilities of desktop applications with the broad reach and low-cost deployment of web applications. This interactive combination results in a more intuitive, responsive and effective user experience.

RIA can be simply defined as “desktop functions over the internet”. Since the early days of the internet, refreshing an entire page on the browser was the most common method used to reflect a change or to display the results of a user request. This limitation has resulted in users always waiting for a page to reload for even the smallest change to be reflected on the page. This constant refresh of the entire page makes implementing a seamless user experience extremely challenging. RIA technologies like AJAX and Flex solve this problem by only updating portions of the web page, as needed, thereby avoiding the complete reload of the page. This provides for an uninterrupted seamless user experience on the internet.

The capabilities offered by these technologies are wide ranging and can be quickly applied to any browser based application. Highlighted below are a few of the capabilities:

• Provides desktop capabilities like drag and drop, annotation, charting etc.
• Support for asynchronous communication enabling client applications to anticipate future data
• Ability to integrate data from disparate sources at both the browser and the server level
• Ability to support client side processing and caching of information

These capabilities result in providing a quick and responsive interactive user experience.

RIA vendors like Adobe, Microsoft, OpenLazlo, the open source community and others are constantly adding more sophistication to their platform thus increasing the potential usage. RIA technology can be applied to a wide variety of applications. Following are a few commonly used scenarios:

• Online applications that require significant input from users like loan applications, registration, product configuration, product selection, etc.
• Migration of existing desktop applications that currently provide features like drag and drop or context driven data refresh
• Dashboard applications that provide on the fly services like annotation, data mashups, online communication, collaboration, custom configuration, etc.
• Applications that could benefit from client side processing like:
  • Calculations requiring frequent user input
  • Interactive data visualization like plots and graphs
  • Validation of user input

Like any other emerging technology implementation of RIA comes with its own set of challenges.

• Design, implementation and testing RIA’s require an approach that is in some ways different from traditional web applications. In a traditional web application the UI feature sets are limited. Also the usability testing in a traditional web application is typically based on a single transaction where one predefined path is taken by all users. RIA’s on the other hand could potentially consist of a wider set of UI feature where multiple activities could be taking place on a web page at the same time. There can also be significant interaction between different parts of a web page. These differences between RIA and traditional web applications should be taken in to account while planning design and usability testing.
  • User interaction in a traditional web site
    
  • User interaction in a RIA
    
• RIA platforms from different vendors are still evolving and are at a different levels of maturity. Based on your application needs and your enterprise standards a thorough product evaluation is required.
• RIA community is still working on a standard way to index and search content in a RIA environment. Design and implementation of content heavy applications in a RIA environment does require work arounds and planning ahead.
• RIA on mobile platform is an evolving space. A lot of work is still in progress to provide the ability to build once and deploy anywhere.

RIA’s benefit a number of different audiences:

• Users – RIA’s are revolutionizing the way people interact with the web through engaging applications that improve communication and achieve better business results.
• CXO’s – RIA’s are clear differentiators. If you are not using it – your competitors are.
• IT Managers– RIA platforms are a productive way to deliver engaging cross-platform rich internet applications that meet business objectives on time and on budget.
• Developers – RIA platforms provide a comprehensive, integrated set of tools and technology for fast end-to-end development of applications.