Rich Internet Stuff From the Blogosphere

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I just got back from the vacation (Flickr pictures will be forthcoming) and am going through my newsfeeds from the past week. It was a pretty slow cycle overall but there were a few things I thought you all might be interested in (if you haven’t seen them already).

The first is a 2007 predictions post over on Ajaxian. A couple of quotes that caught my eye: Dion predicts “A large amount of apps have flash AND ajax, and users don’t know or care.” and “Ajax wpf/e interop.” while Michael predicts “The boundaries of Ajax harden, with most developers gaining a clear understanding of what it can and can’t do with modern browsers and managers in a better position to decide on application architecture (whether to use Ajax, Flash, desktop, etc.).”

It’s going to be very, very interesting to watch Ajax and other RIA technologies dance together this year. We started out like middle schoolers with each technology on the other side of the room but have slowly gotten up to the high school prom stage with some dancing and some awkward making out. This year we could see more of a tango with some subtle sophistication and a true melding of the soul. Did I just use dancing to talk about RIAs? Really? I must be sleepy.

Ashish has a funny post about Mark Anders’ interview with The Register. I loved Mark’s interview, but I tend to agree with Ashish here. RIAs don’t have to be cross platform. Update: I totally missed the boat on this. After going back and reading Ashish’s post again I’m really confused. He’s not saying RIAs don’t have to be cross platform, he’s saying that no one from Microsoft has touted WPF as an RIA technology. And after doing a search he’s right. Wow. I want to find out more about this and why Microsoft doesn’t see WPF as an RIA technology.
I also liked Danny’s post about Apollo platform ubiquity. He makes an interesting point. Does Apollo need the kind of distribution that Flash has?

JD looks over the landscape that was 2006 and makes some very good observations. Jesse Warden also reflects on 2006 but has some valuable insight into what 2007 might look like.

Okay, time for me to hit the hey. I have to get back into the work routine tomorrow.

[tags]Apollo, Ajax, Flash, WPF/E[/tags]

Related posts:

  1. What Google Trends Says About Rich Internet Applications
  2. 2006 – A Great Year for Rich Internet Applications
  3. Rich Internet Applications
  4. Rich Internet Advertising
  5. Would Google Use Firefox as a Rich Internet Application Platform?
  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Hi Ryan, yes, you were sleepy… tango at a prom dance, sure…. ;-)

    If you’re using the term “Rich Internet Application” then that term’s original March 2002 introduction and definition do definitely include the ability to “enable easy deployment on multiple platforms and devices”:
    http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2005/03/ria_definition.cfm

    Single-OS network tools could still be useful, but they’re not “RIA”.

    (The term “RIA” has definitely been obfuscated over the past year, as the (delayed) popular acceptance of Microsoft’s XmlHttpRequest call led to “Ajax” helping the browsers refresh their text without reloading the entire page, which minimizes the actual “rich media” references in the original definition.)

    jd/adobe

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    I think language evolves JD, and while I believe Macromedia did a great thing by coining the phrase RIA, I think it’s come to mean more than cross platform solutions.

    The 2002 definition is a bit outdated and a lot of new technologies have come to the fore. The definition of RIA should be about experience, about content and about bringing the power of the web to an experience that would normally come from the desktop. I don’t think that has to be cross platform.

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    … and you’re choosing to describe this new thing with an existing term, because…? ;-)

    http://www.sundials.org/about/humpty.htm

  • David

    Maybe it’s because WPF is for desktop (windows) applications, and not the web? Would that preclude it from being a Rich INTERNET Application?

    “Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is part of .NET Framework 3.0, the new managed code programming model for Windows.”

    Just a thought….

    David