Do all Rich Internet Application Technologies Suck?

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I was cruising through my feeds this morning and came across a post by Warren Henning who thinks that all Rich Internet Application technologies suck. Specifically he seems to have beef with the usability. Now, I think his statement paints RIAs with a bit too broad a brush, but if you look at his mailing list conversation, he has some legitimate usability concerns…..if you believe the browser is “usable” to begin with.

Now I’m not saying that we have to win over people like Warren, in the end he seems like he’s pretty stuck in his ways. But there will continue to be debate in a lot of areas about why it’s bad to break outside of the browser and how that goes against usability guidelines as we know them. But a well designed RIA can be MUCH more usable than the typical browser application, so instead of focusing on making RIAs behave like browser-based applications, we need to focus on design and making our apps more usable and more accessible. Niqui Merret is giving a talk, Accessibility Out of the Browser, at Dx3 that I think everyone should attend. I see this being a hot topic this year as more and more apps move to a richer platform and eschew antiquated browser constraints.

[tags]RIA, usability, accessibility[/tags]

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  • Hans

    Warren is complaining about people forgetting to wear a belt when he’s missing his own pants.

  • http://metacircular.wordpress.com/ Warren Henning

    Hi. I’m flattered that someone thought to comment on something I said, even if they disagree.

    I suppose I did generalize too much. I was just disappointed by a lot of what I’ve seen; for instance, Bruce Eckel’s screencast on using Flex in conjunction with TurboGears struck me as taking a remarkably long time to do something relatively simple.

    I don’t think I’m set in my ways, although I will admit I’m coming into this biased/prejudiced.

    Hans, what am I doing wrong? I don’t understand.

    “But a well designed RIA can be MUCH more usable than the typical browser application, so instead of focusing on making RIAs behave like browser-based applications, we need to focus on design and making our apps more usable and more accessible.”

    I encourage that wholeheartedly. If people who want to use RIA technology can collectively mobilize themselves to focus on design, I’m sure they’ll produce wonderful things. If all they did was realize that not everyone has perfect vision (me, for instance), that’d probably suffice.

    I for one am very much looking forward to Adobe’s Apollo.