blogs | Karl Johnson

Thursday February 22, 2007

RIA's are NOT Websites! Think outside of the browser box...

Everyone thinks of RIA's as web applications that run in the browser. Almost everyone, that is. Some people are able to get their heads out of that so familiar browser box and look at RIA's for what they are - powerful desktop applications that can be run via a browser or from a desktop operating system. While Macromedia was out in front in producing RIA technologies, and coining the term Rich Internet Application, I am afraid that term is rather misleading. And several people have asked the question "Is a RIA a RIA if it is run on the desktop? What about Apollo?". Perhaps "Rich Applications" or "Rich Experience Applications" will replace the RIA acronym as we move forward in the world of blending the browser and desktop experiences.

You see, RIA's are NOT websites. They can do an excellent job as acting as a rich and very usable and functional application that a user can use via the web without having to install anything from the developer, but they are not content focused websites. They are applications! Every time Adobe comes around asking for feedback from the development community about what they want to see in Flex, so many developers immediately respond with suggestions like deep linking and SEO optimization. These things are of course important to anything running on the web that you want people to be able to find and access like content, but why think this way when approaching a RIA? If you absolutely need to deliver a rich experience and still meet the traditional web site requirements around content, it very well can be done with Flex, so do not fret. But if those things are in your RIA's requirements, just take a step back to make sure you are approaching your next great app from the right perspective.

Up above, I talked about the few that have been able to climb out of the browser box. One of those people is Ryan Stewart, who maintains a personal blog on RIA's as well as a ZDNet blog.

I highly recommend you check out his post here. I have been trying to figure out a way to wrap up my thoughts on this exact point for a while, so once I read Ryan's great post it inspired me to write a follow on. Thanks for the great read Ryan and the vision to see beyond applications as websites!

Comments, love letters, anti-rants: karl.johnson [at] cynergysystems.com

Karl

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