Rich Internet applications (RIAs) offer a rich, engaging experience that improves user satisfaction and increases productivity. Using the broad reach of the Internet, RIAs can be deployed across browsers and desktops.
The Adobe Flash Platform is the leading solution for building rich Internet applications, offering a complete set of integrated technologies supported by an established ecosystem.
In today's global business environment, where customers are more demanding than ever and brand loyalty is increasingly difficult to obtain, deeper customer engagement is integral to an organization's success. RIAs can make customer interactions compelling, dynamic, and useful — in a word, engaging.
Business executives increasingly recognize the value customer engagement brings to their businesses. For example, in a recent study on engagement conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Adobe, 80% of executives said that better engagement translates into improved customer loyalty, and 75% said they believed it meant higher profits.
Engagement is also critical to transforming customers into active advocates for brands and businesses; 79% of respondents said that engaged customers will recommend products and services to others.
In March 2007, Forrester Research published "The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications," a report based on interviews with RIA technology providers and designers, as well as Forrester Research clients and customers. The report revealed that "well-designed RIAs can produce eye-popping results that can help prove the value of current investments and make the case for future RIA projects."
According to the findings, "firms that measure the business impact of their RIAs say that rich applications meet or exceed their goals." Specific findings demonstrate that improved ease of use for customer-facing RIAs "drives higher conversion rates and order size....More shoppers convert to buyers when they can easily trade off product options and costs in real time....And because of increased ease of completing complex orders online, fewer customers give up."
Additionally, the ability for RIAs to incorporate rich media pays dividends. "Rich media helps boost margins. RIAs not only enable better configurations, they also allow firms to embed video and other contextual help content into applications....Users who access these types of help features convert at a higher rate than those who don't."
Building RIAs with Adobe technologies offers additional benefits. Adobe's clients have a long history of delivering consistent, cross-platform experiences. The Adobe® Flash® Player runtime reaches 98% of Internet-enabled desktops and more than 450 million devices, offering businesses greater reach than with any other client technology available. Adobe AIR™, the latest client from Adobe, leverages the power of Flash Player while adding the capability to deploy RIAs directly to the desktop.
Finally, since Adobe technologies enable designers and developers to build RIAs with their current tools and skills, businesses can leverage existing personnel and assets to enhance customer engagement while minimizing expense.
Rich Internet Applications are basically web applications with the same functionality as the conventional desktop applications. Rich Internet Applications offer rich and engaging experience which improves user satisfaction and increases productivity. It is a combination of the best user interface functionality of desktop software applications with the broad reach and low-cost deployment of Web applications. It offers organizations a proven and cost-effective way to deliver modern applications. RIAs can be built on Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Adobe Integrated Runtime, JAVAFX, Ajax, Microsoft Silverlight, Java Applets, Curl and Google Web Toolkit Framework. Moreover, RIAs run in a web browser and do not require any software installation.
When RIA are built with the Adobe technology it can be used for the product configuration application that helps the consumers to customize and configure products to meet the specific needs. RIA is also used for multimedia applications that integrate video, audio and animation. With the help of RIAs, the enterprise software vendors are extending the reach of their systems to business users' media-rich interactive applications.
Softweb Solutions is a Flex Development Company having a team of developers with rich experience in the applications of various graphical and multimedia tools that can make your project successful. By utilizing FLEX, Softweb can provide you smarter and better solutions.
To add better functionalities and serve customized solutions we have been working with the following technologies along with Flex:
RIA technology like Adobe FLEX is applied by Softweb to develop cutting-edge integrated Web solutions that deliver extraordinary results. We have proven expertise in Rich Internet Application Development for simple to complex web sites. Softweb builds RIAs with the Adobe Flex technology that enables the designers and developers to work together and develop more innovative web sites with interactive applications.
Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. RIAs typically transfer the processing necessary for the user interface to the web client but keep the bulk of the data (i.e. the state of the program, the data, etc.) back on the application server.
RIAs typically do the following:
A number of platforms on the market enable developers to create RIA applications, including the perennial favorite, Adobe Flash. Some of the top RIA platforms available today are:
Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex
The most popular RIA development tool to date is Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex. These technologies are cross-platform and quite powerful for creating rich client-side interactions.
Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics and supports bi-directional streaming of audio and video. It contains a scripting language called ActionScript. It is available in most common web browsers and some mobile phones and other electronic devices (using Flash Lite). Several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash, including the Adobe Flash Player. The Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform, such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices.
Adobe Flex provides the option to create Flash UIs by compiling MXML, an XML-based interface description language. The Flex SDK comes with a set of user interface components including buttons, list boxes, trees, data grids, several text controls, and various layout containers. Charts and graphs are available as an add-on. Other features like web-services, drag and drop, modal dialogs, animation effects, application states, form validation, and other interactions round out the application framework.
However, perhaps the largest advantage of the Flash RIA platform is the install base of the plug-in, which at last count was 98% of the world’s computers.
Ajax frameworks
The second most popular RIA Development technology is Ajax, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (or XMLHttpRequest). It is a script-based RIA approach. JavaScript is the programming language with which Ajax calls are made.
With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. Data is retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object or through the use of Remote Scripting in browsers that do not support it.
Ajax has quickly risen in popularity as it is supported by all modern browsers without the requirement for additional plug-ins. Like other RIAs, though, it is not well suited for search engine optimization or for handling clients that have disabled client-side scripts.
Adobe AIR
Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), previously code-named Adobe “Apollo,” is a cross-operating-system runtime that allows web application developers to use their existing web development skills with RIA technologies (such as Flash/Flex, JavaScript/Ajax, and HTML) to build and deploy RIAs to the desktop. While not entirely RIA, this technology is closely related to rich applications technology as it targets the same developers.
Adobe positions it as a browser-less runtime for rich Internet applications that can be deployed onto the desktop, rather than a fully-fledged application framework. The differences between each deployment paradigm provide both advantages and disadvantages. For example, a rich internet application deployed in a browser does not require installation, while one deployed with AIR requires the application be packaged, digitally signed, and installed to the user’s local file system. However, this provides access to local storage and file systems, while browser-deployed applications are more limited in where and how data are accessed and stored. In most cases, rich internet applications store users’ data on their own servers, but the ability to consume and work with data on a user’s local file system allows for greater flexibility.
Microsoft Silverlight
Another way to build RIAs is Silverlight, which provides a rich graphics and animation display via XAML integration, and it includes support for multimedia and HTML interaction.
Silverlight was initially get developed under the codename Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E). It is compatible with multiple web browser products used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian (Series 60) phones, will also be supported.
A third-party free software implementation named Moonlight is under development to bring compatible functionality to GNU/Linux.
With Version 2, the .NET Framework is included, enabling client-side programming with managed languages such as C# and supported dynamic languages such as IronRuby. Like Adobe Flash Player, Silverlight code runs in a sandbox without direct access to platform APIs for security.
JavaFX
JavaFX is a new offering from Sun Microsystems that complements the Java family of tools. It addresses the growing demand in the Java community for RIA tools and technologies to deliver rich content to the client. Today the technology spans two releases: JavaFX Script and JavaFX Mobile. JavaFX Script gives Java developers the power to quickly create content-rich applications for the widest variety of clients, including mobile devices, desktops, and home electronics units. In theory, content creators now have a simple way to develop content for any Java-enabled device. JavaFX Mobile, on the other hand, is a complete software system for mobile devices.
OpenLaszlo
OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for the development and delivery of rich Internet applications. It is released under the Open Source Initiative-certified Common Public License.
The OpenLaszlo platform consists of the LZX programming language and the OpenLaszlo Server.
Laszlo applications can be deployed as traditional Java servlets, which are compiled and returned to the browser dynamically. This method requires that the web server be running the OpenLaszlo server.
Alternatively, Laszlo applications can be compiled from LZX into a binary SWF file, and loaded statically into an existing web page. This method is known as SOLO deployment. Applications deployed in this manner lack some functionality of servlet-contained files, such as the ability to consume SOAP web services and XML remote procedure calls.
Google Gears
Google Gears is beta software offered by Google to enable offline access to services that normally only work online. It installs a database engine, based on SQLite, on the client system to locally cache web application data. Google Gears-enabled pages use data from the local cache rather than from the online service. Using Google Gears, a web application may periodically synchronize the data in the local cache with the online service whenever a network connection is available. If a network connection is unavailable, the synchronization is deferred until a network connection is established. This allows Google Gears-enabled web applications to work disconnected from the Internet, making them more like their robust desktop counterparts. While not entirely RIA, this technology is closely related to rich applications technology as it addresses the key problem of application connectivity.
