July 12th, 2007
The market adoption proves the "why" of Rich Internet Applications
When smarter people than me start talking about Rich Internet Applications I’m always a happy camper. In this case it’s Michael Coté from RedMonk who recently got a tour of Silverlight from Microsoft and wrote up an interesting perspective on the Rich Internet Application space. I enjoyed his definition of what an RIA is because I think we’re all still trying to define it:
My simple sieve consists of three parts:
- Is it something trying to act like a web application (only better!), including connecting to and interacting with the web?
- Is it trying to go beyond standard web application UI technology using something more than Ajax?
- Did you have to download a browser plugin or other runtime?
Answering “yes” to more than less of those, you probably have an RIA. Sure, that’s not a tried-and-true method, but it’s something more than the other method that works 100% of the time, “I’ll know it when I see it.”
It’s a long post but worth reading because Coté gets into the why of Rich Internet Applications, which is something that not everyone seems to get. Most people acknowledge that RIAs look better, but in some cases that prettier UI doesn’t translate into a better user experience. In those cases, everyone loses. All of us, Microsoft, Adobe, ect, want RIAs to make the web experience better. And as Coté starts to brainstorm, that can happen in a lot of different verticals.
It could be video, where both Flash and Silverlight make the web better. It could be retail applications that help stores lure customers with better advertising and a more fun commerce experience. It could be any site on the web that wants to use RIA technologies to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Or it could even be the enterprise, which is something Adobe is starting to talk more about.
Because these technologies are all still very new, we don’t have a lot of examples to point to to say “this works.” But people are using them.Here’s the key: Because these technologies are all still very new, we don’t have a lot of examples to point to to say “this works.” But people are using them. Look at Pownce, the Nike+ site, the British Library, or Finetune. The market is going to ultimately decide whether or not these sites increase traffic/add brand loyalty/create a better user experience. But so far the trend seems to be that more sites and companies are leveraging RIAs. I think that means that in large part people are happy with their RIA investments, but in the near future as we get more data and metrics on these RIAs, we’ll be able to talk more about concrete examples.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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