Internet and Technology

Rich Internet Applications (abbreviated to RIAs) are pieces of software, which you access in your web browser, that closely mimic the behavior and functionality of desktop applications. A good example that most people are familiar with is Gmail, the email service by Google that behaves a lot like the email software installed on your computer.
In the early days of the Internet there were static pages of text and images connected together through hypertext links. To interact with a web site users normally clicked on something and waited for a new page to load. While hypertext links are still valuable, modern web browsers provide many ways for users to interact with web sites.
Today, there are word processors, spreadsheets, online games, and all kinds of other applications developed as RIAs. The advantage of RIA technology is that people can connect to a web site, use the software they need, and not have to install anything on their own computer. RIA technology also provides a consistent experience for people who use Macs, PCs and other systems.
There has been a real explosion of RIA technology on the web in recent years as consumers demand more functionality. Businesses are able to provide increased service levels to customers at a relatively low cost. RIA technology can provide a real win-win scenario.
Not so long ago, it was inconceivable for people to even think about accessing their bank accounts from a computer in their home, now we expect it. If a bank didn’t offer online services, they would lose a lot of customers. We now expect a lot more interaction a lot faster than in the early days of the web.
Some RIA technologies include things such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, Ajax, and JavaFX. However, unless you are a software developer, you almost never have to worry about the choice of technology. Sometimes users may have to install a plugin (such as the Flash Player or Silverlight plugin), and other times the RIA will work with technology already built into the web browser.
Today, many companies rely on RIA technology to provide a competitive advantage. Youtube is one example of a site, providing a unique service and built with RIA technology (Adobe Flash and Ajax). You’ll also find traditional web sites, like Amazon.com, sprinkling RIA technology liberally throughout their site.
Today, there is a growing RIA community that consists of software developers, business people who need to leverage the technology to compete, and end-users who want the most from their Internet experiences. It’s an exciting time to be on the Internet with new fun and useful applications being launched every day.

Melanie Benson Strick is not a doctor, but she specializes in treating a condition she calls the “Bright Shiny Object Syndrome.”

“When you are chasing a new, bright shiny object every day, you’re going to be overwhelmed,” Melanie explains. “When I tell people I have a formula to break free of that syndrome, they get curious and want to go the next step with me.”

And that is how Melanie morphed into an engineer of sorts – she identifies where her clients want to go, and she designs a process to get them there.

Melanie’s creative approach is featured in a new book, “The Official Get Rich Guide to Information Marketing on the Internet” by Robert Skrob and Bob Regnerus, because she cleverly turned her Internet marketing savvy into a cash cow.

Melanie started out as a trade events organizer and later worked for Motorola, helping the company establish the 9-1-1 call centers. “But I began to look for ways to have more fun,” she recalls. “Lifestyle coaching seemed like an interesting field, where I could use my previous experiences.”

However, Melanie realized she couldn’t just plunge head-on into her new career. “I was pretty naïve to think I could just go out and become a coach because I didn’t know how to pull this together,” she says. “I had no clue how to recruit clients.”

That’s when Melanie turned for help to consultant Alexandria Brown, who has been very successful in her own information marketing business. Alexandria looked at Melanie’s website and offered this assessment: the site, though eye-pleasing, would not attract customers. “She said it was a waste of space on the Internet because it was not doing anything for me,” Melanie relates.

In fact, websites cluttered with too many graphics and too much useless information is counterproductive, Skrob notes. “The more choices you put in front of people, the longer it will take them to make a decision and the less likely they are to be happy with the choice they make. When the number of options gets really overwhelming, people often respond by making no decision at all. So when it comes to getting responses from your website visitors, ONE is the magic number. When you present your visitors with ONE yes-or-no decision at a time, you’re more likely to get the results you want.”

So Alexandria advised Melanie to restructure her website, adding a landing page that invited visitors to leave their e-mail addresses in exchange for a free report and an assessment of the potential client’s business. The report, which also included a CD and a subscription to an e-zine, helped Melanie connect with people who needed help building their own businesses.

With this new, focused website Melanie hit the jackpot. To attract more clients, she developed different levels at which people could access her information, ranging from a reasonably priced entry level to more elaborate packages. “This way I maximize my conversion of prospects into mentoring clients” she says.

It is no wonder that info-marketers like Melanie and numerous others profiled in the book, a sequel to last year’s “The Official Get Rich Guide to Information Marketing,” became extraordinarily successful by packaging their expertise and selling it to others. “The development of the Internet has been good for every type of business,” notes Skrob, president of the Tallahassee FL-based Information Marketing Association. “And there has never been a better time to be in the Internet information marketing business because it is responsive to and fueled by the ever-increasing pressure on people’s time.”

The book, out in September 2008, “picks up where the last one ended,” Skrob adds. “The last book taught the big picture business plan; this book shows how to implement that plan on the Internet. If you have an information marketing business now, you can’t afford to miss out on what the Internet has to offer. And if you’re just getting started in information marketing, the Internet will help you make your first sale more quickly and with less risk – just as Melanie did.”

 

The Rich Internet Application reflects the gradual but inevitable transition of Web applications from the simple thin-client model of a traditional Web browser to a richer distributed-function model that behaves more like the desktop in a client/server model. Today these richer user experiences are being implemented with technologies such as Flash, Ajax, and Java, using standard Internet and Web protocols to take web performance to the next level.

Because RIAs are significantly more complex than traditional browserbased Web applications, they pose new design, measurement, and management challenges. To implement RIAs successfully, enterprises must re-evaluate their approaches to service level management (SLM) and consider several new challenges including:

• how to measure an RIA user’s experience of response time;

• how to break apart into meaningful components the time it takes to complete a business transaction;

• how to monitor the performance of a production application, and alert when its behavior is abnormal;

• how to change development and systems management processes to ensure successful implementations.

The Evolution of the Web Page

The Web was originally intended to help researchers share documents as static pages of linked text formatted in HTML. From there, Web pages quickly evolved to include complex structures of text and graphics, with plug-in programs to play audio and video files or to stream multimedia content. Web developers supplement the basic browser function of rendering HTML by invoking code (scripts) on the user’s computer (the client). These scripts can create interface elements such as rollover effects, custom pull-down menus, and other navigation aids. These script capabilities, while they enhance a user’s interaction with individual Web pages, do not change the fundamental model in which application logic runs on the server and executes between Web pages after the user clicks. This behavior is said to be synchronous, that is, after each click the user waits while the server handles the input and the browser downloads a response page.

From Web Pages to Rich Internet Applications

In a traditional Web application, all processing is done on the server, and a new Web page is downloaded each time the user clicks. Recently, Web developers have been evolving a new model—the Rich Internet Application (RIA), which is “a cross between Web applications and traditional desktop applications, transferring some of the processing to a Web client and keeping (some of) the processing on the application server”.

As with most computing advances, several technologies are vying for acceptance as the de facto standard way to build RIAs. The main contenders are Adobe’s Flash suite, Java applets, and the collection of Web technologies known as Ajax, a term coined in 2005 by Adaptive Path’s Jesse James Garrett. Garrett explained that Ajax is “really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways.

Ajax incorporates:

• standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;

• dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;

• data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;

• asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;

• JavaScript binding everything together.”

In practice, we can think of Ajax as a development concept or approach, as various technologies can substitute for those specified by Garrett. Some developers even claim that “Flash is Ajax”, and others advocate using them together. viz., AFLAX. All having their hand in website performance complicating any analysis of RIA technology is the massive amount of hype surrounding both “Web 2.0” (a superset of RIA) and Ajax (a subset of RIA).

Looking to create very rich and interactive applications? It is not so easy for developing high-performing applications as it is really need some heads up. You will need some expert and professional developer to develop application without fault. There is lots of IT outsourcing company but for developing high-end application you will need creative and skilled developer.

Desktop based Rich Internet Application running on multiple operating systems need runtime Adobe AIR. By having feature of additional API adobe AIR makes Rich Internet application development faster and smoother compared to other web application development platforms. Creating a high-performance application is not an easy task. It will need some extra care and professional programming skills. For developing very rich and interactive application it’s effective to outsource from some sound skilled IT outsourcing companies such as Rightway Solution. One of the best professional and outstanding growth achiever in Flex application development and Adobe AIR web development Rightway can be the best solution.

Adobe AIR is easy and cost effective technology which can control some existing technologies like HTML, Java scripts, CSS, Flex, and Flash for creating desktop applications. The strong point of AIR is that can work existing web application to deliver excellent Rich Internet Applications (RIA) to remote browser.

Adobe provides developers three ways for Adobe AIR development:

As the traditional desktop applications Adobe AIR is having Cross Platform Application runtime, run application while Internet disconnected, low risk and Cost effective development, easy to integrate with existing technologies, supports to native desktop integration and having ability to access local data with embedded databases.

Another benefit is AIR offers integrated support for the SQLite database and helps in web application development and desktop application development.

Rich Internet Applications are the next generation of Web applications. Rich Internet Application provides the usability, receptiveness, and reuse of client/server applications with the operation, manageability, and accessibility of traditional Web applications. Examples of RIA frameworks comprise of Ajax, Curl, GWT, Adobe Flash/Adobe Flex/AIR, Java/JavaFX, Mozilla’s XUL, OpenLaszlo and Microsoft Silverlight.

Rich Internet applications offer a rich, appealing experience that develops user satisfaction and boost productivity. Using the Internet, the developers can organize RIAs across browsers and desktops. Rich Internet Applications differ from other Internet applications in the amount of communication interface. A customary page based on Internet application limits interaction to a small set of usual controls such as checkboxes, form fields, radio buttons and buttons. This strictly limits the skill to build usable applications and most Internet applications have proven awkward and more difficult to use than their desktop counterparts.

RIAs can change the way businesses operate so far. The technology behind creating such applications is not complex and can be straightforwardly understood and executed in order to create useful program. It will definitely improve the presence of a website over the internet. Many companies have doubled their output by adding rich internet applications into their internet operations.

RIAs have developed all kind of applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, online games. The benefit of technology is that surfer can connect to a website, use the software they need, and no need to install anything on their own computer. This technology provides a reliable experience for surfers who use Macs, PCs and other systems.

In today’s scenario most of the companies are depending and taking advantage from RIA technology. YouTube is one such example of a website that is offering this service and which is built with RIA technology (Adobe Flash and AJAX). RIA community consists of software developers and business people who need to develop the technology and use for better future of websites.

A number of websites with RIA style interfaces include:

Many are constructed with Flash or AJAX techniques. The key features of these applications include:

These rich features are those that provide test to designers who wish to make sure applications are highly functional.

Flex Rich Internet Applications Want your hometown Team for Flex Development and Rich Internet Applications? Building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) is no easy task. Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are web applications that have the features and functionality of traditional desktop applications. Flexperts Chicago’s Adobe tools, clients, frameworks, servers and services usage or by using them in combination with other familiar web technologies helps make complete solution for building RIAs. RIAs typically transfer the processing necessary for the user interface to the web client but keep the bulk of the data back on the application server. Flexperts Chicago’s Flex Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex & Java is aimed squarely at the IT developers. Flex 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. Leading companies across industries such as entertainment, finance, media, retail and social networking are embracing Adobe RIA technologies. Flexperts Chicago’s 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. Flexperts Chicago’s RIA offer organizations a proven, cost-effective way to deliver modern applications with real business benefits.

Flexperts Chicago’s is established to provide custom rich internet applications. Your hometown team of enthusiast and professional Adobes flex developers is a niche team of a multinational solutions provider providing you with reliable support and unlimited possibilities.

Your friend calls you up at the last moment and goes like, “Hey. There’s a hip party around the block, tonight! Better not miss it”. You jump off the bed, not out of excitement but, because you don’t have a Cinderella dress for the bash. “Okay, wait… This is not 1996”; you think to yourself and run to your notebook, switch it on and rush to D&G website. There it is; your dream attire! You put your hands inside the notebook’s screen and take the dress out of that website, in a blink!

Don’t believe it? You will, soon enough, because this is the future of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs): an implausibly interactive and flexible web experience.

As the majority of people, around the globe, begin to use broadband connections; your RIA incorporated website has more chances to clutch the mainstream potential consumers of your product/service.

Now, the million dollar question is: What RIA do I integrate into my website to provide a more engaging web experience to my prospective consumers? Well, the answer is as simple as it gets. I will jot down examples of some award winning RIA-incorporated websites and you’ll know exactly what you want for your website.

On July 21, 2007; The Simpsons movie was released world-wide. They launched a series of promotional campaigns for the movie. From McFarlane’s Simpson Toys and EA’s “The Simpson Game” to the Hill figure of Homer in Dorset; they did it all. However, the all favourite Simpsonize Me promotional crusade was the most successful of all. Now, what was so thriving about this website? Believe it or not, just three words: Rich Internet Application. You upload a picture of yourself and it generates an image of you as a Simpson’s character. It’s fun, engaging and, above all, you get simpsonized!

Ikea came up with an even better idea. They created “Anna”, a female bot, to assist and guide you through their website. You communicate with her and she answers all your questions like a real sales representative. Now, that’s nifty.

Using the RIA framework, YouTube has revolutionised the delivery of video content over world-wide web. Some top-notch websites have even introduced custom product configuration setups. Let’s take Reebok, for instance. You can design your own Reebok and pump up your closet. It’s exactly what every customer wants; a personalised product.

Accessibility, performance and consistency are the key characteristics of Rich Internet Applications. It’s all about providing an unparallel startling experience to the web community. Your users will love talking to your bot or designing your product that, eventually, they would dig your website and make a purchase.

It’s all about exposure; therefore, you need to elevate your online presence with Rich Internet Applications because you don’t want to lag behind in the future stampede of competition.

The term “Rich Internet Application” was coined in early 2000. The framework refers to a web application which runs itself in a web browser with abstract and interactive details, much in the same way desktop applications often function.

RIAChicago has been able to provide best in class information accessibility services to the end users. With a much richer browsing platform than before, users can get to view the data without refreshing the page and the applications stay consistent across various browsers.

Most of the RIAChicago’s applications are based on Ajax and utilize flash’s capabilities on a simple HTML platform.

Several technologies can be used in order to create a RIAChicago’s framework. Some of the popular platforms include:

RIAChicago has been able to deliver breakthrough solutions in the RIA space. RIAChicago have delivered customized Adobe Flex solutions to customers across various industry segments. RIAChicago’s delivery model is pretty simple.

RIAChicago work around for the customer requirements based on 4D model. Right from Discovery to Design followed by Develop and Delivery, customer centric approach is maintained in order to deliver best in class RIA solutions. RIAChicago truly has been able to provide cutting edge designs that have increased the bottom-line of their customers.

RIAChicago provides an end-to-end project implementation and post delivery support on the delivered applications. RIAChicago is an obvious choice for small to mid segment enterprises that plan to grow their online business and market their services in an attractive manner to their suspects online.

All the projects that are undertaken follow a professional and systematic approach. RIAChicago can also support the end users in establishing a market in the competitive environment. RIAChicago has carried several Internet marketing campaigns and provided more traction and leads to their valued customers.

Silverlight Technology developed by Microsoft incorporates the same functionalities as Adobe flash. It helps integrate graphics, multimedia, animation, and interactivity in one runtime environment. The latest version of the technology was introduced in July 2009. The technology gels well with Microsoft windows as well as Mac operating system.

Why use Silverlight?

High definition video files can be viewed with Silverlight Technology and Microsoft will responsible for transferring these files to the Internet. The transfer of large media files is expensive but Microsoft will still take the trouble to stream Silverlight media files. However, the service will be optional. Streaming done by microsoft will save content distribution network fees for small developers. According to Microsoft, 700 kbps throughput will be reliable and the free distribution of network content will last for a year.

In addition, the applications based on Silverlight Technology are delivered to browser in XAML. The advantage of using XAML is that it is easier for the search engines to find scan XAML than compiled Flash applications. The Flash based applications have an added web code which facilitates the search but adding that means extra work for developers. Even if the web code is added to the application, the result will not be as good. This is because Silverlight Technology helps search engines index the actual application instead of just searching for the keywords.

Lastly, Microsoft is marketing Silverlight Technology along with its live services. It is introducing Application Program Interfaces (APIs) for search engine, Virtual Earth, instant messenger and other services. Microsoft networks and resources will be used to create these services which will be supported by advanced online applications. Silverlight Technology will spearhead the development of Rich Internet Applications because of these reasons.

Rich Internet applications provide an end user with an interface that is more responsive than traditional applications. The user’s browser does not exchange large, monolithic blocks of information, but rather sends small pieces of data at a time, usually asynchronously. And this means that only relevant pieces of the interface need to updated, allowing users to do more, and do it more quickly, than traditional web applications allow. For this reason, more and more web applications use rich Internet technology of some type to give the end user an optimal experience.

Implementation of Ajax RIA can enhance value of service oriented systems. Open source developers can combine and leverage the powerful capabilities of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with Rich Internet Applications technology. Developers can use many available free components, flexibility to use layouts, data management tools. Traditional RIA followed client-server architecture and client is used to display static content where as all real processing is carried on the server. Server is the channel through which client instructions are executed only by receiving response from the server. These drawbacks lead to revamping and current RIA has proved.

Even web developers that are comfortable with AJAX or Flex (or other frameworks used for creating rich Internet applications) will soon need to immerse themselves in Microsoft Silverlight, while new developers will want to learn about Microsoft Silverlight from the start. Because of its foundation with .NET, Microsoft Silverlight has a smaller learning curve than many other frameworks used to create rich Internet applications.

Client engine provides several benefits to enjoy: rich user interface; more responsive as client engine is downloaded on the client side at the beginning itself. Other performance benefits include: client server balance, workload on the web server is reduced, and resources set free are assigned other client sessions simultaneously. Prefetching and asynchronous communication speeds up the response time. This helps RIA users to move data between the client and server easily. e.g. Google Maps. Network load is reduced as client engine is application specific and before downloading data.

We know that in a general each web page requires an individual download using HTTP GET request. But, RIA uses asynchronous communication for more responsive user interface bypassing web page paradigm of downloading the web pages. This makes difficult to measure the response time and reduces the packet sniffing approach. RIA is javascript enabled and uses XMLHTTPRequest for client-server communication, DOM scripting and latest CSS for rich user interface. Some products provide environment for development.