RIAs Methods And Techniques
JavaScript
It is the first major client side language technology that has the
ability to run code and installed on several major of web clients. Earlier its
uses were relatively limited but the development in DHTML makes possible to
piece together an RIA system without using unified client-side solution. Ajax,
the advance tool of Java Script becomes more prominent technique to develop RIA.
Google is using this tool on the mass scale to develop its one of the most
popular software Gmail and Google maps. Despite of this it is not so easy to
create a large application in this framework. Several other different
technologies have to include with efficiency. For making process easier several
open source Ajax Frameworks have been developed along with commercial
frameworks.
Adobe Flash
This is another major tool to develop RIA as this
technology is cross-platform and quite powerful to create an application user
interface. Flash user interface can be compiled by MXML (a XML based interface
description language), through using Adobe Flex tool. Adobe is currently working
on providing a more powerful platform with the product Adobe AIR, a combo
technology of HTMLs (including Ajax applications) Flash player based
applications and PDFs.
OpenLaszlo
OpenLaszlo is an open source rich Internet
application framework, which was developed by Laszlo Systems Inc.. The
OpenLaszlo server
compiles programs from LZX language (a mixture of XML tags and JavaScript) into either DHTML (commonly known as AJAX now) or Adobe Flash bytecode. At present it is upporting Flash7 and Flash8. OpenLaszlo is the only rich Internet application platform, which can compile two different runtimes of same code base.
Windows
Presentation Foundation and Silverlight
Microsoft has launched Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) with .NET
3.0 Framework that provides a way to build single-platform applications having
some similarities to RIAs that uses XAML and programming languages like C# and
Visual Basic. Besides this, Microsoft has announced to launch Silverlight that
will provide a subset of WPF functionality on devices and other platforms.
ActiveX Controls
Inclusion of ActiveX controls into HTML is a very powerful mean to
develop rich Internet applications, but they have no guarantee of running it on
Internet Explorer properly. Many times they can break the sandbox model. This
makes it a suitable tool to target to manufacture
computer viruses and malware.
Curl 5.0, Rebol 2.6 and Seaside for Smalltalk
There are three alternatives of Java and the JVM are available in the
RIA developing world. These are: Curl, Rebol and Smalltalk. All these are
abstract machines that are available in various forms. Curl facilitates
Client-side
persistent data while Rebol does not need a browser and Seaside uses a minor
extension to Smalltalk to provide a much richer web experience for Smalltalk.
All three alternatives are far more mature than more familiar options and are as
old or older than Java and the JVM.
Java applications
Java based Rich Internet Applications can be launched from within the
browser or as free Standing applications through Java Web Start. Java RIAs can
perform full-fledged functionality of Java include 2D & 3D graphics, and
off-line capabilities, but at the cost of delayed startup. Some useful
frameworks for Java RIAs are XUI,
Swixml, or Canoo?s thin Swing-approach, UltraLightClient.
User Interface languages
New user interface markup language can be used in RIAs as an alternative
to HTML/XHTML. RIA?s user interfaces may also be richer via using scriptable
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVL) as well as SMIL Synchronized Multimedia
Integration Language (SMIL). Though all browsers do not support native SVG
rendering yet.