Rich Internet Applications are internet applications which can act as software which is installed locally on your computer. Experts call this is the next trend of the business applications. But I can’t call it next, because almost every one using them everyday even without knowing. What are those really? The answer is very simple.
- Google Products
- G Mail
- Calender
- Reader
- Maps
- Yahoo Mail
- Facebook (Partially)
Normally a traditional web 2.0 web site refresh on every dynamic change. But rich internet application never refreshes the whole page. Look G mail, once you go in there, read e mail, compose or edit settings. It refreshes only the necessary section of the web page. So in there user can’t see a “Flicker” on every change on the web page. This is the main goal of creating rich internet applications. Furthermore it utilizes the bandwidth and provides smooth browsing experience to their user. In other words, user doesn’t feel that he is browsing. It acts like normal software installed locally on the PC.
To develop rich internet applications the base line technology is “JAVA Script”. When a JAVA script calls the web server to get some data from the database to update the web page dynamically, we call it AJAX (Asynchronous JAVA Script and XML). Traditional web 2.0 web page is “Synchronous” means it waits till the server response comes and can make only one response at a time. In AJAX its “Asynchronous” means only a part of the web site wait till the server response comes and many server response can be made at the same time. Whole page never waits till a server response comes. (Never refresh as whole). To make the developers life even easier there are some AJAX frameworks.
- GWT – Google web Toolkit
- Adoby Flex
- IceFaces
Using above framework the developer can make the web site is a agile manner. If someone chooses to write AJAX come manually, it will take very long time though he has the total ultimate control. The above mentioned frameworks provide IDE integration with “Drag and Drop” tools which saves lots of time.
This trend is walking toward a new era of software development. In near future there won’t be setup.exes. Instead of that there will be online software, like G mail for all the day to day needs. Furthermore this will end (almost) software piracy. All the users who need to use the software must pay the subscription fee. No installation, no cracks. And I think current speed of internet is good enough to run rich internet application. But the reliability should be improved. The last thing I need to see is, I can’t type a document because there is no internet. Smart developers will come up with smart solutions for this as well. There are already some offline versions for some Rich internet application which solve the problem up to some level. Let’s look forward.
Tags: #Internet #Rich Internet Applications