Adobe RIAthon (India)
If you happen to be in India and working with RIA’s, you should consider joining the Adobe RIAthon 08.
Entries have to be submitted no later than the 26th November.
Check it out…
http://adoberiathon.wordpress.com/
MyHome : Introduction Video (3)
This is the video of the presentation on national danish television featuring the project manager from The Danish Electricity Saving Trust and the Technical Director of HelloGroup.
Documenting Rich Internet Applications… perspectives from an IA
Another fellow at Hello Group is Peter Svarre who is directing our immensely competent UX department.
On his blog he has recently been writing about the challenges of creating UX for Rich Internet Applications… which is one of the great challenges the entire new media industry currently are faced with.
Check it out… its essential to understand the challenges Peter Svarre and his UX peers are mentioning if you are working with RIA’s or tomorrow’s websites.
(http://www.petersvarre.dk/blog/2008/09/web-20-expo-1-documenting-rich-internet.html)
Google Gears
The latest entry among the candidate RIA technologies is Google Gears.
Still in version 0.3 at the time of this writing, its obvious that a lot of work needs to be done.
However, Google Gears (GG) has a couple of neat features…
* Database based on SQLLite.
* WorkerPool (JavaScript MultiThreading).
* Desktop Module to interact with the OS.
The Database module provides browser-local relational data storage to your JavaScript web application. Gears uses the open source SQLite database system. Ergo exactly as we have grown accustomed with Adobe AIR.
The WorkerPool module allows web applications to run JavaScript code in the background, without blocking the main page’s script execution.
In web browsers a single time-intensive operation, such as I/O or heavy computation, can make the UI unresponsive. The WorkerPool module runs operations in the background, without blocking the UI. Scripts executing in the WorkerPool will not trigger the browser’s “unresponsive script” dialog.
Nevertheless, since the browser’s XmlHttpRequest object is not available in the context of a worker, Gears provides its own HttpRequest object to fill that need. Gears HttpRequest provides most of the features of XmlHttpRequest except for the ability to access the response as an XML DOM object and the ability to send a request synchronously.
Check it out…
http://gears.google.com/
A couple of more cool features are scheduled, but lets see which ideas actually make it out of the labs alive.
Some reasons to consider GG are that it does not require an explicit installation, just that you allow a specific site to run Gears enabled and that its open source in contrast to e.g. Adobe AIR and there a couple of more pretty interesting features of GG, but I will not get into that now.
When this is said, in my very humble graphical understanding – I think there exist a striking resemblance between Adobe AIR logo and the Google Gears logo and to be totally honest, the feature set if we disregard the very promising multi-threaded Javacsript… do you see what I mean ?
Google Trends of XAML and MXML
Despite the huge momentum Adobe Flex have gained the last year or so, its clear that XAML still have more momentum overall, according to Google Trends.
XAML is the markup language from Microsoft to create RIA’s and one of the cornerstones in Silverlight, MS’s “new” primary RIA platform. MXML is the markup language used in Adobe Flex, Adobe’s primary RIA platform and has been around for quite a shorter time than XAML.
Here is a direct link to the comparison I did:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=xaml%2Cmxml
An interesting observation is related to the geographical distribution of the searches, seeing that India is top-ranking in regards to Country, however in regards to City its Redmond, VA (The home of Microsoft).
Another interesting point is that Denmark and Danish is at the time of this comparison (it’s off course subject to change, partly due to the dynamics of the Google indexing system based on statistically enhanced numbers and off course due to the fact that the numbers eventually do change over the course of time) ranked 10 and 6 respectively, positioning the Danish RIA community high on the international rank.
Combine this with the positions of our brothering countries, Sweden and Norway, Scandinavia is definitely in the super-liga of RIA regions.
Control Creation : In Markup or Code ?
While it is possible to create all your controls and objects in code, best practices dictate that it is usually better to do so in markup. The most compelling reason is that markup is highly “toolable” – that is, it lends itself to round-trip modification in tools such as Adobe Flex Builder and MS Visual Studio / Expression and thus is easier to scale, modify and maintain.
The Copenhagen RIA / Flex Meetup
Earlier this year a MeetUp group was created for Copenhagen centered around the development of RIA’s and Adobe Flex.
Along with DFUG (www.flashforum.dk) this will become one of the places where you can expect to see events posted.
Check it out:
http://flash.meetup.com/149/
DFUG : Manager for Adobe User Group Copenhagen
Its a great honor for me to have been elected the regional manager for the Adobe User Group in Copenhagen in collaboration with Mikkel Havmand.
We hope to be able to make a difference on the Copenhagen RIA scene and I sincerely hope to be able to arrange for some cool events, both virtual and real-life, in the upcoming year.
I will from now on be posting about topics relating to this as well as RIA and Adobe Flex in general.
Check out the official statement (sorry, its only in Danish):
http://flashforum.dk/publikationer/nyheder/dfug-far-nyt-manager-team-i-kobenhavn
RIA : Is this Web 3.0 ?
Taking a step back from the ever occurring deadlines and technical challenges that lurch around every corner, it becomes evident that RIA may have a more significant nature than it may seem at first sight.
Not everyone agrees on exactly what Web 2.0 entails. As with all great buzzwords and concepts, people are already predicting what Web 3.0 will be. Will rich internet applications dominate it?
RIAs are still in their infancy, but when done right they’re incredibly powerful tools. When Google launched Google Maps a few years ago, it opened people’s eyes to the fact that web browsers can do much more than merely display pictures and text.
Currently, there are four mainstream mechanisms being used to develop RIAs.
AJAX/JavaScript
AJAX is a web development technique for using JavaScript with XML to create a rich internet application by dynamically and asynchronously exchanging data in the background without having to refresh the page. Google Maps and Gmail demonstrated what could be done with simple existing technologies like JavaScript and XMLHttpRequest. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! all now promote their own AJAX toolkits to assist in building AJAX-rich media functionality.
Flash/Flex
The first horse in the RIA race was Flash. Adobe/Macromedia with its Flash/Flex infrastructure is still the leader in online video. Combining the programming capabilities of Flex makes an incredibly powerful toolset for creating internet applications. Flash has strong penetration and when used effectively can enhance your website.
Silverlight/.NET
Microsoft is barreling ahead with Silverlight, a browser plug-in to deliver interactive web applications that should be taken seriously. The company launched Silverlight earlier this year and is promoting it heavily to its large partner development network. Silverlight is delivered to a browser via XAML, which is a text-based markup language. This makes it easier for search engines to scan Silverlight vs. Flash.
OpenLaszlo
Finally, even though you don’t see it much, there’s an open-source platform for RIAs called OpenLaszlo. Initially developed as a proprietary system by Laszlo Systems, it was made open source in 2004. Not wanting to be left out of the RIA race, IBM–consistent with its embracing of Linux and other open source–has helped propel OpenLaszlo. The company worked with Laszlo Systems to use the open source Eclipse development platform with OpenLaszlo. Applications for OpenLaszlo can be run in Flash or in DHTML.
One current issue with Flash is that while search engines can index it, they don’t index it as well as with text because Flash is a binary compiled file. That’s why most websites aren’t entirely created in Flash. Accessibility and keyboard navigation can be issues with these rich applications as well. If you don’t have a mouse or can’t use one, then you’ll have problems with these technologies. Also, while the plug-ins have sizable browser penetration, they’re problematic for some users.
What It Means for You
What does all of this mean for business owners in the Web 2.0 era? For the tech entrepreneur it means new opportunities. Many traditional client server applications are being pressured to move their applications to the web. Entrepreneurs can potentially displace client server apps with new innovative web applications. For other entrepreneurs, you have to evaluate your business and what specific benefits you can get from adding rich features to your website.
Ever Evolving
There will be other emerging technologies in the RIA area. The combination of these rich features will help trends like social networking continue to evolve. We’ll likely see many websites with more drag-and-drop-type features in the next few years. The online/offline office also will continue to develop as predominant internet companies compete with Microsoft Office for the next generation office applications. Web applications will continue to become more robust and feature rich than ever before.
Note:
Copyright © 2007 Entrepreneur.com, Inc.
…and thanks to Frank Bell for his input.
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