[Sigia-l] Refreshing - What's RIA?

[Listera]

"Bob Doyle" wrote:

> I made it a NarrowerTerm to WebApplication...

Well, the general notion of RIA means different things to different
companies, but for at least Microsoft and Macromedia, it's beyond *web*
applications. 

This is more than a semantic difference as it signals their long-term goals.
Their strategic direction is to move *Internet* applications from the public
HTML/HTTP based *web* ones to proprietary Avalon/XAML or Flash/XMLM ones,
respectively.

For MS and MM, the goal is to use public protocols like HTTP, web services,
SOAP, XML, etc., for data transmission, but resort to proprietary runtime
engines (Avalon and Flash) and dev languages (XAML and XMLM) to display that
data.

Indeed, Microsoft (which will not have significantly upgraded its IE web
browser in over half a decade) and Macromedia (which doesn't even own a
browser) wouldn't mind at all if you actually ditched the web browser, in
favor of their runtime. Avalon/XAML is not restricted to the *web*(browser)
and Macromedia would love you try Central (which is essentially a Flash
runtime working outside of the web browser).

So the it's really RIA (Rich *Internet* Applications) not RWA (Rich *Web*
Applications).

Ziya
Nullius in Verba