Open Thread: Do Rich Internet Applications Matter to You?
At the beginning of this month, Microsoft made noise at MIX ‘07 about their Silverlight platform designed to bring .NET to the browser at the same time it knocks Adobe’s Flash out of it. Both Silverlight and Flash aim at the rich internet application space — a perceived gap in what users want and what they are getting from their overly light web apps. The idea is that we need more rich interactivity from our browser apps than they give us. But is this just developer fantasy, or does it represent a real end user need?
In 2003, Sun technologist Tim Bray observed that “both IT admins and end-users prefer browser-based apps to traditional compiled clients, for everything except content creation.” He suggests that it’s mainly developers who perceive the need for rich Internet applications.
I’m curious what you really want out of your application interfaces. Gmail, a “poor” Internet application in that it’s completely Ajax-based, offers many people a more-than-acceptable interface to email. Del.icio.us also provides plenty of power without richness. Zoho Writer may be a fine replacement for “rich” offline word processors in an era of web publishing.
True, most of us have a need for desktop applications, especially related to our particular profession. Graphic designers need PhotoShop, book authors need MS Word or OpenOffice, software developers might choose Eclipse. Perhaps rich desktop applications and poor Internet applications are complements, never to converge into the hybrid web-desktop apps trumpeted by web technology futurists.
Do you see a need for more richness in your Internet applications? What desktop applications will you continue to use into the indefinite future? What have you moved into the browser?
I do not need rich internet applications. What I need are applications that work both online and offline out of the browser.
Nope, I like my Web applications simple with just a touch of AJAX where it improves the user experience.
I often get turned off when I get to a site and I have to wait for the animation to play before I get to the content itself.
Another problem with Flash based sites, is (correct me if I am wrong) that they do not have the usual page index.
Take care
Serge Blog: http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
I find that I’m moving more and more into the browser. I use web-based email, calendaring, bookmarking, feed reader and storage applications. I also use a web-based project management/CRM tool (dotProject, although I’m giving SugarCRM a test-drive), and I’m completely in love with Zoho’s Office suite.
I do occasionally find myself using desktop and web apps in a complementary way. I’ll sometimes create a document offline, then import it into an online app for storage and future access.
I accept RIAs for what they are and where they are. A limited feature set is the trade off for greater access. But I find that I most of the web apps I use do most of what I need them to do most of the time.
My biggest concern is portability. Give me the ability to export all of my documents at once in case you go out of business or something.
There is always going to be a hybrid of Internet apps and Desktop Apps. The more features you need, the more your going to steer clear of Internet apps.
RIA is nice, ajax is good thing to have also! but what matters most is the use of all these to get your job done!
We used to get things right like 5 years ago when nobody was speaking for web 2.0 and RIA!
Best
Whatever can eliminate excessive page reloads on submit works for me.
However, I still don’t think web apps and broadband connections are robust enough compared to other compiled apps.
Also, the online/offline problem is a HUGE issue for webapps that many web developers like to ignore.
In my opinion, RIA is a phrase that was developed by Adobe (or Macromedia at the time) just for marketing purposes. They were seeing less use of Flash for entire web sites and needed a way to show that it’s still useful in this age of web based applications.
I think Ajax can accomplish a majority of what Flash can in Rich Internet Applications and with less of a learning curve for developers.
I can never get trackbacks from ZDNet to post, but here’s my response – http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=389
Anne, one of these days I am going to convert you. When that happens, I am going to host a party and celebrate. :)
=Ryan Adobe Evangelist
Wow, so trackbacks are working. I feel like a dummy.
I also find myself using online applications more and more. Tools like Gliffy (for diagrams) or Floorplanner (for architectural floor plans) offer enough functionality for my occasional need for these type of tools and the ability to share and easy access your work on different computers are things that are becoming more important for me these days.
I agree with Ryan – excellent point. I think the root issue is design vs. development. I’m a developer myself and only recently have I started valuing the “ergonomic” value of applications – its all about the marriage of design and function – a balance of art and science. A form in AJAX is that same as a form in Flash – same functionality with different rendering – RIA will prove its value when different methods for manipulating data that can’t be replicated in DHTML come about. I agree with need for online/offline access to apps. And I think this is something that Apollo and Silverlight are aiming to address. Nope..I don’t work for Adobe or Microsoft.
I have to say: one thing I loved about the web was the lack of richness – simple, functional UI’s with out the bloat, lag, and clutter of heavy desktop apps like Outlook or Word. IMHO, apps like Yahoo’s new mail are a step backward, while streamlined things like Tumblr are a step in the right direction. Certainly there’s a place for RIA’s (if you’re doing photo editing online, etc), but the application of richness needs to be selective and tasteful.
Sheesh – I’m starting to sound like curmudgeonly Jakob Neilsen.
The browser user experience is clearly inefficient, and insufficient. While AJAX is letting me ditch Flash, it seems like we still need a better model for resident applications and executables. Sun is doing some interesting stuff with Java, I wonder if that will play out. I doubt Silverlight has a prayer, though, talk about proprietary.
Hi Anne,
I think that, more than anything, these new RIA frameworks provide a more solid, and more formalized foundation for creating the types of applications that we were already able to create with traditional AJAX & DHTML. Even though we have good ajax frameworks like YUI, GWT, and Prototype, they still have the same fundamental problem in that they bend, twist, and arm-wrestle the web browser to behave in a way that it wasn’t originally intended to do.
Gliffy is a perfect example: under the hood of this simple diagram tool is a mountain of javascript code, html, css hacks, etc. I’m guessing that you could rewrite the same tool in Apollo or Silverlight at a fraction of the cost both in terms of time and lines of code.
Jim D.: I’m pretty sure Gliffy is Flash-based, so it’d probably qualify as an RIA. Good point that developing with Ajax is very difficult.
Alice: yes, the Java stuff could be interesting too.
In the tech world, we seem to have forgotten that most normal people i.e. end users & folks who run businesses in the rest of the world (outside of Silicon Valley) don’t buy applications based on the technology i.e Rational business people don’t make statement like – “If this is not using AJAX I will not buy it!” OR “I will only use applications authored in Ruby and using Rails!”. At the end of the day, people running serious businesses will buy solutions that best solves their pain or needs. Each class of technologies used to create and deliver the application(s) has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The user will make their choice(s) after weighing the pros & cons of each application.
Hence the question “Do Rich Internet Applications matter to you?” is a tech-centric view and the wrong question. Within the application taxonomy, there is a continuum from the fully hosted pure HTML browser based application to the totally offline desktop application– in between these, we have rich AJAX browser based application, richer Flash runtime based application and even richer Silverlight runtime based application. (And I am sure that over time other solutions will also emerge) Hosted applications bring a set of advantages: • Application, data & state roaming both geographically and any device (Constrained by the runtime availability on the device ie basic HTML processing browsers are there on all devices but richer runtimes may not be there in all devices) • Easy one click non-brittle application deployment ie pure browser app or browser+runtime plug-in based app • Always on & IT tasks such as backup, security, tuning etc are handled by the provider • Easy to support multi-user access • Easy to integrate with other hosted applications
And also bring some disadvantages: • High latency and sluggish performance if there is a need to work on large data sets • Harder to build applications that need close interface with multiple peripheral/hardware devices • Harder to build applications that need quick response time (ie cannot deal with high latency such as Point of Sale applications) • Cannot do pure offline
In my view, over time the distribution of user population over the range of these applications types could potentially look like a skewed bell curve. The exact distribution will be determined by many factors including infrastructure build out (Internet connectivity, mobile device adoption etc) & size of the different user segments that have differing needs and which class of application solves them best.
Both Gliffy as Floorplanner are flashbased as far as I know
Marl: at WWD, we write for a tech-centric crowd and we don’t consider them abnormal. Starting a discussion based on technology is useful. There are paradigmatic differences in web-native vs. desktop-like apps; it may not be a simple continuum as you propose. I think most techie types can shift between the user interface view and the technology-under-the-covers view with ease. In some cases it doesn’t matter, but in the case of DHTML and the others, it does — because you are nudged towards certain interface styles by DHTML that Flash/Silverlight won’t support and vice versa.
Marl, I agree on most of the points. I think there were several posts that are implying it is DHTML vs FLEX/FLASH, SilverLight, etc… I think the most successful websites in the near future will incorporate a mix of technologies, using FLASH only were needed. YouTube is a prime example of this.
Another point to be made (again, mentioned above) is the speed at which the application can be built. Javascript programming is dependant on the browser. Time is needed to debug across at least the three mostly used browsers (IE7,IE6,Firfefox). That still leaves the others out there. There a few great javascript frameworks out there that help, but I would not feel comfortable releasing anything without testing across the platforms. FLASH/FLEX runs in the flash plug-in, installed on 98% of the PCs out there. I’m just getting started with FLEX, but it is pretty straight forward.
My 2 cents….
I would love to have the snappy experience of a RIA in a desktop application. Especially, because I don’t have internet at home. Meaning I won’t be able to check mail with gmail or use buzzword or writely to edit/write documents. And knowing that such sites have my documents on their server isn’t a nice feeling neither. Brrr .
While I have a tendancy to agree with you for a web application that not all applications need to be RIAs. You seem to be forgetting that Microsoft started out by adding a lot of this “WPF” technology to regular Windows Applications.
Remember what happened when people first got fonts or typefaces in their computers? A lot of documents looked like a ransome note for a while. Then style won out. I would just say that a lot of this is happening with RIA. We’ll see a lot of graphically crazy apps then reality will set in and things will be toned down somewhat. But like typefaces, since then we’ve always had them.
I tend to think that history will find good uses for the technology and the ones that aren’t will not be with us long (it’s called attrition).
Anyway, my view is we are on the cusp of something here, so people should just start looking out for the randsome notes.
If people don’t care about richness then why the heck people do care about the iPhone???
Hi Anne. Great thread.
My viewpoint (surprise!) is that RIAs are going to be more and more important over time, and that this trend is inevitable.
In some ways, I wish we’d never used the word “rich,” when describing RIAs, because people associate it with things like gratuitous animations. Yes, I expect RIAs to be highly visual, but only to the extent that it promotes usability and effective understanding.
HTML-based applications are not going to go away in the foreseeable future, but there are limits to what you can do effectively with an HTML-based UI. For more UI intensive applications, I believe that RIA technologies such as Flex and Silverlight will allow you to create applications that are just not possible with HTML. If you haven’t seen it yet, try to get on the Buzzword alpha. It is pretty mind-blowing, and it is just one of the early examples of what we have in store over the next five years as people experiment with the new technologies.
-Sho (Adobe)
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