Now that Flash is part of Adobe Systems, AJAX is omnipresent, and Microsoft and Sun have entered the game, RIA is as mainstream today as mainstream gets. At the lightweight end of , a number of open-source libraries have caught fire. are ideal for programmers who just need to add a bit of fancy functionality (a date chooser, a data grid, some form preprocessing, etc.) to a page.
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A step up from the open-source tools are commercial AJAX frameworks such as Backbase, Bindows, JackBe, and Tibco General Interface. But can these maintain their edge? With so many good open-source alternatives available, why ?
The reasons range from better technical support and documentation to more polish and flexibility. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to draw significant, categorical differences between the open-source and commercial tools.
As the open-source projects extend their reach, the commercial players are finding niches beyond AJAX. For instance, has evolved into an "enterprise mashup" platform that ties together HTML, RSS, Web services, and SQL calls. , plus has and . Laszlo Systems, now the shepherd of , focuses on Web 2.0 desktop solutions for businesses and service providers.
Other players have come at AJAX from the server side: , which started as a Java-based framework for building client-server applications, today delivers back-end data to AJAX as well as Java clients. WaveMaker, which started life as (it was called ActiveGrid then), is today a rapid Web application builder on Java, allowing .
The more sophisticated RIA solutions have cozied up to AJAX as well. RIA oldtimer Curl, which nabbed InfoWorld's (based on ), . In addition to allowing a Curl applet to be embedded into an existing AJAX page, the new release added skinnable controls and graphics improvements such as anti-aliasing, partial transparency, and the ability to render rotated images.
Curl 6.0 is an industrial-strength RIA platform that brings high-quality graphics, sophisticated effects, easy customization, and excellent performance to Windows, Mac, and Linux clients. Curl has even added . No doubt Curl would draw more attention from developers if it weren't for juggernauts Adobe and Microsoft, and the speed at which their RIA platforms are evolving.
When Microsoft's , it was already backed by and design tools (in Visual Studio and Microsoft's Expressions Suite, respectively), and it already had . But performance -- at least for highly interactive applications -- was a concern. , completed the promise with full .Net support, a rich set of controls and networking APIs, and speed to burn. Microsoft also added the Beijing Olympics and Blockbuster to the flagship customer list, while .
Adobe turned heads with a pair of big RIA releases in 2008. (supporting graphical layout of rich, Flash-driven Web GUIs) with real-time charting, wizards for data binding and Web services, application profiling, and extensions for Adobe CS3 aimed at bridging the designer-developer gap. Adobe's bigger news, however, was , an SDK and runtime for packaging and deploying rich Web applications directly to the desktop with support for offline persistence. No browser required. with database encryption and other improvements.
As 2008 drew to a close, in the RIA race. Back in August, with impressive data binding capabilities; a good collection of widgets for layout, animation, and input device listeners; and support for vector objects, transparency, and 2-D keyframe animations. Like Adobe and Microsoft, Sun is also working to close the loop between design and development with plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Look for the of JavaFX 1.0 in coming weeks.
If you're looking for some good news from the year 2008, you'll find it in the amazing range of RIA developments. Adobe leads the way with the Flex/AIR combo, and their integration with matchless tools for designers. Microsoft's Silverlight has come very far very fast, putting ASP.Net developers on a fast path to RIA. And Sun's JavaFX, with its Java-like syntax, gives Java developers a tool (and commercial backer) they can easily warm to. Developers with their eye on tomorrow's Web never had it so good.