When is it worth deploying RIA technology?
Excerpt of ”Rich Internet Applications for Business”, an article by Hans Dirk Walter, CEO Canoo Engineering AG (in print).
Even if RIA technology continues to expand steadily in the future and the number of purely HTML based applications does decline, it is nonetheless not recommended to resort to an RIA framework or library for technology’s sake alone when developing online applications. Instead, the decision depends on the user interface requirements.
Figure 1 provides a schematic illustration of various categories of application depending on usage, and shows the dependency of these applications with regard to interactivity requirements and interface richness (UI functionality, drag & drop, graphics).
.
Typical web applications such as online shopping or rail timetables, that are only occasionally visited by their customers, need to be self explanatory and easy to operate. Speed and sophisticated interaction are of secondary importance in these cases. This type of application is best implemented using form based “wizards”. The functionality offered by HTML is generally more than sufficient in such cases. This does not apply, however, to productive systems, whose users often spend several hours per day with the application. The interface need not necessarily be self explanatory, while training is normally worthwhile. These kinds of application should be developed using RIA technology. The final types of program identified are games, which place the most demanding requirements of all in terms of interactivity (extremely speedy program reaction times in response to rapid successive inputs), as well as sophistication (3D animations, film sequences, etc.) Such application have so far scarcely been realised in satisfactory quality as RIAs.
