The New York Times has seen that RAIA-Rich Anywhere Interface Applications is fit to print now that Adobe has released AIR to the public. And so the full impact of the RIA become RAIA will start to get full acceptance in the press – catching up with the reality we have been covering for the past 4 years.
RIA becomes RAIA – January 2008 the transition from Rich to as much emphasis on Run Anywhere
Web 2.0 to 3.0 – September 2007 the transition of Web 2.0 DHTML+AJAX to Web 3.0 RAIA
State of Web Development – March 2006 look back to prognostications in an article I did for Internet World
IT Waves of Change – in November 2005 RIA is seen as part of continuing IT innovation
John Udells Challenge – November 2005 RIA emergence of opportunity
AJAX and the 6As – October 2005 article covers the underlying demand issues
UI Market Scramble – October 2005 defines the basic RIA market and opportunity
Nexaweb RIA – November 2004 coverage of one of the earliest and one of the best AJAX-based RIA players
What is coming to Light and AIR here is that the presentation layer for all applications will be built on a new software foundation – that is RAIA. And Adobe is daring to say so and to declare itself as the leading provider of that technology with AIR/Flex/Flash being the triumvirate of tools to deliver RAIA best. And they have some very compelling claims:
Benefits vs Cost of RAIA – fairly sober analysis of how and when RAIA works.
Business Examples – some major developers using AIR et alia have rel products to show.
What is Available to Developers – a broadset of tools, many are free
Now for sure Microsoft will have a lot to say about this with its Silverlight product being one of the feature players at its Mix2008 conference. Silverlight has some matching and even winning features, but it rests on the three peglegs that are Redmonds remiss interoperability, web standards shortfalls, and often derelict cross-platform support policies. Sun has Java/JavaFX with strong kiosk, desktop, and mobile apps – but a strangely weak and non-disruptive Web side support to Run Anywhere. There are a hoard of companies like OpenLaszlo, Nexaweb, even Google that have some of the same ambitions. Effectively, this market which was beta is now officially off to the IT races.