You Say You Want a (RIA) Revolution?
"You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world"
- John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Written by Lennon and McCartney and released on the B-side of The Beatles' Hey Jude single record 40 years ago, these lyrics to "Revolution" have been a rallying cry for causes and corporations. As I was checking referrers to this blog today, I noticed that a fairly new site name RIA Revolution contains a link to my Some Perspective in JavaFX post. According to their About page, "RIA Revolution is a community site for all things RIA [Rich Internet Applications]. The site features news, stories, podcasts, screen casts and videos to keep you updated about the happenings in the RIA World." As I mentioned, it's a new site, but I'm excited about its "revolutionary" tone, and about watching it continue to be populated with "all things RIA".
On that note, a couple of today's RIA revolutionaries are Stephen Chin and Keith Combs. They are co-conspirators on WidgetFX, an open-source desktop widget platform written from the ground up in the JavaFX Script language. Here's a quote from Stephen Chin that resonates well with what I've expressed on this blog:
"The biggest setback for user interface design in the history of modern computing was the marketing push for thin-client, web-based UIs. The whole software industry has been shackled by browser incompatibilities, Javascript limitations, and a document-centric model for web applications. It has taken a decade of engineering and framework design in HTML and Javascript to match what desktop client technology could easily do in the 80s."
2008-2009 promises to be a revolutionary time in Web/Internet application development. The upcoming release of JavaFX SDK 1.0 yet this fall, 2008, will help enable the revolution.
There is an area in which I'd really appreciate some RIA community discussion and feedback: Web 2.0 has a fairly well defined style, captured in documents such as Ben Hunt's Web 2.0 how-to design guide. Should there be a unique style for RIAs, or should it be a variation of Web 2.0 style guidelines, or should we just see if a style evolves as developers and designers create RIAs at an increasing rate?
Food for thought, please communicate yours,
Jim Weaver
JavaFXpert.com
I haven't been able to find a lot of information on RIA. Thanks for the post.
Joel
Ladies Golf Clubs
Posted by: Joel | March 16, 2009 at 10:17 AM
James,
Thanks for talking about us. At, RIA Revolution (www.riarevolution.com) , we are committed to cover all things RIA and be a useful source of information and actionable intelligence for everyone in the community.
Sincerely, appreciate your participation. A revolution is nothing without its revolutionaries!
Posted by: Shashank Tiwari | October 06, 2008 at 03:00 PM