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January 23, 2008
RIA, 2008
RIA, 2008: Ryan Stewart pulls together a bunch of predictions for "rich internet applications" over the next year. I see different trends, mostly piggybacking off of things established in 2007: (1) The RIA concept, which once prompted fierce debate, has now been endorsed by Ajax, Microsoft, Mozilla, and pretty much everyone in the world now... resistance is gone. (2) High-speed, OS-neutral processing is available today on the world's computers, via the 95% audience support of Adobe Flash Player 9. (3) The fastest way to create such apps, the Adobe Flex workflow, is on the verge of delivery in the key 3.0 version, and many high-profile applications have been developed during beta. (4) And then there's AIR, which brings deeper capability than what a browser can offer, using the same development technologies you'd use for in-browser work. Audience capability... client demand... cheaper production... additional delivery channels... all of these were firmly established in 2007, and will be used to significant effect in 2008. We'll see things flower, that's my prediction.
Posted by JohnDowdell at January 23, 2008 07:42 PM
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Is there a ballpark street date for Flex 3? Spring? Summer?
[jd sez: This may be in a FAQ that I didn't pull up in quick re-checking, but the pre-release tour is now underway, so it looks like we're in the final stages before full release.]
Posted by: PaulC at January 24, 2008 08:04 AM
What's your prediction on Microsoft's SilverLight impact on the RIA development space? It just reminds me of their attempt years ago to compete with Flash with their failed Liquid Motion product.
Posted by: Adrian J. Moreno at January 24, 2008 11:18 AM
I predict... [drumroll]... that they'll have to ship it before we can start making real predictions.... ;-)
They've got marketing mindshare, and have certainly validated the entire area of doing richer things in browsers, but I started hearing about "Sparkle the Flash Killer!" back towards 2002, and in 2003 the conversation broke out into public venues, and in 2005 Gates started speaking publicly of "Windows Presentation Foundation, Everywhere!", and in 2006 we heard that there would be a self-contained WPF browser plugin with "possibly half-a-billion downloads" by the end of that year, but instead in December there was a pre-release without any internal logic engine at all, then in 2007 the logic engine was announced as back in the plan, and by March 2008 we may see a first pre-release of the browser plugin with its new API, and sometime after it's eventually finalized in a true 1.0 we may get an idea of what consumers think of it all.
I've been watching Microsoft's efforts for longer than the word "RIA" has been around, and with each broken prediction I've gotten a bit more cautious about the effort.
I'm glad Microsoft is trying to broaden the reach of .NET developers by doing in-browser work. I believe they *will* eventually ship, and probably get some consumer adoption, and we'll likely see great projects from talented developers using it too.
But some of the opinions at Ryan's place exasperated me, because they took the latest marketing promises as technological reality.
"Ship it, then we'll see"... that's my approach to this ongoing Sparkle campaign. Given history, it's hard to justify anything else.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 24, 2008 01:01 PM