O’Reilly: Inside RIA

Despite formal education's best efforts I still find geography enjoyable which is probably why I've spent way too much playing with Google Earth. Nystrom a Herff Jones company has recently released StrataLogica to harness this and combine it with their own map content for use in the classroom. StrataLogica is an online version of Nystrom's wall map and globe content.

All of our clients have data rich applications and need equally rich data visualizations to help their end customers analyze data quickly and effectively. What makes my job really interesting is that these clients are in different industries and are using different technologies. So we have pulled together a set of 28 tools for creating graphs, Gantt charts, diagrammers, calendars/schedulers, gauges, mapping, pivot tables, OLAP cubes, and sparklines, in Flash, Flex, Ajax or Silverlight.

Kevin Shuttle already beat me to the proverbial punch with his review, but I'd to share some of my thoughts on a recent Boston based conference called RIA Unleashed. This developer focused event was recently held at Bentley College, Waltham,...

Boston was home to the RIAUnleashed conference on Friday, November 13, and was jam-packed with Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and other RIA goodness. What was so unique to me about this conference was the fact that not only were the speakers...

RIA Unleashed - Boston is a 1 day 3 track event covering Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and related technologies and disciplines. Our three tracks are designed to allow you to focus on the technologies you are interested in. You'll be able...

InsideRIA had three sessions at Adobe MAX this year: The Battle of the Flex Frameworks Returns, with Greg Owen; Augmented Reality within the Flash Player, with Jesse Freeman; and InsideRIA's Secrets of the Best Rich Internet Apps of 2009 (So Far), with Garth Braithwaite.

I recently came across this article comparing the implementation of a simple "slide gallery" application in Flash and Silverlight. I was inspired to try to replicate the application's behavior in Apache Pivot. The results of my efforts are in this post:

The Dojo Javascript Framework is truly awesome. I'll admit, the documentation is a bit to dig through, but hopefully my experience and previous digging will be of use to you. Don't worry, the only things being thrown around in this "Dojo" are Javascript and web programming ideas you may or may not have seen before. In this article I would like to accomplish two major things: giving an introduction to the Dojo Javascript Framework and a walk-through of how I approach creating a RIA using dynamic HTML and Dojo.

It has been a long and hard road getting to this point with a few road blocks in the way. If you have been following along with the progressions of the last few weeks, you probably are already aware of...

Well, tonight was supposed to be the big results post, but as those of you who have been following along with this contest know there have been some problems that have recently been discovered. So, with that in mind, we...

We just wanted to provide you with an update on our polling situation. We have heard from many of you through comments on our site as well as external blog posts. I would first like to thank all of you...

You've been looking into the world of Rich Internet Applications for a while now but how do you make the jump? Whether you're a developer working in Java or C++ looking to get on the web or a designer working in an art department wanting to do more interactive, the RIA world is a fast-growing and exciting field many people are looking to transition to. Unless you're lucky enough to have some personal connections into an RIA firm, the decision to move requires hitting the pavement and convincing an RIA company that you're worth hiring. This article comes from my experiences as both a former interviewee and current interviewer at a mid-sized RIA company.

We applied two simple criteria to identify the 50 most usable RIAs: Number 1: Does it adhere to the 10 basic usability principles? Number 2:Is it really rich? Developing a product with Ajax, Flex, or Silverlight doesn't inherently make it rich. A usable RIA will embody these six principles: Make it Direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay in the Page, Provide an Invitation, Use Transitions, React Immediately.

After over 7500 votes, we have our top 10 for this week's semi finals to pick the Best of RIA 2009. The top 3 from this group will be discussed at Garth Braithwaite's Adobe MAX session titled "InsideRIA's Secrets of the Best Rich Internet Apps of 2009 (So Far)" and the overall winner will be chosen by the live audience.

Round 2 is now completed and the top 5 RIAs that will join last weeks winners in this weeks semi-finals are (Note: results as of 11:45pm eastern time) Balsamiq Mockups, iPlotz, Hot Gloo, SlideSix, & Digital Tutors move on to...

Round 1 is over and Round 2 now begins. The top 5 RIA's from this week's poll will move on to next weeks semi final. So, please vote for your favorite from this week's 10 nominees. Please click here to...

After well over 5000 votes, round 1 is officially over. The top 5 RIAs that will move into the semi-finals 2 weeks from now are (Note: results as of 10:15pm eastern time) Aviary, FlashMoto, Creately, Konductor, & Yooba move on...

Over the next 3 weeks, we will be conducting a tournament to determine the InsideRIA choice for the top RIA of the year so far. For the next two weeks we have nominated a total of 20 RIA's based on...

We need your help. O'Reilly is conducting a competition to highlight the best RIAs of 2009. We have been compiling a list of noteworthy applications, but we want to make sure we aren't missing any. It can be especially difficult to find independent developers that aren't receiving as much attention as they might deserve. Upon completing the list we will begin voting here on InsideRIA. The finalists will be showcased at a special session at MAX 2009 where we conduct and in-depth look at each app and conduct a Q&A with the developer/development team. Please leave a comment with any submissions/suggestions. The only requirements are that the application be created/powered with Adobe tools and that they were either created, released, or updated in 2009.

We need an open honest discussion about HTML5 and what it means for the web. Unfortunately, you aren't going to get the truth from fanatics on either side, but instead we all need to examine all of the evidence and come to our own conclusions. I have spent a great deal of time analyzing the facts, and in the process I have made several observations.