Bookmark www.InsideRIA.com

What's "RIA" ?
I've mentioned it on Nairaland before, but RIA stands for 'Rich Internet Application'. These types of applications are typically identified by the user experience they offer. Most of the time, they are web applications that have the features/functionality of traditional desktop applications, and/or are noted to break paradigms and achieve new heights in the level of engagement for the user. They are not restricted to one technology or platform, and can be built with DHTML/AJax, Silverlight, Flash, Ruby, Google Gears, HTML, Flex, Java, OpenLaszlo, and can be deployed on Desktops, Mobile Devices, and via the Web. (I foresee a strong breakthrough on mobile devices in Nigeria in a matter of years)

Some examples of RIAs are:
- Google Maps
- Youtube
- GMail
- PickNik ( http://www.picnik.com/app )
- BuzzWord ( www.buzzword.com )
- The New Yahoo Mail
- FaceBook
- Many more here: http://flex.org/showcase/ (flex specifically)


What is InsideRIA.com ?
InsideRIA.com is an online community developed by O’Reilly and sponsored by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Our goal is to create an invaluable resource for information on the ever-changing state of design and development of rich Internet applications (RIAs).

InsideRIA brings some of the leading members of the RIA community together, where you can engage with them in an ongoing narrative about where RIA technology is headed. We hope InsideRIA will become your first-stop resource to stay on top of news, events, opinions, and learning. The site and the community will evolve over time, and you’ll see a healthy amount of tweaking (based on your feedback) in the coming months.

We’ve started with general topic areas on Design, Development, and Standards, which will feature blog posts and multimedia content. InsideRIA will also feature articles each month on a variety of RIA-centric topics. Community involvement is extremely important to the success of InsideRIA, and you and other members of the community can participate by sharing your ideas through feedback on articles, videos, tutorials and other features. We’re hoping some of you will even join us as guest bloggers.


Our first group of featured articles include:

ActionScript 3.0: Is It Hard or Not?
by Colin Moock

Anatomy of an Enterprise Flex RIA Part 1: The Tools You’ll Want
by Tony Hillerson

What is RIA?
by a combination of InsideRIA experts and RIA community members.


If you're serious about web development, and being part of the next generation of web applications, you will bookmark www.InsideRIA.com .

before going to inside rich internet apps www.insideria.com I recommend you first use www.actionscript.org , www.kirupa.com www.ultrashock.com because you wont catch up if you jump directly withouth prior knowledge

Hi mambenanje, thanks for the follow up.

Kirupa and the rest are definitely great sites for people interested in building Flash/Flex RIAs, but InsideRIA covers a wider scope of technologies.

That aside, most of their articles require no in-depth technical knowledge, they are mostly for high level education.

Hey Prodgal,
I think Rich Internat applications are Rich Internet applications, and if you say kirupa.com and actionscript.org are good resources for rich internet applications, there is no need saying insideRIA offers a wider range of technologies(since we are talking about RIAs). Kirupa offers, php, asp.net, flash, html css, apache and even windows, infact all you need to build RIA kirupa got it covered.
Talking about higher knowledge or something, your post is addressed to developers, helping them build RIAs but now you say they dont need to be developers(technical) to use insideRIA then why are they using it. its for developers so they need to use kirupa, and actionscript.org to fully go along in a developers community, something insideRIA wants to address.
[IMHO]

mambenanje, thanks for the interest.

My point was that insideRIA.com covers a range of FRONT END ria technologies. What makes an RIA differet is the user experience, which is dictated by the technology implemented on the front end.

I've contributed to Kirupa and as.org for years, and they cater mostly to the flash and flex community (after all, its called actionscript.org). I am a big supporter of macromedia (now adobe) technology, and I love those sites, but Inside RIA .com covers more. It aims to cover all front end RIA technology, not just flash/flex, but also Silverlight, Laszlo, JavaFX, etc (notice i am listing frontend/UI technology, not asp, php, and other middle tier technology).

I didnt say insideria.com is not for developers, i said it does not require in depth technical knowledge. This means that any developer that doesnt know technical details about these front end languages can still pick it up.