RIA goes mainstream - Java FX welcome!

Anybody spot a trend? It seems like some very big players are targeting RIA and new tools are arriving by the truckload. RIA - Rich Internet Applications are commanding respect at Microsoft and now Sun with todays announcement of Java FX at Java One. I think is very good news for RIA developers and great news for Flash based technologies.



As the current de-facto standard for building RIA online, Flash and Flex are getting respect from ever larger players in the RIA space. All these new RIA tools and platforms simply validate the 5 year direction at Adobe and Macromedia before it. Anyone remember "Experience Matters" and Broadmoor? Macromedia coined the term RIA in 2002 but a few of us in the Flash world were already hard at work making RIA at the time. I remember building list controls, quicksort, and dataproviders using loadvars and frame calls in Flash 4/5. When Flash 5 hit ActionScript took off like a rocket and it would never be the same. We saw components, events, and new patterns emerge and APIS.

Todays RIA tools are light years ahead of those early days when RIA was invented. With Flex 2.0.1 and soon Flex 3, I can build an RIA in minutes and integrate API's from various servers which is viewable by 86% of the Internet, soon 98%. With Flex and AJAX I can deploy RIA application to the desktop with Apollo delivering seamlessly with a single file to WIN/LINUX/OSX. We sure have come a long way!

It is yet another great day for RIA and for Flash Player!

Go Flash Player, Go Flex! You both are changing the face of software!

So when is Apple announcing their RIA Platform built on Quicktime?

Shame that Sun chose the "FX" moniker but then again we all know who the Original FX is!