RIA War is Brewing? Not like they say
The RIA War Is Brewing. I saw this article and was again disappointed that people continue to compare these platforms.
Curl and Siverlight? competitors. AIR? not so much its a desktop environment. Compare it to the Flash Platform and move on.
Prism? Its kinda like a half cocked attempt at building AIR applications. The entire platform can be simulated by building an AIR application that includes a single html control with a root url of a remote site. But that where the comparisons end.
AIR is an platform for building desktop applications with existing web tools. These are not RIA’s. You build them with the same tools you build RIA’s. However they do not run in the browser and do not require a back end server to be useful. They are not RIA’s themselves. You wanna compare something to AIR compare Java or WPF or something that actually runs on the users computer with or without the web, then you have a comparison worth getting into.
Quit trying to make news over crap that is unrelated. Just because they happen to be new tools from competing companies does not make them competitors automatically.
KthnxBye.
17 Apr 2008 Simeon
Yes, still don’t quite understand AIR. It’s like the bad parts of the web (scripting environment, HTML etc) with the bad parts of deployment (desktop based install, no sandbox).
Actually the AIR runtime answers the questions that trouble desktop developers. The deployment of desktop applications has always been a bear, but using badge installs and having an update mechanism in the framework fix that for the developers. AIR also provides a platform for desktop development where the company does not have to re-tool all its developers to extend its reach to the desktop. I think the only reason silverlight will find any leverage is because people can use visual studio to build the apps. Not because its a better platform than flash, but because the tools are familiar to the .Net developers.
As for the sandbox, that depends entirely on the type of application you are building. If you load content remotely it is subject to significant restrictions in what functionality is available. This is to remove the threat of loading dangerous content by the user when their connection is hi-jacked.
But the real point of this is not that AIR is a viable desktop development environment, or that silverlight is flash from 6 years ago. The point is that the two technologies are not in competition for the same space.
You are right. Adobe AIR is different from Silverlight but that distinction will probably disapear within the next 18 months as Silverlight adds off-line capabilities.
Curl is actually a direct competitor to AIR as it allows you to develop desktop applications that do not need to be connected to a back-end server to function. Curl also happens to be a RIA platform so you can run applications in the browser or off the desktop, on-line or off-line. One platform for both RIA and desktop.
Curl is actually a better desktop platform than AIR, IMO, because it has a better security model, runs about 10 times faster than ActionScript 3, and can handle huge data sets. Curl also support 2D and 3D rendering and all of the GUI widgets you would expect.
Richard Monson-Haefel
VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.
Hey Richard,
Thanks for the comments, you will have noticed I left curl out of my rant, because of my limited knowledge of the platform. Its good to have some additional information.
I still stand by my statement in the power of AIR being that companies who are building RIA’s using traditional web tools gain the ability to take those applications offline and deploy to the desktop (and the perks that come from being native). That comes without having to re-tool and re-train. So while curl ( or java ) for that matter might have more features, it still requires that a company come up to speed and re-invest in new technologies.
Curl has the same advantage over AIR that flash has over silverlight. And that is time to mature in the market. Given another release we may well see the gap close between what AIR and the other platforms offer. AIR has the added benefit of being new and having lots of ground to cover, which can be taken in big steps because the path is clear. Its often hard for mature products to make those same kind of big steps, as the path is not so clear. I guess thats the hard part of being the trail breaker.
simeon
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