How RIA can give freedom of rapid application development

Professional portal development demands special knowledge of Flash, JavaScript, Java-applets and ActiveX-components. All these technologies are not supposed to complicate your life. But sometimes it’s not so easy to enrich user experience going beyond traditional tasks and at the same time ensure great results in a short space of time. On this point Rich Internet Application and RIA development offers revolutionary possibilities that combined in a single runtime environment.

What does it mean for users? It means “all in one” or integration of content, communications, user interface and a set of custom components and. Of course, all these units work in real time.

What does RIA mean for programmers? First and foremost it opens doors to Rapid Application Development or RAD. Developers use advantages of Ajax GWT programming and in the shortest possible time create new web portals based on reusable program components.

Beyond question, web is a dynamic, vibrant platform, where it is very important to reduce the time from birth of new ideas to their realization. That is why such RIA components as Ajax Toolkit will be in great demand. They allow to make fast and easy changes in new applications, giving developers what they want at this very moment for this very project.

Flex programming - flexible RIA development

What is Flex programming?

Adobe Flex 2 is a very special solution that enables development of RIAs based on Flash related technologies. Interface description and other features are based on XML - MXML dialect. Client logic description was done using ActionScript3 (hereinafter AS3). Adobe Flex translates usual AS code which is transmitted to mxmlc compiler for swf generation (as a result of MXML compilation).

Flex consists of several products:

Adobe Flex Builder - IDE based on eclipse. It allows quick development AS3 and MXML. It has a powerful visual design interface. Syntax highlighting and useful hints, built-in Debbuger, help and other features inspire flex developers.

Adobe Flex framework and SDK was based on the framework components. It contains a huge number of expandable components to develop interfaces of any complexity. It’s free (as a unit of Flex Builder).

Adobe Flex Charting – it’s a library that allows you to create all sorts of interactive charts and graphs (paid application).

Adobe Flex Data Services – it’s a set of server-side component that responsible for fast and convenient exchange of data between Flex and JAVA applications.

The cornerstone of all these applications for flex development is Flash Player (you need the 9th edition for correct work with Flex applications). The main advantage of this player is that its work does not depend on the platform or browser!

Something about mobile applications and more tips for those who don’t want to be a retrograde

#11 Software development for mobile devices

In the late 1990’s, Web development became mainstream in programming and obtained universal recognition, standing apart traditional desktop applications in many areas. In the year 2008 year the development of mobile applications has left the launching pad. The development of this type of programming will become extremely important over the next 5 years. Of course, there are many approaches to develop software for mobile devices: web applications, RIA, and also the applications that can run on the device itself. It doesn’t matter which of these directions you choose. What is really important is that adding skills of development for mobile devices in your resume you can be definitely sure that your experience will be great demand in the labor market in the future.

#12 Newsletter subscriptions and self-education

Nowadays it’s not enough to get the diploma of any profession in IT. Some years without experience and self-education and you will become a retrograde. Of course it’s a sad tendency, sword of Damocles for all the programmers, but fortunately it’s not so difficult to change the situation. Reading news and studying articles about new technologies and the last tendencies in software development will allow you to be always sitting pretty.

to be continued…

Rich Internet Applications for “rich” software development

Today we continue our list of 14 the most relevant technologies for software developers adding some Web-oriented technologies to it:

#4. Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
No matter you can love RIA or hate it, today developers use Flash not only for cartoons about politicians who sing silly songs, but also for more serious things. Flash has rich functionality to create applications using technologies such as Flex and AIR. Companies that develop Flash analogues, for example JavaFx and Silverlight, also improve similar features and increase productivity.

HTML5 soon will combine the full functionality of RIA, including connection to the databases and putting the official seal of W3C on AJAX technology.

It means that in the near future, the differences between RIA platforms will be decreased.

#5. Web Development
Web development won’t sink into oblivion in the near future. Many Web developers ignore, or at least only familiar with the basics, providing frameworks. However, companies want more and more people who able to work with these technologies. So, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML will be still successful even in 2014.

#6. Web Services
JSON or XML? REST or SOAP? This choice depends on the project, and work complexity increases without Web services technologies. Even those areas, where developers used ODBC, COM, or RPC, are gradually moving towards Web services.

to be continued…