Abstract
Chapter 2 describes the most popular options for RIAs development. For practical purposes, these options are classified into two categories: 1) JavaScript-based frameworks and 2) non-JavaScript-based frameworks; even though there are other classifications reported in the literature, this classification is used in this chapter and throughout the book. In fact, this classification allows for a quick understanding of the technologies for RIAs development by abstracting technical details about intended software architectures. In the case of JavaScript-based framework, some frameworks were selected and analyzed such as Dojo, jQuery, Mootools, and Prototype. In the case of non-JavaScript-based frameworks, frameworks selected and analyzed were Adobe Flex™, JavaFX™, Silverlight™, and OpenLaszlo™. For each framework, the architecture, functionality, and properties are described.
Top2. Frameworks For Rias Development
In recent years, several classifications for RIAs have been proposed. These classifications address different aspects of RIAs, such as functionality, target runtime environment and, other more complex issues, such as the software development technology (Toffetti, Comai, Preciado, & Linaje, 2011). Some of these classifications of RIAs are presented below.
Four main aspects of the application development are considered basing on the user’s experience:
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Rich Presentation: RIAs offer client-side event-handling and widgets similar to desktop-based UIs. This permits partial page updates, support interaction with visual data representations, and multimedia content (e.g., audio, video).
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Client Data Storage: It is possible to store data on the client-side with different levels of persistence (in a temporal way while the application is running).
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Client (and Distributed) Business Logic: It is possible to carry out complex operations directly on the client-side, such as data navigation/filtering/sorting with multiple criteria, domain-specific operations, and local validation of data. It is also possible to distribute the Business Logic between the client and the server-side, (e.g., to validate some form fields on the client and others on the server-side).
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Client-Server Communication: RIAs support synchronous communication between client and server-side to distribute domain objects, data, computation, and provide server-push (e.g., in collaborative / monitoring applications) (Toffetti et al., 2011).
Depending on each of the application's functionalities, the features above can be combined to obtain standalone applications, collaborative applications, or simply more appealing UIs (UI stands for User Interface) for existing Web applications. In terms of growing number of features and development complexity, a RIA’s may typically falls into one of the following types of application (that they can be possibly combined to obtain complex RIAs):
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Traditional Web applications with RIA-makeover: Where simple isolated RIA capabilities (usually for partial page updates) are added to a traditional Web application (e.g., Facebook™).
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Rich UIs: Web applications with widget-based UIs, where the client-side logic is an extension layer over the browser, superseding core browser responsibilities, such as handling events and managing states and the rich user interfaces components work in a coordinate way (e.g., Gmail™).
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Standalone RIAs: Web applications capable of running both inside and/or outside the browser in a connected and/or disconnected fashion (e.g., SlideRocket™).
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Distributed RIAs: Where the application data and logic are (sometimes dynamically) distributed across client and server-side. Moreover, on-line collaboration is supported and client-server communication is used to fill the gap between objects and events living across the application components (e.g., Google Docs™) (Toffetti et al., 2011).