True. And a Wikipedia article can only reveal what the opinions of its last editors were.

Browsers could always refresh bitmaps without refreshing the page. XmlHttpRequest added the ability to refresh text without refreshing the page. Audio and video are the richer media types which still need to be handled by extensions.

More in the original definition:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2005/03/ria_definition.cfm

jd/adobe

I have been architecting and developing enterprise applications since the day AJAX was technology enabled. It definitely sucks when it comes to working on a big project and RIA usually becomes a big project.

That is way I am heading a group of developers that are responsible for Visual WebGui which hides AJAX and exposes the developer with pure .NET WinForms programming including design time. Kind of like GWT and script# only we do not generate code. You can see hewe some quick start videos that gives you an idea what can be done with such a technology.

To sum things up… I think the technology is viable but the road map is wrong… We should look for ways to have the technology working for us kind of like assembly is working for us with out us having to deal with the bits and bites.

The purpose of a poll is not to prove whether something is fact or fiction. A poll can only reveal what the opinions of its users are. Just because the majority of people believe something to be true, does not make it so. It’s so trivial and probably shouldn’t bother me, but it seems there are a lot of polls asking these forms of questions lately.

Sorry for the rant.

From what I know from asking this question to students and customers alike is that it means a richer than normal Web application, a more responsive Web application, a “desktop like” Web application. So in that sense Ajax = RIA since that is the same promise RIAs claimed.

However, to be term correct yes Ajax is just a component of building an RIA.

Unfortunately no amount of debate will likely help clarify and set a winner here since I sincerly believe that term correctness and conventional wisdom of the market are sadly quite often two very different things. Like it or not Ajax has clearly taken on broader meaning just as the dreaded buzzword DHTML did in the past. So be prepared for fun discussions trying to figure out what exactly someone is thinking about when using the term Ajax.

Does using Ajax make something RIA? No.
But is Ajax a RIA technology? Definitely.

1) A desktop application has in fact unlimited bandwidth to transport both the view and the model as compared to a remote application. In this respect a desktop application always has a clear advantage in terms of cost and speed practically. With respect to the user interface, it really depends on the evolution of javascript standards and possible inclusions of well known libraries so that less traffic is needed to show something nice on the browser. With respect to serving data (that is, not from third parties) bandwidth remains a bottleneck.

But But…

2) At the other hand when users have to cooperate through their application by exchanging data for example, a remote application has a clear consistency advantage because there is only one version around (let’s set browser differences aside for the moment). Furthermore, you save enormous costs on installs (why insist on having an install possibility, when it is enough to have a sign-up or even nothing?).
A remote client application gives additional freedom to the user; he/she can run it from any computer.

So how much weight to put on each element…it all depends

That being said, I think it’s probably pretty imprecise and further muddies the already somewhat hazy meaning of “Ajax” by saying Ajax==RIA.

Perhaps this is better: WebApp * Ajax == RIA

My points:
1. AJAX != RIA b/c it is like comparing an apple to an apple tree. AJAX can’t be an RIA b/c AJAX alone does not make an application. It is only an enabling technology. I would also say that Flash or Active X or Java are not RIAs, but rather technologies that CAN be used to create an RIA.

2. RIA != “desktop in a web browser”. Most RIAs out there today look nothing like desktop applications, and I don’t mean that Google Documents doesn’t look/behave like Office. But rather the pieces that make up “Rich” are many and the ability to emulate desktop behaviors is only a SMALL part of what “rich” means in the context of RIAs.

To this end, I just gave a talk about “What is rich? Why do rich?” last week in Israel and I’ll be giving again next week in Monterey, CA at the Web Application Summit (www.uie.com). The term RIA was created by Macromedia and its intent is to discuss the mixing of rich media with interaction application designs. Some of these are related to desktops, but some are just cinematic effects and the change of the page metaphor, etc.

In my opinion, it’s not the programming language, the framework or the server application that makes an application an RIA. It’s more its functionality and the quality that makes an application a real RIA.

My opinon ;)