In today’s world, almost anything depends to the Internet. From our banking to our communication, Internet plays a big role to ensure we are getting a better life. The World Wide Web (WWW) has made things possible to be executed over the virtual world using web applications that work just like normal desktop applications called RIA or Rich Internet Applications, offering a rich, engaging experience that improves users experience as well as productivity.

These applications usually delivered either using site-specific browser, using plug-ins for Internet browser or independently via virtual machines. Some of the processing are transferred to the client end, which means the computer itself and not the server that hosts the application. Although this may sounds technical to you, but you may not aware that you have been using it for quite sometime. Java, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight are the most popular RIA framework.

It has been largely used in end user computing (EUC) especially by Desktop and mobile users. However, Apple has been reacting negatively on these by disallowing these 3 RIA framework on their popular products – iPod, iPhone and iPad. Instead, they have came up with their own application and currently promoting the HTML5.

The main difference between RIA and other Internet based applications is the amount of interaction on the interface. For example, in an ordinary web-based application interaction are limited to a small set of user controls such as button, check-box, form field and radio button. This reduced users’ ability to create useable applications which made it hard to use then a normal client based applications. RIA eliminates this problems by offering wide range of controls to make users’ interaction much more better.

What’s more, RIA has become a catalyst to the rapid development of a richer content and a better user interactivity applications that will benefit users. This will also be a start to many future Internet applications that we can’t even think of it yet.