Spencer Uresk's Technology Blog

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)

Since the day I started doing web development, there has been talk about the limitations of HTML and ways to deal with those limitations. When I say limitations, I am talking about them with regards to creating web-based applications. For delivering content, HTML is the best solution in most cases.


For the last little bit, I've been evaluating a few RIA platforms - Laszlo and Macromedia Flex.

Laszlo is free and open source (they make money selling Laszlo components & consulting services). Flex is licensed on a per-server basis (from what I have heard - $10,000 - $12,000 per server). Both come with a variety of pre-built components, though Flex certainly has many more than Laszlo, currently. Both deploy into a Java container (I used Tomcat 5.5.9), and are relatively easy to install - I was able to get them both up and running within 5 minutes.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be creating a few small applications in each platform and comparing my findings here. Stay tuned!

posted by Spencer @ 4:36 PM