Rich Internet Application |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Users generally need to install a software framework using the computer's operating system before launching the application, which typically downloads, updates, verifies and executes the RIA. This is the main differentiator from JavaScript-based alternatives like Ajax which use built-in browser functionality to implement comparable interfaces. While some consider such interfaces to be RIAs, some consider them competitors to RIAs and others, including Gartner, treat them as similar but separate technologies.
RIAs dominate in online gaming as well as applications which require access to video capture (with the notable exception of Gmail, which uses its own task-specific browser plug-in). Nevertheless, web standards such as HTML5 have developed and the compliance of web browsers with those standards has somewhat improved. However, the need for plug-in based RIAs for accessing video capture and distribution has not diminished, even with the emergence of HTML5 and JavaScript-based desktop-like widget sets that provide alternative solutions for mobile web browsing.
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