Should Your Project be an RIA?

Our first Adobe AIR application has been released for about a month and so far has turned out to be a success. Looking back on our three Rich Internet Application (RIA) projects so far (two Flex 2 and one AIR), this one made the most sense as an RIA. Here’s the thought process we’ve gone through when deciding if a project should be developed in an RIA technology:

#1 What’s the Simplest Solution?

We find that the simplest solution is usually the best. This is the KISS Principle, “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Flex is sexy, but could the same be accomplished using vanilla HTML and CSS?

I’ve seen a general concern on the blogosphere lately that the majority of Flex applications are just rewrites of simple web pages. The most interesting Flex applications are still being released on private intranets, but that’s starting to change. Putting up a simple contact us form in Flex is probably a bad idea. I do think it’s great to rewrite code in another technology as a learning exercise. Just make sure to keep it on your development box.

That’s enough for now I’ll continue with “#2 Worth the Time/Cost?” next time.

Tags: AIR, Flex, Project Management

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Project Management, Web Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.