rich Internet application (RIA)

Rich Internet Application (RIA) is an approach with which intuitive user interfaces can be built on the Internet. Rich Internet Applications are based on AJAX and implemented using the ActionScriptprogramming language.

The RIA technology offers the advantage in enterprise networks that a new software version does not have to be distributed. In addition, interfaces created with RIA technology can be used quickly and flexibly in modern communication devices such as wireless telephones or navigation devices, embedded systems and computer games. They are installed via a download and work online and offline. Similar approaches are being pursued with ActiveX from Microsoft and JavaApplets from Sun Microsystems. A technology for the creation of Rich Internet Applications is JavaFX.

The RIA concept is characterized by short response times to user input. In contrast to other web applications, in RIA the computing power is shared between the client and the server, whereas in similar concepts the computing load is provided only by the server and the client is solely responsible for display. Similar concepts to Rich Internet Application are Applets from Sun and ActiveX from Microsoft.