Lots of motivation for creating rich internet applications

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Richness is not an all or nothing proposition

I regularly teach a course on designing RIAs and one of the things I'm always challenging my students to think about is to not think of an RIA as an all or nothing proposition.

While I agree w/ the point of your article that there are definitely motivators for RIAs, I would suggest that I have not come across a single application where richness of one sort or another would not add value to the overall experience if designed and executed correctly (those last 2 ifs are pretty important).

Your example of del.icio.us is really important. Why? b/c I can tell you that the RICH Firefox extension version of del.icio.us is a gazillion times better than the ordinary version. The addition of the add-on makes it so much more useful and delightful.

But further, simple richness added to ordinary controls is a great way to help designers push richness into their applications without overwhelming their developers. Small steps honed over time and then proven through validation, will better arm the designer for bigger and bigger design and development efforts towards the goal of a robust rich application.

While helping designers and developers to understand the importance of developing a rich (pun intended) vocabularly for motivation, it is also important to realize that there is a continuum of richness that can be support. Not everything needs to jump to become Goowy, Zimbra, or Kayak. Flickr is a GREAT! example where richness is deployed appropriately, but not completely pervasively and how its richness path has grown over time.

-- dave

Posted by: dmalouf   Posted on: 07/31/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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