A sip of pure WebUI


    On June 26, at the Media Center of the Samara State Aerospace University , a Fresh Air seminar was held on developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) technologies.

    Content:
    At the cutting edge of technology
    Fresh organization
    Recommended links The

    conference was organized by a team of young people who recently graduated from the university and began to conduct such seminars with the support of a student IT club. So far, the initiative group has two similar events, but everything indicates that they will be held regularly.

    Rich Internet Applications translate as rich Internet applications, which ideally replace expensive desktop software for ordinary users, and, in addition, make the cross-platform problem meaningless. An application running in a virtual machine is practically indifferent to the operating system and hardware platform.

    At the cutting edge of technology


    The conference examined three of the most promising and dynamically developing developments in the field of RIA:
    • Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR,
    • Microsoft Silverlight,
    • Sun JavaFX.

    Flex technology, which became an extension of Flash and developed by Macromedia, was the first to launch. After Adobe acquired this company, the efforts of the two giants in the RIA were combined and Adobe Flex can rightly be called the leader now. But on the heels of Adobe, Microsoft is rapidly advancing with its young Silverlight. The technology is still not quite run-in; but, knowing Microsoft’s aggressiveness in striving to occupy a dominant part in any niche of the market into which it comes, it’s clear that Adobe Flex is more than a serious competitor.

    Due to the almost obvious increase in the popularity of RIA, Sun Microsystems also decided to grab a tidbit, especially since once it was Sun that was the parent of the first RIA applications (applets). The company has scheduled the release of JavaFX for the fall of this year.

    Why did Microsoft and Sun decide that their startups will compete with Flex? One of the main reasons that now there are many .Net and Java developers in the world who will be more comfortable working with the familiar programming language and familiar development environment. On the other hand, the ActionScript language used by Adobe is very similar to both Java and C #, and in addition to the standard development environment, it can be either Eclipse or IDEA.

    The conference as a whole was dedicated to demonstrating the capabilities of the described technologies, as Now, most developers have a superficial understanding of RIA technologies, but use units in general.

    During the seminar, the main advantages and disadvantages of each of the three technologies were considered, although the greatest attention was paid to Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. Adobe AIR is essentially the same “flash drive”, but it runs on the desktop, naturally with a corresponding extension of capabilities. Such an application runs in a virtual machine, so its development immediately implies cross-platform. Adobe already supports Windows and MacOS; Adobe AIR for Linux is still under development.

    Fresh organization


    It should be noted the high level of training of the seminar speakers. A competent scenario of the entire event and even the speakers' speeches can give odds to the preparedness of Microsoft DevDays events in our city. Even if technical problems occurred or the participants were late, the organizers very smoothly got out of the situation. Of course, it is noticeable that the participants are somewhat inexperienced in public speaking; on the other hand, it is very gratifying to see that the guys practice basic techniques for working with the audience.

    A well-organized coffee break complements the positive picture of the entire conference. Where did you see that before the break was over the developers left the table, and there were still snacks on it? Although, of course, there were other factors here - the desire to chat with speakers and the opportunity to try the technologies under consideration “live”.

    In general, words of gratitude should be said to the
    speakers: Ilya Krasinsky, Oleg Makarov, Pavel Veselovsky;
    and organizational support: Anton Lobachev, Irina Dorovsky, Artem Kharitonov, Yaroslav Patrikeev, Dmitry Klenov.

    Recommended Links


    Rich Internet Applications
    Wikipedia (Eng)
    RIA means freedom (PC World)
    Adobe Flex
    Official site (Eng)
    Wikipedia (Russian)
    What is Flex (Russian)
    Adobe AIR
    Official website (Eng)
    What is AIR? (rus.)
    Microsoft Silverlight
    Official site (Eng)
    Wikipedia (rus)
    Microsoft releases Silverlight platform - “killer” Adobe Flash (rus)
    JavaFX
    Official site (Eng)
    Promo site (Eng)
    JavaFX strikes back (Russian)
    Feature Examples
    Adobe Flex
    MS Silverlight

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