Phil Pounder, February 28th, 2008
This year’s lecture for the Computer Science Department at Durham University discussed the development of rich internet applications (RIA).
After completing both his BSc and PhD at the University of Durham, Mike Smith spent 2 years teaching in the Computer Science department of the university. In 2005 Mike started to work for Scott Logic, as a Senior Developer, however he maintains a strong relationship with the university.
At Scott Logic, we are keen to keep firm links with local Universities and for the past 3 years we have been presenting to the Durham Computer Science students as part of the Business and Professional Lectures module on their course.
The module aims to educate the students on the ethical and legal implications related to software development, to give an insight into the potential career paths available to them, to allow them to become more aware of some of the industrial and commercial applications that are currently being developed and to bring to their attention problems faced and solutions identified by industry.
This year’s talk discussed the development of rich internet applications (RIA). Rich internet applications aim to provide the interactivity and UI feel of a desktop application but with the advantages of browser based deployment. It is a growth area with a number of recent technologies and with user expecting increasingly sophisticated web interfaces with fluid interaction.
A number of technologies were discussed, ranging from the standard browser technologies used for AJAX applications, to vendor specific plug-ins such as Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe Flex. This gave a high level overview of the options and future direction of RIA as well as providing context in which to discuss their development.
The talk then looked at some of the current issues in RIA development, such as the limited support for automated testing and validation of JavaScript. It also discussed the adoption of RIA in the context of the traditional web team and the other human factors that need to be considered in technological choice, from open source licensing issues to accessibility.
If you want to know more about RIAs, or how Scott Logic can help your organisation then don’t hesitate to contact us.