Clients often ask which Rich Internet Application development tool they should choose - Flex, Silverlight, or an AJAX framework. Excitement over HTML 5 has been stirring up this question in the RIA community even more than usual.
At Catalyst we're in the business of delivering very sophisticated, responsive, interactive and graphically rich applications over the web, not pushing specific technologies. Sometimes Flex is a better option and sometimes AJAX is the better option and other times Silverlight or JavaFX is better. It all depends on the requirements, the team, and the application.
Each of these technologies have the same goal: enable delivery of a rich UI and immersive experiences with the interactivity and user engagement similar to desktop applications, but adding in the availability and interconnectivity of the web.
There are no hard and fast rules for selecting one technology over the other, however there are some rules of thumb.
AJAX - use for incremental, tactical improvements, SEO-friendliness, customizable footprint
If you are updating an existing application and want to implement rich functionality incrementally, with small, frequent updates then AJAX is a good choice. Or if you need to meet specific application footprints and performance requirements (e.g. fast initial page load time) AJAX development frameworks (e.g. jQuery, EXT JS) can be customized and tuned. Importantly you can also use Flash to fill in the gaps where you need richer behaviors, than are easy to create with AJAX (e.g. video players or real-timestock tickers).
Of course HTML 5 (supported in FireFox, Safari, Chrome and IE 8) will add to the allure of AJAX/HTML bringing local storage, multithreading, real-time data sharing, form validation, and more (e.g. 2D and 3D drawing).
See examples of our work in AJAX for Digital Advertising and Teleconferencing.
Flex - use for large-scale, more comprehensive user productivity applications
Like AJAX, Flex also can be used for gradual re-factoring of existing web applications via widgets, but the argument for Flex becomes particularly strong when an application is built from scratch, or has a high level of complexity and data processing. You get better performance (i.e. data sorting, search, display) and easier code maintainability. Also for large applications there is a definite plus with Flex in that you can avoid the necessity for testing and tweaking across browsers and OSs.
See examples of our work in Flex for Real Time Analytics and Media Advertising.
Silverlight - use if you are a .Net shop
Silverlight has many of the same arguments as Flex, except that it is geared for the community of .Net developers and offers seamless integration to .Net tools and components. Enterprises that work in .Net will find it easier to integrate interfaces and application designs created in Silverlight.
See examples of our work in WPF and SIlverlight for Financial Systems and Issue & Support Tracking.
So which technology do we choose?
We are agnostic about RIA technologies. Our developers are facile in all of the relevant options. So the general rule for us is to identify what problems our client needs to solve and then select the appropriate RIA technology. No one technology is inherently better than another. For each applications we look at the requirements for performance, interactivity, security, maintainability, scalability and in-house expertise, and then give our clients a recommendation as to the best technology or combination of technologies.
Categories: RIA