A post on Ray Ozzie’s blog makes a case for rich applications and why they are becoming more important than ever. “Agreement on common formats and protocols can yield powerful network effects and unintended positive consequences. We’ve been teasing ourselves and our users with the power of componentized function, rich object models, schemas and persistent storage in the form of integrated application environments. No single framework has achieved PC-like or browser-like ubiquity; as powerful as they are, these environments have and will likely remain islands of function and islands of users. WinFS is an attempt to get a higher level of interoperability between programs through agreement on schemas.”
The schemas in central also try to achieve the same goal. He also says, “the rich clients are back with a bang with two significant factors: storage and communications.” The storage and communications are not ony becoming richer, but also thicker. ‘Rich’ in Rich Internet Applications is there because of two reasons, richness of data and richness of content. Richness of data because, all the applications in the Central or WinFS framework will have many ways of creating, editing, viewing, publishing and otherwise manipulating this vast array of content and will demand and embrace the fact that such content is stored, indexed, and searchable in a way that is standardized, long-lived and open to our choice of application. Richness of content because of the thick storage devices and communication pipes that RIA’s have access to. We can now interact with large stacks of photos, videos, presentations, and digital media and get better experiences.
Also, in an interview with Dan Gillmore, he says, “Everybody is agreeing on: Objects on the client and services as a way of dealing with servers. It’s looking good for the customer, because it doesn’t matter what’s on the client and what’s on the server, we’re all going in the same direction. The client is still about moving from a world of APIs to a world of objects.”
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