RIA Calendar
09Jan04
Laszlo’s doing some cool stuff with Rich Internet Applications (buzzword for database driven Flash). They have a bunch of demos on their site, and Howard Dean’s website uses their calendar which is neat if a little slow.
To me, the potential of RIAs is in filtering information without filling out html forms and reloading pages. You can filter using slider bars and have it update your query in realtime. Check out the airline ticket example on the demo page. I can imagine a pretty sweet E@S view that lets you find what you’re interested in really quickly. Also, a simple (poor?) RIA could be a good way to provide integration with group calendars on their individual group websites.
Not much I see there that couldn’t be done with a little DHTML and SSI…maybe I’ve just been burned by Flash too much before.
The interface also seems to demand too many clicks to find a piece of information. For instance, to checkout on the Amazon page, you must click several times, to display “cart”, then “payment”, then “shipping”, then “order”. Just show it all, since the information is non-exclusive.
But that’s just a design issue. I’m still wary of Flash, the medium…how do you save it to your computer? How do you modify it from a pc without flash installed?