Adobe's RIA Technologies

From: Pete Helgren
BTW Nathan, the latest iteration in the company you are referring to
is to use Adobe's RIA technologies (Flex and AIR I think) to develop
web applications.

Yes, I'm aware of that. "Rich Internet Applications", or RIA (for short) seems to be replacing "Open Source" as their new marketing mantra. In this case their newest applications run under Adobe Flash. And since we helped start the company and continue to hold stock, it's interesting to follow its strategy.

One pattern that seems to be common with Flash based applications is the embedding of navigational links or menu systems within the applications themselves, in contrast with the notion of accessing multiple applications from a shared menu system or running within a portal. I see that pattern in their newest RIA applications, and it puzzles me because we put so much work and emphasis into a unifying "application execution environment" or AEE, from the beginning. It's as if they abandoned the notion of running within a portal. But I wonder why? Does it have something to do with Adobe Flex or Flash runtimes? Is it just easier to open and manage multiple windows under Flash?

I subscribe to an email service for most Midrange lists, using http://www.gowebtop.com that runs under Flash, but during the past two weeks the site has been down more than up. I also get the "Virtual Memory too low..." message under Windows if I run a number of Flash based applications or videos during the day. Is Flash a viable runtime if you want to deploy hundreds of applications?

Nathan.