the university of sheffielddagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2010-11/external/... · 2012. 3....

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Ankita Sunil Sonavane | Reg. No.: 100151862

Rich Internet Applications (RIA)

A Comparison between two popular frameworks (Adobe Flex &

Microsoft Silverlight)

A study submitted in partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science

In Information Systems Management

at

The University of Sheffield

Submitted by:

Ankita Sunil Sonavane

Registration Number: 100151862

Date: September 2011

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Abstract

The purpose of this research study is to carry out a comparison between two

popular plug-in based RIA development frameworks, which are Adobe Flex

and Microsoft Silverlight. The end result sought is: which RIA development

framework among the both can prove to be a better option for

developers/designers to build Rich Internet Applications for the web. The

aims and objectives of this study are: 1) To examine the various technical/

non-technical characteristics of both the frameworks and evaluate which

framework is more efficient and user friendly for developing RIAs, 2)To

examine the positioning and reputation of both the RIA development

frameworks in the current market and 3) Correlating results of both the

above mentioned objectives to find out which RIA development framework

is superior than the other, all aspects combined.

In order to meet the objectives of this study, researcher used a technical

aspects evaluation system for gathering and analyzing support provided by

both the frameworks to different tools and features used for developing RIAs,

then a online questionnaire was used to gather data for evaluating user

experience of both the frameworks and to carry out the evaluation of market

standing of both the frameworks data from different online sources was used.

The conclusion of this study indicate that a conflict was seen between the

results of the various aspects on the basis of which both the frameworks were

compared. On one hand users rated Adobe Flex as a better platform for

designing RIAs and on the other hand Microsoft Silverlight was a winner in

the technical support and current market standing category.

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Acknowledgement

Though my name appear on the front page of this dissertation, Many people

have contributed to its completion and I am sincerely thankful all those

people because of whom my postgraduate experience has been the one which

I will cherish throughout my life

My deepest gratitude is towards my supervisor Dr. Val Gillet whose

guidance helped me to recover at stages where I faced a lot of problems. I am

amazingly fortunate to have such a supervisor whose support helped me to

complete my thesis successfully. I am also thankful to her for approving my

dissertation work and taking out time for correcting my mistakes.

I am also thankful to all the participants who took part in my questionnaire

and gave their views about my topic, without whom this wouldn't have been

possible. I am also thankful to my parents for their support while this

research was conducted, without their blessing it wouldn't have been

possible.

Last but not the least I owe my deepest gratitude towards The University of

Sheffield for providing such a professional level of education and facilities

which helped me boost my knowledge in a very short span of time.

THANK YOU ALL...

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 7

1.1 Research Background .................................................................................................... 7

1.2 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) ................................................................................. 8

1.3 Research Aims & Objectives ....................................................................................... 12

LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................... 14

2.1 HTML & The World Wide Web .................................................................................. 14

2.1.1 Inception of HTML and The World Wide Web .................................................... 15

2.1.1.1 Hypertext (Hypermedia) ................................................................................ 17

2.1.1.2 Global Hypertext Systems ............................................................................. 20

2.1.1.3 Growth of Internet .......................................................................................... 21

2.1.1.4 Domain Name Systems .................................................................................. 22

2.1.2 Evolution of HTML .............................................................................................. 22

2.1.2.1 Role of Browsers ............................................................................................ 23

2.1.2.2 Semantic HTML Vs Presentational HTML ................................................... 26

2.1.2.3 Cascading Style Sheets .................................................................................. 27

2.1.2.4 Journey from Static to Dynamic web pages ................................................... 28

2.2 Web 2.0: The Participatory Web .................................................................................. 29

2.2.1 Animation & Graphics: A More Lively Web ....................................................... 31

2.2.2 Challenges Lead to Development ......................................................................... 32

2.3 Thin Client Vs Rich Clients ......................................................................................... 33

2.3.1 Thin Clients ........................................................................................................... 34

2.3.2 Rich Clients ........................................................................................................... 35

2.4 Rise of Rich Internet Applications ............................................................................... 38

2.5 Rich Internet Applications Finally Arrive. .................................................................. 41

2.5.1 Plugin based frameworks ...................................................................................... 45

2.5.2 Non-Plugin (JavaScript ) based framework .......................................................... 46

2.6 Comparison of RIA Development Frameworks .......................................................... 47

METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................ 51

3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 51

3.2 RIA Framework Comparison Methodology ................................................................ 51

3.3 Data collection ............................................................................................................. 54

3.3.1 Data collection approach and data types ............................................................... 54

3.3.2 Data Collection Instruments .................................................................................. 55

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3.3.2.1 Technical aspects evaluation system .............................................................. 56

3.3.2.2 Questionnaire ................................................................................................. 56

3.3.2.3 Market standing evaluation system ................................................................ 57

3.3.4 Selection of Target Audience ................................................................................ 58

RESULTS .............................................................................................................................. 60

4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 60

4.2 Results of Technical Aspects Evaluation System ........................................................ 60

4.2.1 List of Characteristics ........................................................................................... 60

4.2.2 Results and Description ........................................................................................ 63

4.3 Results of Online Survey ............................................................................................ 73

4.4 Results of the market standing evaluation system ...................................................... 79

DATA ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 80

5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 80

5.2 Technical Characteristics ............................................................................................. 80

5.2.1 Table of Comparison ............................................................................................. 81

5.2.2 Overall Support for Technical Characteristics ...................................................... 83

5.3 Non-Technical Characteristics ..................................................................................... 84

5.3.1 Individual Analysis ............................................................................................... 85

5.3.1.1 Graphical Richness ........................................................................................ 85

5.3.1.2 User Interface Elements ................................................................................. 85

5.3.1.3 Multimedia Support ....................................................................................... 86

5.3.1.4 Multimedia Support ....................................................................................... 87

5.3.1.5 Designer/Developer Tools ............................................................................. 87

5.3.1.6 Costs ............................................................................................................... 88

5.3.1.7 Performance ................................................................................................... 89

5.3.1.8 Refactoring & Code-Completion Support ..................................................... 89

5.3.1.9 Migration ........................................................................................................ 90

5.3.1.10 Overall User Experience .............................................................................. 91

5.3.2 Grouped Analysis .................................................................................................. 92

5.3.3 Over all Support for Non-Technical Characteristics ............................................. 93

5.4 Market Standing ........................................................................................................... 94

5.4.1 Worldwide Market Reputation .............................................................................. 95

5.4.1.1 Silverlight Plug-in Version Support .............................................................. 95

5.4.1.2 Flash Plug-in Version Support ....................................................................... 97

5.4.5 Global Market Penetration of Web Browser Plug-ins .......................................... 98

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5.4.2 Global Web Search Interest ................................................................................ 101

5.4.2.1 Interest Over Time: Adobe Flex &Microsoft Silverlight ............................. 101

5.4.2.2 Regional Interest: Adobe Flex &Microsoft Silverlight ................................ 103

5.4.3 Related books available on amazon and ebay ..................................................... 105

5.4.4 Threads/Discussions on framework's official websites ....................................... 107

5.4.5 Popularity of facebook ........................................................................................ 108

5.5 Correlation ................................................................................................................. 109

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 112

DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................... 116

7.1 Further Research ........................................................................................................ 116

7.2 Limitations ................................................................................................................. 117

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 119

APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................... 125

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

The software industry undergoes evolution constantly with new technologies,

new concepts, new software applications being launched every day. Nowadays,

focus is not just on developing something that meet user's expectations and

demands but, on building something that surpasses their expectations and

enhances their overall experience. This urge to take user's experience of using

software applications to a whole new level by making it richer, responsive and

more interactive than before is seen among the developers of Rich Internet

Application (RIA) development frameworks/platforms.

Most of the benefits provided by RIA technologies suggest that they are only

developed for making end-users experience of web applications more interactive

and graphically rich. But, that was not the only purpose for developing RIAs,

Noda and Helwig (2005) stated that, "RIA technologies are not only for

enriching user experiences, but also for empowering businesses to reduce

development time and costs, taking web development to a whole new level".(p.1)

Today, with the help of the constantly evolving technologies, existing powerful

systems that support this technology and their connectivity with the Internet, no

needs and expectations of the end-users and businesses seem unattainable for the

dominant software manufacturing companies. This is the reason why a strong

competition is seen among companies such as, Adobe Systems Inc., Sun

Microsystems, Microsoft etc.,which are constantly striving to provide their

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clients(designers, developers, programmers and end-users) with the best

platform/software for designing RIAs that not only meet but exceed their

demands.

But, with so much competition in this field, picking the right solution for

developing a RIA that best suit their needs becomes a tricky task. The purpose of

this research project is to guide designers/developers of rich applications in their

decision of which plug-in based RIA development framework (Microsoft

Silverlight and Adobe Flex) to pick.

1.2 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)

As mentioned above evolution is one thing that has been constant in the software

industry. It all started with the introduction of a concept called Hypertext

(Hypermedia) systems in the late 1960s, these systems provided a user interface

for browsing through large classes of information (computerized documents,

reports, images etc) available in databases. These systems were very popular

back then and it also saw some commercial success. But, its only drawback was

that, it only provided browsing access to information present on a single machine

(computer).

In 1989,this limitation of Hypertext systems led to the introduction of HTML

(HyperText Markup Language) by Tim Berners-Lee, which officially turned out

to be the very first tool for designing something that can be viewed across the

web.

In1990s, when HTML was newly introduced, it was fascinating for the users and

developers of web applications, as it was a relatively new concept back then. It

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was appreciated for its several qualities, such as, systematic structuring of

documents/pages to be displayed, formatting of text's font type, size colour,

layout etc with the help of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Thus, users only got to

view web pages with structured documents which presented static text formatted

and styled with the help of CSS, and concept of rich and interactive web

applications still had a long way to go.

Over the years HTML has gone through a lot of development, started as simple

language which allowed to display stagnant /static information (like text and

images are presented in books and newspapers) to a complex markup language

that allowed to display all singing and dancing web pages with richer and

dynamic data (like animated images, sounds and all manners of gimmicks

(Raggett et. al, 1998).

Allaire (2002) stated that, "In mid-1990s, explosive growth in the Internet and

the World Wide Web drove widespread adoption of a new model for content and

applications using personal computers connected to the Internet". (p.1)

This was the reason why "Thin Client" computing systems came into existence.

Thin Client systems had their advantage, such as, they were cheaper for

designing and developing applications, it also made managing and maintaining

applications an easy task. But, these systems also had its drawbacks, they failed

to meet end-users demands of rich and interactive application interfaces and

sophisticated applications that could be built and delivered as a whole.

Complexities in various tasks performed through web applications were

increasing over time , especially when it came to high levels of interaction,

client-side processing and multimedia capacities, here the traditional HTTP-

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HTML web applications started showing their limits (Preciado, 2007) .

Traditional web applications were facing great limitations, they were inadequate

in providing end-users with interactive and rich functionalities (support for

animation, different types of multimedia and graphics) for the user interface.

Thus, to overcome all these drawback and limitations associated with the

traditional web applications a new breed of web applications came into existence,

the so called Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) (Busch and Koch, 2009).

It was not just the limitations of the traditional web applications, but the

demands of businesses and end-users were exceeding day by day than their

investment in Internet Technology and in order to meet their needs, software

companies were forced to look towards developing more richer models for

designing applications that combined the media-rich power of desktop and

content rich nature of web applications (Allaire, 2002).

The term "Rich Internet Applications" (RIAs) made its debut in 2002 in a white

paper released by Macromedia. RIAs offered a lot of benefits over traditional

web applications, they provided richer, responsive and interactive graphical user

interface, much like the interface of desktop applications. These applications use

a relatively robust client-side rendering engines than traditional web applications

that allow them to present much intense, responsive and graphically richer user

interfaces, they also provide a wide range of controls (sliders, date pickers, tabs,

gauges etc) for designing interfaces and some RIA technologies also provided

support for displaying full-motion animation in response to data changes

(O'Rourke, 2004).

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Then, their architecture is based on the structural design of thick(rich) client

systems which facilitate asynchronous communication and provide variety of

widgets that help to manipulate the user interface elements, on one hand the data

and processes are managed by the clients and on the other hand the network

traffics is reduced by improved communication (Busch and Koch, 2009).

More than designing RIAs, the development of software that can be used for

designing RIAs was a complex task. As the process of requirements engineering

had to take into account all the various interactive features and functionalities

that a RIA has to offer to its end-users, which separated it from the traditional

web applications. This software is called a RIA development framework or

platform and it can be categorised under two different categories:

Plug-in Based RIA Development Frameworks: Requires a plug-

in(small piece of program) to be installed on the client's system before

executing the application, as it's responsible for verifying, executing and

updating the RIA. For Example: Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex.

Non-Plug-in or JavaScript Based Frameworks: Here, no plug-in needs

to be installed and the framework makes use of the in-built browser

functionality for executing the RIA. For Example: AJAX.

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1.3 Research Aims & Objectives

The purpose of this research project is to study, analyse and compare two plug-

in based RIA development frameworks. This comparison will be carried out

between today's two popular plug-in based RIA development frameworks,

namely, Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex. Since their inception, both these

frameworks have made their finest efforts to provide web application designers/

developers (both professional and beginners) with a platform, that allows them to

create more and more "richer" , "responsive" and "interactive" applications for its

users.

The focus of this study will be on determining which of these above mentioned

frameworks have better tools, features and functionalities to offer. So that, it will

guide the RIA designers/developers in their decision making process of picking a

plug-in based RIA framework, by making them aware of varied possibilities and

limitations associated with both the platforms. To do so, the comparison process

has been carefully structured and divided in three parts: technical elements

(compares different tools and features of both frameworks) , non-technical

elements (compares user experience of both the frameworks) and market

standing (compares the reputation of both the frameworks in current market).

Thus, the purpose of this study will be achieved by fulfilling the below

mentioned aims and objectives:

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To examine the various technical/ non-technical characteristics of both

the RIA development frameworks (Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flex)

and evaluate which framework is more effective, efficient and user

friendly for developing RIAs.

To examine the positioning and reputation of both the RIA development

frameworks in the current market.

Correlating results of both the above mentioned objectives to find out

which RIA development framework is superior than the other, all aspects

combined.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 HTML & The World Wide Web

Today, it has been more than 20 years since „HTML‟ (Hyper Text Markup

Language) and the „World Wide Web‟ was first introduced to the world by Tim

Berners-Lee. Gillies and Cailliau (2000) defined web as follows, "The World Wide

Web is like an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a record collection, a video

shop, and Speakers' Corner all rolled into one and accessible through any computer".

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C - A worldwide association formed for

developing guidelines and protocols which ensures that the web reaches its full

potential ) defined HTML as, “A publishing language of the World Wide Web and

as one of the main components of the Open Web Platform” (W3C, 2011). Today if

you look up the term „HTML‟ online, you will come across hundreds of definitions

for it, but in simple words it can be described as a language that is used for designing

and structuring the format of web pages/documents that can be displayed on the web.

It helps to create the layout of how these web pages would look like when viewed

using a web browser (Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer). Back in late 1980s,

when HTML was just introduced to the world, it did not just display text on web

pages, but, in the coming years efforts were made to make this experience more

richer for the users, by providing support for displaying multimedia (images, audio

etc). Viewing multimedia was all the richness users got to experience back then.

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When we talk about HTML, the discussion is incomplete without bringing up the

term called an „Open Web Platform‟, it can be defined as a collection of different

web specifications developed by different web standardization bodies like, the

Unicode Consortium, the Internet Engineering task force, ECMA International,

including the W3C (Hegaret, 2011). In 2011, CEO of W3C Jaffe defined it as, “ A

platform for innovation, consolidation and cost efficiencies”.

When Hegaret came up with the term “Open Web Platform” (OPW) in 2010, the

idea was quite clear in his mind, it wasn‟t just associated with availability of

hundreds of open specifications and technologies that play a vital role in enhancing

our web experience and making it more richer and vibrant. But, it actually depicted

that, the current and future development of the web has to be based upon these set of

open technologies that are available not only for a particular country, part of society

or group of people, but, for all.

The web has been successfully developed and used by so many people for so long

because of this very concept called the Open Web Platform. The web exists today

because of the contributions (collection of open technologies available for general

audience and which are not company owned) made by companies, people and

organisations who are passionate about it. More than 100 such specifications have

been standardized by the W3C itself and more by other bodies mentioned above.

2.1.1 Inception of HTML and The World Wide Web

In 1989, the World Wide Web was born with HTML as its publishing language

(Raggett, 1998). Berners-Lee invented the web when he was working in the

computing services department at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear

Research), its headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it's an international

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organization whose aim is to bring together physicists from all over the globe and

carry out the operations of biggest and most respected particle physics laboratory in

the world (CERN, 2008). But this wasn‟t the first time when he came up with the

idea of web. He had some experience in text processing and document production,

and long back in 1980s was the time when he created the first hypertext system for

his personal use (Raggett, 1998). The concept of this hypertext system was close to

the idea of the web, he named it „Enquire‟, a short form for an old Victorian book he

found at his parents place named, “Enquire within upon Everything” (Berners-Lee

and Fischetti, 1999).

Berners-Lee‟s first hypertext system (Enquire) and the Victorian book were the two

things that helped build the foundation on which the concept of web was based

upon.. This book was like an encyclopaedia, which held information on different

things like cooking tips, washing tips, recipes and investment tips etc.. It was sort of

a written version of his idea of the web, not perfectly similar to it, but, at least it was

the starting point.

His conception of the web much more larger than that, something where people

would not just go to fetch information from but would also be able to share it with

the rest of the world, unlike in the case of books where people have to wait for the

next edition for more information, he wanted something where not only recipes,

health tips and other such stagnant information will be shared, but real time

information like weather forecasts, current news and more would also be shared. In

short, his vision was about anything being potentially connected with anything

(Berners-Lee and Fischetti, 1999).

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When at CERN he started thinking more about this concept and how it can be shared

with the rest of the world, he never thought that in the future, “the web” would

become such an essential part of our lives and would be implemented on such a huge

scale.

Through 1990s, the idea started shaping up. But, was it too soon? Raggett (1998)

stated that, invention of web in 1990s was no coincidence, as the developments in

the world of communications technology during that time were such that, sooner or

later it was bound to happen.

Why Raggett meant by the developments in the world of communications

technology were the following four factors:

The increasing popularity of Hypertext a.k.a. Hypermedia systems.

The inception of a Global Hypertext System.

Growing number of Internet users during that time.

The introduction of DNS (Domain Name System) which made addressing

machines over the Internet easier.

These four factors played a vital role in the rise of the world wide web, and they are

discussed in much detail in the next sub-sections.

2.1.1.1 Hypertext (Hypermedia)

This term was first coined by Ted Nelson in 1965 (W3C, 2011). Berners-Lee and

Cailliau (1990) defined hypertext as follows,

“HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of

nodes in which the user can browse at will and it provides a single user-interface to

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many large classes of stored information such as reports, notes, databases, computer

documentation and on-line systems help”.

The term hypertext is actually a misnomer, as many of the current systems allow and

even encourage the inclusion of non-text data such as graphics, animations and

digitized sounds (Bevilacqua ,1989).

In simple words it can be defined as, a text that provides access (hyperlinks) to not

just textual data but also graphics, images, audio/video files using a single user

interface and because of this, Nelson also proposed another term called

"hypermedia", which according to him was more suitable for these systems.

Aspen Movie Map was the first hypertext system, a revolutionary application

developed at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1978, it was a virtual

tour of the city of Aspen, Colorado (Inventing Interactive, 2010).

Then, Berners-Lee developed „Enquire‟ in 1980, a hypertext system for his personal

use. Next hypertext system called „Hypercard‟ introduced to the world in 1987 ,

developed by Bill Atkinson a very talented programmer who worked for Apple

Inc..This program used the metaphor of cards as files of information that can be

accessed and manipulated in a free form manner. It allowed full-text searching

without the need to pre-index information and users can search and browse by

scanning groups of items (Mac GUI City, 1987). The concept and working of the

Hypercard program, gave a rise to more such similar programs to be developed. Like

the 'Toolbook' for PC and 'Guide' for both UNIX and PC.

In 1982, Peter J. Brown, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Kent,

Canterbury developed Guide as a part of research project. This system's aim was not

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just to present documents on computer screen but was to break away from the

constraint of paper and rethink from scratch how to best display documents on

screen, also one of its desires was to take advantage of the high bandwidth of

communication between the user and computer offered by graphics workstation

(Brown, 1987). It was commercially launched in 1984.

'Hypertext Systems' was a popular area of research during the 1980s and it saw a lot

of commercial success, as most of the developers wanted their product to be the one

that captured market and gained maximum user acceptance. But, even then, there

were certain drawbacks associated with it.

Getting disoriented while browsing through files and documents on these

systems was easy as they lacked the assistance that books provide, such as

indexes and table of contents etc.

Another problem was that, while browsing through documents users should

be purely aware of what sort of information they are looking for; if they do

not make right choices they might end up overloading themselves with

unwanted and unnecessary information. Bevilacqua (1989) defended this by

saying that, "Although this problem is not new with hypertext, computerized

access does add a sometimes overwhelming dimension to it".

Then came the compatibility setback: it was too soon to address this issue

during that time, as even Bevilacqua (1989) stated that, "imposing standards

while hypertext is in an experimental stage will dampen creativity".

And the one of the biggest limitation of these systems was that, hypertext

jumps were only possible for files on the same computer and jumps to

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computers on the other side of the world was still out of question (Raggett,

1998).

But, these limitations and entire concept of hypertext systems turned out to be the

underlying concept on the basis of which the framework of the world wide web was

build upon. Invention of this concept is the reason why people first got a chance to

share, jump and access various types of multimedia and text on a worldwide scale.

This is the reason why Berners-Lee‟s dream of a global information sharing system

became a reality.

2.1.1.2 Global Hypertext Systems

Berners-Lee was the one who first thought of a global hypertext system, that will not

just facilitate jumps between files on the same computer but also to other computers.

But it wasn't an easy task as the global hypertext system he wanted to create has to

run on the different types of computers (PCs, Macintoshes etc), and most of the

hypertext systems developed during that time were computer specific. So, in order to

create a global system that can access text from different machines, he had to find a

way of compiling text in such a format that is acceptable and standard for all the

machines. And, to deal with all these requirements/issues that stood in the way of

creating a global hypertext system, Berners-Lee developed the HTTP protocol,

which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol for retrieving other documents and the

text format for HTTP was named HTML (Raggett, 1998).

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2.1.1.3 Growth of Internet

During the same time, when efforts were being made in methods for accessing

information on the web, the Internet itself was developing, its rise and growth in

number of its worldwide users also played an important role in building the

foundation of the web.

Many people thought that the web and Internet are one and the same thing but they

were not. Gillies and Cailliau (2000) stated the difference between both in their book

by saying that,

"The Internet is like a network of electronic roads criss-crossing the planet - the

much hyped information superhighway and web is just one of many services using

that network , just as many different kinds of vehicle use the roads".

Many technical innovations have acted as predecessors to the rise in the number of

worldwide Internet users. One of the major factors for the fledgling Internet was the

introduction of the first host-to-host protocol called Network Control Protocol

(NCP), in 1972 NCP was implemented in all the ARPANET sites and the focus was

shifted on the development of applications, which again turned out to be one of the

paramount factors for the phenomenal and sustained growth of the Internet (Coffman

and Odlyzko, 2001).

Then, introduction of Internet email program in the 1970s which facilitated exchange

of messages over the distributed network, became quite popular among Internet users

as it was a new and unique way to communicate will people across the globe.

Coffman and Odlyzko (2001) stated that,

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".Internet email was clearly one of the key drivers for the popularity (and hence the

phenomenal traffic growth demands) of the Internet and was the first "killer app" for

the Net". (p.14)

Then with the introduction of Domain Name Systems, another boost was seen in the

number of Internet users.

2.1.1.4 Domain Name Systems

Postel (1982) said that, " The Domain Name System was originally invented to

support the growth of email communications on the ARPANET, and now supports

the Internet on a global scale". With Domain Name System a user friendly naming

system that helped to address and locate devices on the Internet, was introduced to

the world. What this system basically did was translate difficult to remember

numeric identifiers known as IP Addresses (187.36.27.000) to simple and easy to

remember alphabetical identifiers known as domain names (www.dns.com). This

naming system played a vital role in making Internet accessible to a large audience

worldwide and it also simplified the email addresses, as before DNS was introduced

email addresses were represented by complicated and meaningless signs and codes.

2.1.2 Evolution of HTML

Over the years HTML has undergone lot of innovation, Raggett (1998) stated that,

“HTML has evolved from a simple language to a complex system of mark-up,

enabling authors to create all singing and dancing web pages complete with animated

images, sounds and all manners of gimmicks”.

This means that, HTML has gone through a lot of changes and modifications since

the time it was first introduced to the world. Many new features have been added and

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old unwanted features were phased out every time a new version was released. Its

first version was published in late 1991 , the current W3C recommendation for

HTML (version 4.01) was published in December 1999 and intensive work is being

carried out to define the next version i.e. HTML 5 (W3C, 2011).

When Berners-Lee first introduced HTML, people started getting familiar with the

concept of 'web applications', which can be described as an application that can be

accessed over a network (Internet) with the help of browsers. Initially these

applications were coded with HTML, a wide range of tools were used for this

purpose, from simple plain text editors to sophisticated authoring tools, it used tags

such as <h1> and </h1> to structure text, so that in can be displayed as heading,

paragraphs , lists, hypertext links, tables etc ( W3C, 1997).

Back in the 1990s, viewing multi-media and just the idea of browsing/jumping

through all this data available on several machines all over of the world was a rich

and interactive experience for the users. But, with time, the meaning of the terms

'rich' and 'interactive' has also evolved, if we think of it today, these web pages made

information available in a very basic and simple format, just like information is

displayed in books and newspapers. Users didn't really get a chance to encounter

what a real "rich" and "interactive" experience can be like.

2.1.2.1 Role of Browsers

HTML was just a simple structured document format with markup tags added

between text strings that specified the role of that text, this made the elements of

early HTML more logical and less presentational, the presentation part was dealt by

the browsers (Wium Lie, 2005).

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The reason for HTML being more logical and less presentational could be CERN (

place where HTML was born), it provided with a more technical environment which

paid more attention to construction of the content of the web pages and less

attention was focused on the styling of web pages. For example: In HTML, tags

were used to wrap the text that was supposed to be displayed as heading, paragraph

or hyperlinks. But, what colour, size or font this text was supposed to appear in,

remained un-described.

This is where the browsers came in, the role of web browsers was to read the HTML

documents and interpret it into visual/audible web pages. In 1993 a tough

competition was seen among the browsers that were launched then, for example:

Erwise, Viola and Midas browsers were available for X Windows system and Samba

was under construction for Mac (Berners-Lee and Fischetti, 1999).

Dave Raggett - a name which has been closely associated with the development of

the World Wide Web since 1992 (W3C, 2003), also entered the competition with his

browser called "Arena". Raggett was convinced that hypertext web pages could be

much more exciting, like magazine pages rather than textbook pages (Berners-Lee

and Fischetti, 1999). He believed that HTML can do more than just displaying text

on web pages and more features could be added to make the browsing experience

richer than before. He came up with Arena to experiment with diverse ways of

representing web pages written using HTML. More, browsers were launched in

coming years.

In 1993, NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) launched

another browser called "Mosaic", it was developed by Marc Andreessen (a student

who worked at NCSA) and Eric Bina (a programmer who started working for NCSA

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). Berners-Lee and Fischetti (1999) stated in their book that, because of its traits like

- it being easy to install and its requirement of having very little learning before

accessing the web, it soon picked up more rapidly than other browsers. What

differentiated Andreessen 's approach from others who were developing browsers

then was that, he wasn't just interested in participating in the race to develop a

browser, but he also wanted to know and understand the user requirements and then

create a product that would be accepted and used by a large number of people around

the world. This dream of his became a reality when he became one of the co-

founders of Netscape Communications (a US based computer services company) and

launched the Netscape browser.

Wium Lie (2005) said that, "The Netscape browser supported a set of new

presentational HTML tags (e.g. CENTER to center text) and more were to follow

shortly".

Also, Hawn (1995) stated that, "Netscape Communications wants you to forget all

the highway metaphors you've heard about the Internet and instead , think about an

encyclopaedia - one with unlimited, graphically rich pages, connections to E - mail

and files, and access to Internet newsgroups and online shopping".

With Netscape's first launched browser Andreessen fulfilled one of the most

imperative demands of the users, which was to add presentational tags in HTML.

And thus, inclusion of presentational tags in HTML and providing users with a

graphically rich experience, evolved this language from being a simple structure

based markup language (which just concentrated on elements, like - what should be

displayed in the heading, paragraphs etc) to a presentational markup language (which

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also focused on elements associated with the presentation of the content, such as, the

type, colour and size of the font to be displayed.

2.1.2.2 Semantic HTML Vs Presentational HTML

Semantic HTML and Presentational HTML both formed subsets of HTML.

Semantic HTML dealt with the document structuring, i.e. presenting text in

paragraphs, heading etc., and Presentational HTML dealt with the appearance of the

text displayed in the document, i.e. editing elements like font size, type, colour etc.

HTML had the semantic markup right from the beginning and the presentational

markup was introduced later. Knierim (2011) stated that, semantic HTML helps to

make documents easier to understand for machine parsers (search engine robots,

agents, screen readers, accessibility software etc). Even Presentational HTML did

have its plus points, such as, it was easy to type, for example: using <b> instead of

<strong> for making the text bold, also it was identified by most of the browsers

back then.

Considering the fact that HTML was introduced in the first place for presenting

documents to its users and not for the reason of how well it could structure the

documents, this was the reason why presentational HTML was introduced in the first

place. But, using presentational HTML tags wasn't the best way to go, Wium Lie

(2005) said that, "The creators of HTML intended it to be useful in many settings but

presentational tags threatened device independence, accessibility and content reuse".

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2.1.2.3 Cascading Style Sheets

The users appreciated the presentation HTML for its several traits that allowed to

manage and controlled the appearance of a webpage (example: editing the text's font,

size colour and layout etc), but it had its drawbacks, and a much more better option

was available to deal with the presentation aspect, such as, "Cascading Style Sheets"

(CSS). These style sheets allow to describe the appearance of web pages by

providing elements that would help to format the font, colour, size, spacing and

overall layout of the text to be displayed on web pages. With its inception in 1996,

the W3C deprecated the presentational attributes of HTML and preferred the style

sheets over presentational HTML, for styling and formatting the appearance of the

web pages. This was because, the separation of HTML from CSS makes it easier to

maintain sites, share style sheets across pages and tailor pages to different

environment, which W3C referred to as the segregation of structure or content from

presentation (W3C, 2010).

Using style sheets was a much better choice for altering and manipulating

presentational elements because, it offered developers achieve good control over

page formatting by separating content from presentation which simplified

maintenance and all this could be achieved by fairly less amount of coding. Thus, in

those days, viewing web pages designed using HTML and which were formatted &

styled using Cascading Style Sheets was all "rich" the user experience of web

applications got.

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2.1.2.4 Journey from Static to Dynamic web pages

The web pages created using HTML were static, i.e. they just served users with

static, stagnant and non-interactive information, which is delivered to the users in

the same format it is stored in or uploaded onto the server (holds all HTML files).

These were basically simple HTML documents (files) which the server would locate

and sent those files to the browser over the HyperText Transfer Protocol, as an when

information was requested by the users. Each time a static web page was accessed

through a browser, it did not change and the users got to view the same standard

information which the programmer wrote, every time the page was loaded in a

browser. The only time the information on these web pages altered, was the time

when the programmer/developer changed it by himself or replaced a new page

instead of the old one onto the server. Thus, with static web pages users didn't get to

experience any interactivity, until dynamic web pages were introduced.

Dynamic web pages in contrast to Static web pages, tailored the results as per the

users request and represented information in a fresh format depending on what the

user does. Example of Dynamic web pages are: online surveys, forums, blogs,

online voting, e-commerce websites (ebay, amazon etc), in short web applications

which provided personalized attention to the user's needs (Web and Macros, 2011).

Most of the data displayed on dynamic web pages are controlled by databases which

are connected to these web pages, which means that when users requests for some

information, that information is fetched from the database and provided to the user

through browser windows. A good example of dynamic web pages could be a

banking website where each user gets to view different information (i.e. their own

bank account details), as and when they withdraw or add money to their accounts.

This information is updated in the database and then reflected on their online account

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automatically without the programmer having to intervene, unlike static web pages

where the programmer has to manually change the information uploaded on the

server. Thus, inception of Dynamic web pages was the first step of web applications

into the world of "interactive" and "vibrant" web applications.

2.2 Web 2.0: The Participatory Web

As years passed more efforts were seen towards enhancing the web experience of

both developers and end users. One of those steps taken towards enriching the web

experience was the introduction of the term “Web 2.0”. Dale Dougherty, Co-founder

of O‟Reilly Media (company known for its technology conferences and publishing

books and websites) was the one who came up with this term in 2004 in a conference

arranged for discussing the potential future of the web.

Back in the fall of 2001, when the dot-com bubble burst was all over the news, many

thought that web was over-hyped, but both Tim O‟Reilly, vice-president of O‟Reilly

Media and Dougherty thought that the web was far from being crashed and was

actually more important than ever (O‟Reilly, 2005). And, the dot-com bubble burst

in fact triggered a technological revolution and became a turning point for the web

and this led to the inception of Web 2.0.

In the TechWatch report (report which was commissioned to investigate the

substance behind the hyperbole surrounding „Web 2.0‟), O‟Reilly mentioned that, he

separately wanted to discuss the following three elements (Anderson, 2007):

Web Technologies - Ongoing web development by W3C.

More recent applications & services - Emerging as a result of existing

technological development.

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The Big Ideas - Understanding the manifestations and adoption of these

applications & services.

O‟Reilly wanted to do that because he thought that, understanding of these three

elements was important for the strategic implementation of Web 2.0. Also, analysing

the combination and a mesh of these elements would provide vital information for

building the foundation on which Web 2.0 would stand.

Anderson (2007) mentioned in the JISC Technology and Standards Watch Report

that,

“Web 2.0 is a set of new technologies and ideas that are changing the way people

interact but it's also important to acknowledge that these ideas are not necessarily the

preserve of „Web 2.0‟, in fact its direct or in-direct reflections of the power of the

network: the strange effects and topologies at the micro and macro level that a billion

Internet users produce”.

Here, Internet users refers to the users at both the ends, it encompasses not just the

ones who use the web applications but also the developers who design and create

these web applications for them. According to Anderson both these users played a

significant role in the development and shaping of Web 2.0. As, depending on the

usage of and response received by existing new technologies (recent web

applications and services), the developers refine the existing technology and ideas, to

come up with new ideas that build the infrastructure for the future technologies. And

thus provide users with many more advanced and richer applications and services

through the browser window.

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Thus, O‟Reilly‟s „Web 2.0‟ can be thought of as evolution of the „Web‟ which

Bernes-Lee introduced to the world, an evolution which wouldn't have been possible

without the alliance, collaboration and participation of users and this was the reason

why it was referred to as the „participatory web‟, which opened doors for more

powerful and richer web applications (O‟Reilly, 2005) .

2.2.1 Animation & Graphics: A More Lively Web

HTML's simple web pages became more lively with introduction of animation. And

all this became possible because of a man called, Jonathan Gay - a programmer who

started his career as a professional programmer at Silicon Beach Software (Software

company owned by Macintosh). He started by designing games and drawing

programs. In 1993, Charlie Jackson founder of Silicon Beach Software launched a

company called FutureWave Software, to design and develop graphics related

software.

Waldron (2000) stated in his article that, in 1995, FutureWave received demands of a

lot of people saying that the company should convert their smart drawing software

called "SmartSketch" into an animation software and he also said that, during that

time market for animation tools was very small, plus the only way to distribute

animation was on VHS or CD ROM. Thus, demand for creating an animation

software considering the market conditions for it and the problem it's distribution

posed, didn't make any sense.

But, that was the time when Internet and the World Wide Web was making its

presence felt, and the company started looking at the web as a medium for quick and

easy distribution of animation, which would create a strong & profitable market for

their first animation software.

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During that time Java was the only way to extend a browser so that it can support the

play back of an animation, but it was horribly slow, in fall of 1995, Netscape

communications browser came out with a plug-in API that wasn't as bad as Java

based extension and actually turned out to be a good choice for extending web

browsers that gave a decent performance (Gay, 2011).

Thus, in 1995 creation of this animation software became a reality and FutureWave

Software launched its first animation product called FutureSplash Animator to full-

fill the users demand of an animation software and their wish of creating animations

for the web.

In summer of 1996, FutureSplash Animator started gaining public interest with two

high profile clients, their first client was Microsoft, who were working on web

version of MSN, who wanted to create TV like experience on the Internet and their

other high-profile client was Disney Online, who wanted to create animated

interface for their online subscription service(Waldron, 2000). Because of the

company's strong associations with Microsoft and Disney, later in December of

1996, Macromedia purchased the company and FutureSplash Animator was re-

branded and released as Macromedia Flash 1.0 (Gay, 2001).

2.2.2 Challenges Lead to Development

In a white paper released by Macromedia, Allaire (2002) stated that,

"In many respects, much of the web application development and deployment

technology of the late 1990s has had to adapt to the challenges imposed by the

architecture inherent in the web". (p.1)

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This means that, since the inception of Internet and the World Wide Web in 1990s,

technology has been evolved on a large scale which has in turn, posed a constant

challenge to the field of web-based software development. And this challenge has

been gladly accepted by the developers/designers who made efficient use of this

evolving technology, by providing their audience(users) with numerous applications

that have now became a part of their lives.

These web-based applications have not just helped people by making their day-to-

day life easy(for example: people now no longer need to make time and go out to

pay their bills, to shop or for banking, they can do it any time/anywhere from the

convenience of their home) but also helped various businesses flourish (for

example: various applications that help businesses to collect, manage and share their

data, conduct market analysis and study business trends by gathering data from

several online sources to structure a report etc).

2.3 Thin Client Vs Rich Clients

Now that the challenge to develop web based applications that compliments the

explosive growth of the existing technological advances, the Internet and the World

Wide Web was steadily been taken care of by the developers, who were designing

new and innovative applications for the web. Another question was raised, i.e. which

of the available web-based systems (models) to choose from, a "thin client" system

or a" rich client" system? Even though the main purpose of both these systems is to

facilitate remote access of data, there was still a huge difference in the design and

concept of these systems, which is discussed below.

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2.3.1 Thin Clients

A white paper by Bright Software (2003) stated that,

"A thin client typically runs a browser, rendering a mark-up language such as

HTML, here user interacts with the HTML rendered forms which are pulled down

from the server along with the data being manipulated". (p.2)

This means that, in a thin client system all the important information (businesses

related or otherwise) is saved on the server, this makes maintaining and managing of

the application quite an easy task, as simply updating the server centrally does the

trick. Thus, the next time when users connect to the server, all directly get to view an

updated version of the application. This is one of the advantages of choosing a thin

client system.

Other advantages of using a thin client system are, the costs associated with

development and designing of an application for the users(customers), as per their

demands, was quiet cheap and affordable. This model also had a variety of

applications to offer to its users that addressed their needs and requirements.

Even though thin client systems have all the above mentioned advantages, this

system had its downside and weaknesses, which are discussed next.

A llaire (2002) stated about thin-client systems that,

" it has also suffered from significant drawbacks and limitations, especially around

the richness of the application interfaces, media and content, and overall

sophistication of the solutions that could be built and delivered". (p.1)

Thus thin client systems were easy to manage, were economically feasible and had

the capacity to deliver its users with wide range of applications that suit their needs.

35


But even with all this, it fell short in providing the users with a rich user interface(as

it makes use of HTML where the presentational aspect is dealt and managed by CSS,

and thin client systems have no control over it) that supported media and other rich

features, plus it also failed to deliver users with functionalities that could possibly be

delivered to enhance their overall user experience of web-based applications.

Then, as mentioned above, as all the information is stored on the server and not on

the client's machine, this means that, providing the clients with an uninterrupted

connection to the server at all times is of vital importance. Because if it fails to do so,

the client won't be able to extract its data that is stored on the server. Also today, the

world is slowly making its move to wireless internet connections and in such a

scenario, providing clients with an un-interrupted connection which LANs and

Broadband connections provide, can sometimes be a problem for wireless systems.

2.3.2 Rich Clients

This is where the rich-client system steps in, to address the user demands which

remained un-fulfilled by thin client systems. Bright Software (2003) defined rich

client systems in their white paper as follows,

"A rich client system is any software running natively on a client machine, it has

access to the windowing and GUI features of the operating system on which it runs,

also it uses local database". (p.2)

These systems clearly are a better choice than the thin client systems for the

following reasons. Firstly, as it provides access to the windowing and manipulation

of graphical user interface elements of the operating system, they have the power to

enhance the user experience by providing them with a rich user interface. Secondly,

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a copy of all the information in the central database is stored on the system's local

database as well. This local database is synchronised with the central database, thus

even in the absence of connection to the server, only the updates of the client's

system will be delayed but data can still be accessed at any time in the absence of

Internet connection, unlike thin client systems which save data on the server, where

any sort of interruption in the connection can cause a problem. Then the way rich

client systems deal with an online form's data validation is better than a thin client

system. In thin client system, user has to fill the form, then after submission of the

entire form data validation takes place and all the errors are highlighted and sent to

the user who then has to resubmit the form. But, a rich client systems identifies those

errors by validating data at the time the form is being filled, this not only saves the

users time by avoiding un-necessary re-submission of the form but, in turn the

scalability of the system is also enhanced.

Hecker (2005) pointed out some other benefits of a rich-client system, he stated that,

In rich-client systems, when certain changes are made, like processing a new move-

in or accepting a payment, all these changes are immediately uploaded to the central

server in real time, then tasks like printing are faster as compared to thin client

systems, as information to be printed is present on the local database and does not

need to be downloaded.

Allaire (2002) stated that, the following features are vital elements of rich client

technologies,

Provide an efficient high-performance runtime for executing code, content

and communications.

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Integrate content, communications, and application interfaces into common

environment.

Provide powerful and extensible object models for interactivity.

Enable rapid application development through components and re-use.

Enable the use of web and data services provided by application servers.

Embrace connected and disconnected clients.

Enable easy deployment on multiple platforms and devices.

It's clearly seen that rich-client systems are a better choice than thin-client systems.

They understand client's demands better, they store data more efficiently, they

provide faster access to the data and are more user-friendly than thin-client systems.

Thus, because of these above mentioned qualities rich-client systems got more and

more popular and people and businesses started demanding them.

Microsoft's .NET language allowed to develop(program) these rich-client systems.

Then there was Adobe's Flash which provided users with rich web experience. In a

whitepaper published by Macromedia (2002) it was mentioned that,

"Macromedia Flash MX was built from the ground up to provide a 'rich client'

environment for Internet content and applications that will radically improve the

quality of end-user applications, making Internet more relevant and useful to

businesses and consumers". (p.1)

Thus, with inception of Flash, things that were not possible with thin client systems

rendered by mark-up language (HTML or JavaScript) became attainable for web-

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based application designers and developers. And providing an enhanced/rich

experience to the users became achievable.

2.4 Rise of Rich Internet Applications

In 2002, Businesses and End-Users demands started exceeding than their investment

in Internet technology and in order to cater to their needs, companies were forced to

look towards developing richer models for designing internet based applications, i.e.

a combination of 'media-rich' power of traditional desktop and 'content-rich' nature

of web applications (Allaire, 2002).

Thus, by getting a taste of what rich-client systems had to offer, businesses and end-

users were expecting a rise in the use of such web-based applications that had the

richness of desktop based applications and content sharing/storing capability of

simple web applications. They wanted more interactive and live applications, that

could be used and re-used over the internet as services, in such a way that they

would not only be useful on its own but will also facilitate sharing of data and other

additional functionalities across wide range of client systems in the future. This

increasing anticipation of all the end-users, businesses and companies, also the

growing power of technology(to provide the world with more enhanced applications

and services), all this gave birth to the thought of developing richer and more

interactive web applications, which are more receptive to their needs and demands.

This need of next generation rich clients was identified and discussed by

Macromedia, and thus the term "Rich Internet Applications" (RIA) was first coined

in their white paper released in 2002.

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Preciado et al. (2007) stated that,

"Currently the complexity of tasks performed through web applications is increasing,

in particular when high levels of interaction, client-side processing, and multimedia

capacities have to be provided. In this context traditional HTTP-HTML web

applications are showing their limits and developers are building the future of the

Web using Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) technologies, which are web

applications with many additional features". (p.1)

This shows that, it was not just the demands of next-generation clients that led to the

rise of RIAs, but the limitations and drawbacks of simple web applications also

played a crucial role in this.

Preciado et al. (2005) pointed out the following problems associated with traditional

web-based applications,

Process problems: In traditional web applications, users have to navigate

through a bunch of pages in order to complete a single task (Example: the

task of booking a flight).

Data Problems: They do not support interactive explorations of data.

Usually, the user has to search data through the use of input forms and then

to navigate the hypertext to see the desired data.

Configuration problems: Many web applications require the configuration

of a product/system from multicriteria choices, but are, in general, unable to

present the customized product/system to the user in an intuitive way in a

single step.

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Feedback Problems: they do not allow a continued and ordered interaction

without page refreshments, so the interaction of the user with traditional web

pages is quite limited.

Interactive exploration of data is not supported, because of which user ends up

browsing through unwanted links and web pages in order to locate what he is

looking for. Innovative data exploration and data visualization functionalities offered

by RIAs are beneficial in this context and they make data exploration more easy and

painless.

Then the feedback problem can be explained as follows, in a traditional web

application, which is designed for filling an online form, data validation takes place

only after the entire form is filled and submitted, then after the submission, all the

errors are highlighted and the user has to make the required changes and re-submit

the form again, which is a waste of time as this process can keep on repeating till the

user fills the information properly. But, in case of RIAs validation takes place in real

time, when the user is filling the form the errors are displayed then and there, so that

the user can make necessary changes and submit the final correct version of the

form, thus RIAs saves their time and they don't have to fill then submit the form and

then wait for the errors to pop-up. Preciado et al. (2007) stated that,

"Nowadays, Rich Internet Applications are gaining ground thanks to the facilities

they provide to develop web applications with multimedia, high levels of

interactivity, collaborative work, and/or homogeneous presentation requirements at

the client side". (p.1)

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These plus points of RIAs are actually the limitations/problems associated with

traditional web applications, they do not handle the presentation element of the

applications as well as the RIAs do, traditional applications are less interactive (no

support for drag&drop feature, rich animation etc); and they do not support

multimedia (audio, video etc) without plug-ins. But, RIAs provide a range of

additional functionalities that take good care of the presentation element and promise

to provide users with richer and interactive web experience. Bozzon et al. (2006)

stated that, due to the increasing complexity of web applications in that current web

technologies are starting to show usability and interactive limits. Thus the reason

behind the rise of RIAs is quite visible, all the limitations and drawbacks of web

applications, their in-ability to provide users with interactive and rich features,

basically gave birth to Rich Internet Applications.

2.5 Rich Internet Applications Finally Arrive.

"Rich Internet Application" (RIA) made its debut in the end of 2000. But the concept

is not new, it's as old as, when the idea of "thin-client" and "rich-client " was first

introduced to the world and as mentioned in the earlier chapter, the term was first

coined in a white paper by Macromedia in March 2002. The drawbacks of web

42


applications and developments in the technological environment during that time led

to the inception of the thought to build Rich Applications for the Internet, in order to

address the limitations of the simple web application and providing users with the

richest possible experience by making efficient use of existing technology.

Preciado (2007) defined RIAs as follows, "RIA is the fusion of the interactive and

multimedia user interface functionality of desktop applications with the Web

applications". (p.2)

Bozzon et al. (2006) stated that,

"Typically, a Rich Internet Application is loaded by the client along with some

initial data; then it manages data rendering and event processing, communicating

with the server when the user requires further information or must submit data".(p.1)

Rich Internet Applications were proposed in the first place to address all the

problems and limitations of the simple web applications, they form a variant of web-

based systems by providing sophisticated interfaces that represent complex data and

processes, they minimize client server data transfers by moving the interaction and

presentation layers from the server to the client (Bozzon et al. , 2006). In simple

terms it can defined as follows, a web applications which offer more "richness" and

"interactivity" than a normal web application does, it's features and functionality

makes it more like a desktop application and less like other web based application.

Rich Internet Applications are actually a combination of Desktop Applications, Web

Applications and Communication Technologies, they take the best user functionality

of desktop software applications with the broad reach and low cost deployment of

Web applications and the best interactive, multimedia communication, thus the end

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result of merging these three features provides us with a more intuitive, responsive

and effective user experience (Whatley, 2007).

Figure1: Rich Internet Applications - A Background (Whatley, 2007)

A Rich Internet Application should be something that fits the following criteria

(Grosso, 2005):

An application that is launched from or is contained within a web page.

An application that provides a quick an immediate feedback to users when

they interact with the application (instead of a delay that is caused, while the

response if being fetched from the server somewhere, which is usually the

case in simple web applications). And, it also eliminates the "white screen"

which appears in existing web applications, while the page is being refreshed.

An application that makes use of modern user interface controls, for example:

tree controls, tabbed panels etc.

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An application that lets end-users to carry out common rich-client operations

like drag&drop or using keyboard navigation naturally.

An application that facilitates the same, almost universal reach and ease of

deployment that existing web applications provide.

And finally, an application that provides all the above mentioned

functionalities without the need of large amounts of platform or browser

dependant JavaScript.

RIAs provide users with a wide range of features that are more "rich", "responsive"

and "interactive" than existing web applications. They have combined functionalities

of Desktop Applications, Web Applications and Communications Technology, they

offer both online and offline capabilities, as the data they access is not stored on a

single central database but its copy also resides on a local database which is in sync

with the central database, thus even in the absence of an Internet connection clients

are able to access their data from the database located locally. Then Preciado (2007)

also said that, RIAs offer users with higher interactivity, usability and

personalisation, they minimise the bandwidth usage and separate the presentation

from the content.

Thus, RIAs have a lot of unique features and functionalities to offer to its end-users

and this is the reason behind its emerging popularity. And this emerging popularity

has led to the big names in the software industry like Microsoft and Adobe to

commercially launch frameworks that design and develop Rich Internet

Applications. There is a tough competition seen between these rivals in order to

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provide end-users with special frameworks that build RIAs that provides them with

the best (rich, interactive and responsive) functionalities.

These frameworks basically come under two categories (Grosso, 2005):

Plug-in Based Frameworks: Where plug-in needs to be installed for

running the applications. These plug-ins help in execution, verification and

updation of the RIA.

o Example - Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight etc.

Non Plug-in Based Frameworks: Here no plug-ins need to be installed for

executing, verifying and updating the RIA.

o Example - AJAX (Browser based frameworks, that make use of in-

built browser functionality).

2.5.1 Plugin based frameworks

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft (2010) on their official website defined Microsoft Silverlight as follows,

"a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich

business applications and immersive mobile apps". It not just used to design

interactive applications for web but also for desktop and mobile phones, its platform

independent as it works on all major Operating Systems and supports all the existing

browsers. Its first version "Silverlight 1" was first released 4 years back in 2007, the

running version "Silverlight 4" with its tools was released in 2010 and "Silverlight

5" has been announced, will be launched by the end of 2011 with a additional

improved features for the users.

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Adobe Flex

Adobe Systems Inc. (2011)defined Flex as, "a highly productive, free, open source

framework for building expressive mobile, web and desktop applications." Even

Flex is platform independent , its first version was released in 2004 and the running

version "Adobe Flash Builder and Flex 4" was released in 2010.

2.5.2 Non-Plugin (JavaScript ) based framework

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML also popularly known as AJAX is a concept

which comprises of mixed technologies, its affiliated with building user-friendly,

interactive web applications and a technique which asynchronously extracts data

from the server using XMLHttpRequest object, without reloading or refreshing the

web page, i.e. its skips meddling with the current page and the white screen which

used to appear every time when a web page designed in HTML was reloaded. It a

combination of the following technologies: HTML and CSS for designing and

styling the pages and DOM with the help of JavaScript for "interactive" and "rich

interface".

AJAX wasn't the first approach associated with Asynchronous loading of web pages,

it was first introduced with the launch of Java applets in 1995, then in 1996 with

Internet Explorer's (IE) iframe and in 1999 Microsoft's inclusion of XMLHTTP

ActiveX control to IE 5 enabled the same, which was then adopted by other browsers

like, Mozilla 0.1, Netscape 7, and Apple's Safari 1.2(Apple Inc, 2011).

Even with all the functionalities AJAX has to offer it cannot be compared with the

multimedia support, graphics manipulation, audio/video support and cross browser

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support and other such "rich" and "interactive" experiences the plug-in based

frameworks have to offer.

Experts of the software development industry believe that Rich Internet Applications

and it's development frameworks still have a long way to go. They are gaining

popularity day by day and people are naturally making themselves

familiarised/accustomed with the evolving technological changes and the world of

richer web applications, as it's the future of web development. And, RIAs are not just

gaining popularity among users but also developers who are trying to make the best

use of available resources (technologies) to construct even more richer applications

for the web, and also to, build more sophisticated RIA development

platforms/frameworks which help them do so.

2.6 Comparison of RIA Development Frameworks

As RIAs and there development frameworks are relatively new concepts, not many

evaluation systems exist in the literature for carrying out a comparison between

different RIA platforms. In the 1990s, anything close to an Rich Internet

Applications were Hypermedia Applications, this is the reason why some

hypermedia evaluation systems were also looked into.

In 1998, an evaluation system was proposed for Hypermedia Application

Development and Management Systems (HADMS) in relation to specific application

requirements, this system made use of a set of evaluation criteria for comparing

HADMS (Christodoulou et. al, 1998).

Koch (1999) conducted a comparative study of methods used for developing

hypermedia applications, it not just made comparisons between different

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methodologies used for hypermedia development, but also compared various web

development methodologies.

Then in 2005, RIA was no longer a new concept to the world. It had been a while

that the web application developers and programmers were talking about designing

RIAs and RIA development frameworks. And, finally some set of

criteria's/evaluation systems were discussed and introduced on the basis of which

RIA frameworks can be compared.

Grosso (2005) came up with a list of attributes, that he said a "rich internet

application" should have. This list of attributes that he proposed were un- suitable

for today's generation of RIAs, as they are far more advanced and this list only

covered basic attributes of RIAs when they were first launched. Grosso (2005) also

said that, the this list of criteria doesn't include a lot of technological guidance.

In 2007, Forrester Research wrote a paper for application development & program

management professionals, in which they compared three RIA platforms, namely ,

AIR, Microsoft Silverlight and JavaFX. The comparison was based on the following

factors: Desktop OS support, Browser support, Video codec support, Audio codec

support, Download size(min/max), Pricing and licensing Target release dates

(Hammond and Goulde, 2007). Here only limited number of attributes were

compared.

UW E-Business Consortium (UWEBC - A division of UW E-Business Institute,

University of Wisconsin-Madison) (2005) wrote a paper named, " Rich Internet

Applications - Technical Comparison and Case Studies of AJAX, Flash and Java

based RIA". In this paper the UWEBC made use of the following list of criteria to

compare three RIA platforms: Graphical Richness, Container/Engine Footprint,

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Application Download, Audio/Video Support, Consistency on Different Computing

Environments, Server Requirements, Plug-in/Runtime Requirement on Client,

Development Challenge, Security Concerns and Cost. Here some additional factors

of comparison were seen, but, still not fully suitable for comparing different

platforms.

In 2009 a paper was released which defined a criterion system for differentiation

and evaluation of RIA architectures. Linnenfelser et al (2009) defined the system as,

"a tool for decision makers to compare such platforms and to help them select an

appropriate one for a specific project". This system much better than previously

proposed approaches as it covered aspects important for carrying out comparison of

today's generation of RIAs.

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The 'Criterion System' comprised of the following factors for evaluation of RIA

frameworks:

Figure2: Criterion System

This list of criteria can help to evaluate technical factors of RIA frameworks. But,

over the period of time RIA development frameworks have evolved so much that it

won't be enough to cover all the technical factors, also this 'Criterion System' fails to

measure factors such as, the non-technical aspects ( user experience) and market

standing of RIA development frameworks, which also come under the research

objectives of this study. Thus, to meeting the aims and objectives of this research

project a new list of factors have to be designed which will help to evaluate, analyse

and compare technical/ non-technical characteristics and market standing of both the

RIA development framework.

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CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This chapter's purpose is to define the methodology adapted by the researcher to

attain this research project's aims and objectives, i.e. to collect, compare and analyse

the various aspects (technical, non-technical - user experience and market standing)

associated with both the RIA development frameworks under study. It gives a

detailed description of methods which will be used by the researcher for data

collection, under which it explains the approach used for data collection, the types of

data and various data collection instruments which will be used by the researcher. It

also explains how the selection of target audience will be carried out.

3.2 RIA Framework Comparison Methodology

Not many evaluative systems exist in the literature that can help to carry out a

comparative study between RIA development frameworks, reason being RIAs are a

relatively new area in the field of technology. Thus, to achieve the aims and

objectives of this study, the researcher has combined existing approaches

(Hypermedia and RIA evaluation systems) to compare the two RIA development

frameworks under study. This approach divides the framework comparison process

in three parts, section one helps to compare the technical characteristics of the

frameworks in an attempt to find out which framework offers better technical

features and functionalities. Then in section two the non-technical aspect (user

experience of different features and functionalities) is compared and analysed to find

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out which framework is more user friendly. And section three comprises of methods

to find out the standing and reputation of each framework in the current. Thus,

collection of data that helps to measure and evaluate the technical characteristics ,

user experience and market standing of both the RIA development frameworks,

sums up the approach (RIA Framework Comparison Methodology) used by the

researcher to carry out this comparison.

As mentioned in the above paragraph, not many RIA frameworks evaluation systems

(methodology) exist in the literature that could have been used to fulfil this study's

aims and objectives. Thus, the evaluation systems proposed in 1990s for comparing

hypermedia application development systems and some of the few systems proposed

for evaluation of RIA development frameworks were combined and used by the

researcher to come up with a new approach for comparing different RIA platforms.

In 2005, RIA was no longer a new concept to the world. It had been a while that the

web application developers and programmers were talking about designing RIAs and

RIA development frameworks. And, finally some set of criteria's/evaluation systems

were discussed and introduced on the basis of which RIA frameworks can be

compared.

A list of criteria's were introduced by Preciado and Sanchez (2005), their approach

made use of fifteen already existing methodologies form the web, multimedia and

hypermedia background to structure a new list of attributes (Comparison Parameters)

that could be used to compare RIAs. And, finally Linnenfelser et. al (2010) came up

with a "Criterion System" that allowed evaluation and comparison of different RIA

platforms. These two systems were mainly used by this research project as they

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covered maximum attributes that were vital for carrying out a comparison between

this generation's RIA platforms.

Thus, after going through the literature the above mentioned RIA evaluation

methodologies were used to list comparison parameters, which were close enough to

what this study required. Using just one of these methodologies wouldn't help to

attain this study's purpose, as it only facilitated comparison of limited factors

associated with RIAs. So, in order to achieve the aims and objectives of this study,

existing methodologies were combined to construct a suitable methodology for

carrying out this study.

Different attributes/criteria were gathered and grouped together as per requirements.

The first set of attributes will help to measure and compare all the technical aspects

associated with the frameworks, i.e. various features , functionalities and tools it has

to offer. Then, the second set of attributes were the non-technical aspects (user

experience) which will help to measure and compare the user friendliness of both the

frameworks. And, to compare the market standing and reputation of both the

frameworks, different online sources will be used.

For gathering data, the following instruments will be used, the technical aspects

evaluation system (which uses both the frameworks official websites) for technical

data collection, questionnaire for non-technical data collection and market standing

evaluation system (which uses different online sources) for gathering information on

the reputation of both the RIA frameworks in the current market. And this gathered

data will subjected to quantitative data analysis, which will help to answer the

research questions, such as which RIA framework offers better tools and features,

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which framework is more user friendly and which framework has better

status/reputation in the market.

3.3 Data collection

3.3.1 Data collection approach and data types

Generally the following are two approaches for carrying out a research study:

Deductive Approach

Inductive Approach

Figure 3 and 4: Skinner (2010)

As shown in the above figures, Skinner (2010) defined Deductive as a 'top-down'

approach, where you start with a theory or hypothesis, make observations and

conclude if your data confirms or rejects it and Inductive as a 'bottom-up' approach,

where theory is developed on the basis of what conclusions can be draw from

collected data. An Inductive approach is used for this study.

Also, the following two approaches can be used for research data analysis:

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Qualitative Approach: This approach deals with assessing people's opinions,

perceptions and point of views. It helps to answer why something happened?

Quantitative Approach: This approach deals with measuring the responses

collected from the participants, answers to - "How many?"

This research study makes use of the standard quantitative approach for carrying out

the analysis of technical aspects, non-technical aspects and market standing of both

the frameworks.

The types of data that will be used for analysis are: data collected from the technical

aspects evaluation system used for comparing technical characteristics of both the

frameworks, data collected from the questionnaire for comparing the non-technical

characteristics of both the frameworks and data collected from the market standing

evaluation system to assess the reputation of the frameworks in the current market.

Then all the gathered data will be analysed and compared to find out which RIA

development frameworks has better tools and functionalities to offer to its users,

which one ranks better in terms of usability of different features and which one is

more reputed in the market. Finally, all the gathered data will be correlated to give a

final conclusion showing, which RIA framework is superior than the other, all

aspects combined.

3.3.2 Data Collection Instruments

The following instruments are used for data collection:

Technical aspects evaluation system

Questionnaire

Market standing evaluation system

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3.3.2.1 Technical aspects evaluation system

This system was designed to conduct the evaluation of technical characteristics

associated with both the frameworks. To carry out this evaluation process , first

information on all the important tools, features and functionalities a RIA

development framework can offer, will be collected. Then, a table will be generated

where all of these collected technical features and functionalities will be listed,

followed by its description, explaining why these characteristics were important for

designing a RIA. Then another table will be created for data collection and analysis,

this table shows in which of the two frameworks the listed technical features are

present or absent. One more important thing about this evaluation system is a

"marked star", this star indicates which characteristic if present in both is better than

the other framework and no star indicates that the particular characteristic is equally

good in both the frameworks.

3.3.2.2 Questionnaire

The purpose of designing this questionnaire is, evaluation of non-technical

characteristics (user experience) associated with each framework. A research was

conducted on what characteristics would be best suitable for the purpose of

measuring users experience of using different functionalities these frameworks have

to offer. After careful observation a set of 10 questions were designed for this

purpose. A software called survey monkey will then used for construction, online

distribution and result collection of this questionnaire. The links of this questionnaire

will be sent to its target audience via emails, social networking website (facebook)

and posted on some top RIA developer forums. And the participants will be asked to,

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rate each of these 10 characteristics in terms of its usability on a scale of 1 to 5,

where 1 represents "not user friendly" and 5 represents "extremely user friendly".

3.3.2.3 Market standing evaluation system

The purpose of this system is to assess both the frameworks standing/reputation in

the current market. And this system makes use of the following ways to do so:

Evaluation of the interest level of people in both the RIA development

frameworks by comparing their web search volume patterns across specific

regions and over time frames with the help of Google Insights for Search.

Evaluation of both the frameworks worldwide market penetration by

gathering data on both the frameworks plug-in version support and market

share of existing web browser plug-ins, from statowl.com.

Evaluation and comparison of number of books related to both the

frameworks available on eBay.com and amazon.com.

Evaluation and comparison of the number of discussions/threads related to

each framework on their respective official websites.

Evaluation and comparison of its popularity on social networking website

such as facebook.com.

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3.3.4 Selection of Target Audience

This section discusses how the participants for answering the online questionnaire

will be identified, approached and recruited.

How will they be Identified?

Main criteria for identifying participants is based upon the participants current

knowledge of RIA development frameworks and its relevancy to the research topic.

Their experience of working with both the frameworks and their understanding of

the various technical / non - technical characteristics associated with both the

frameworks will be taken under consideration. People working in the IT industry

will be targeted, as they are familiar with different application development

platforms.

How will they be approached?

There is no approximate value to the number of people that will be approached for

participating in this research project. Thus, the details of the survey will be

forwarded to as many people as possible. Participants will be contacted through the

medium of e-mails and social networking website (facebook). A software called

Survey Money will be used to design an online survey/questionnaire, unique survey

links will be created to gather and monitor responses received from the participants

via different channels, such as email and facebook. The survey links along with this

research project's information sheet will be sent to personal contacts working in the

IT industry who will then forward the link to their colleagues. All the respondents

who decide to participate in this study will help to answer questions associated with

the user experience of different features and functionalities of both the frameworks.

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How will they be recruited?

The participants will be recruited based on their experience and knowledge of the

research topic. A detailed description about the survey along with all the information

the participants might need to know before they answer the survey questions will be

provided to them in an information sheet which is forwarded with the survey link

during the test selection process. This selection process will help to filter the ones

who have current knowledge of RIA development frameworks, experience of

working with both the frameworks and have understanding of various technical/non-

technical characteristics associated with both the frameworks. The ones who respond

positively will be recruited. These respondents can then proceed by filling the online

questionnaire.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter, first, the results of the technical aspects evaluation system gathered

from each frameworks official website are presented. These results are used for

comparing various technical characteristics associated with both the frameworks.

Then, the results of the questionnaire used for the non-technical (user experience)

aspects comparison are presented. These results were gathered from 34 respondents

who took part in this study by answering the online survey. And finally the results of

some aspects that come under the market standing evaluation system are presented,

which play a vital role in comparing both the framework's current market reputation

4.2 Results of Technical Aspects Evaluation System

In this section results of the technical aspects evaluation system used for gathering

information on various technical characteristics associated with RIA development

frameworks/platforms are presented. It comprises of the following two sub-sections:

List of Characteristics

Results and Description

4.2.1 List of Characteristics

After gathering information on various vital tools, features and functionalities a RIA

development framework can offer, the researcher came up with the following list of

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27 characteristics, on which the comparison of the technical aspects can be based

upon.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

QUESTIONS

Support for 3D Effects

Does it have a feature that enables display of 3D graphics in web applications?

Animations,

Transformations &

Effects

Does it have any features that support elements like fade, zoom, drop shadow, rotate and hundreds of other available effects for designing a RIA?

Browser/Operating

Systems

What all browsers are compatible with it?

Support for Charts &

Graphs

Is there any support for displaying charts and graphs?

User Interface (UI)

Controls & Components

Does it have graphical UI Controls & Components?

CSS Styling

Can different application components be styled using the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)?

Data Binding

Does it have a feature that helps to bind two data sources together, in order to maintain data synchronization?

Data Grid

Does it support the data grid component and allow pagination?

Deep Linking

Does it provide support for deep linking?

Deep Zoom

Does it support the Deep Zoom functionality?

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Drag-to-Install

Can an application/widget be dragged from the browser window and installed onto the desktop?

File Upload

Does it provide a feature which facilitates uploading of single or multiple files on the application?

GPU Acceleration

Does it make use of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for altering or manipulating computer graphics?

Hardware Platform

Support

How many hardware platforms do the designed applications support/run on?

High Definition (HD)

Video Support

Does it have HD Video support?

Application Localization

Does it facilitate localization/translation of the software application to different languages?

Multi-Page Support

Can multi-page applications be created?

Multi-threading Support

Is there support for the multi-threading functionality?

Offline Access Support

Can the created applications be accessed outside the browser i.e. in the absence of Internet connection?

Printing

Do the applications provide internal support for printing?

Programming Languages

How many programming languages does the framework support for developing applications?

Push Technology

Is push technology or server push supported?

RSS Feeds

Do the frameworks have a built-in support for RSS feeds?

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Themes

Can different themes be used to alter the applications different visual components?

Unit testing

Does the platform have any unit testing framework for performing unit tests?

Webcam & Microphone

Support

Do the applications provide support for webcams and microphones?

Data Validation

Does the platform provide built-in support for validation of data entry without page refreshes?

4.2.2 Results and Description

3D Effects

Presence of this feature indicates whether the framework can enable display of 3D

graphics in their designed applications or not. Both Flex and Silverlight support this

feature.

Animation, Transformation and Effects

These features indicate if the framework provides support for different animations

and effects like, fade, zoom, drop shadow etc to be displayed in their designed

applications. Its present in both the frameworks but with a slight difference. In Flex

frame-based animation model is used by flash, where one needs to calculate how

many frames particular amount will take, then determine the matrices for each frame.

On the other hand, Silverlight makes use of WPF animation model which is time

based. One just has to define start and end conditions and doesn't have to deal with

matrices. Much easier and better than frame based method Flash uses.

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Browser/ Operating Systems

Flex applications can be deployed across all major browsers and operating systems.

Even Silverlight provides support for all popular browsers like Firefox 3+, Safari 3+,

Internet Explorer 6,7,8 and 9 and also Google's Chrome 4+.

Charts & Graphs

This component is very useful in business scenarios for analyzing complex data.

Flex provides a wide range of chart types that are easy to use, it facilitates powerful

reporting and easy data analysis.

Silverlight too provides support for charts and graphs that help transform and represent

business related data into interactive, rich, animated charts that simplifies the process of

analyzing complex data.

User Interface (UI) Controls & Components

These play a vital role in designing application forms. It helps to design a high-

quality, rich and intuitive UI as per user's demands.

Flex has 30+ controls of its own and it also makes use of many other open-source

components available for designing forms.

Silverlight has 60+ customizable, skinnable controls/components of its own, and like

Flex it also makes use of other available open-source components for building

forms.

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CSS Styling

The purpose of CSS also known as Cascading Style Sheets is to design, manage and

control the presentation semantics of web pages.

Flex has built-in CSS capabilities which are used for designing and developing UI

layout.

Silverlight uses XAML markup language to create the UI layout instead of CSS.

Data Binding

This can be defined as follows, a functionality that binds two data sources together

such that their variables are dependent on one another, and an update in the value of

one, changes/updates the value of other automatically and thus the data is

synchronised.

In Flex, a code is generated using Flash Builder that binds data returned from a

service operation (source) to the user interface (UI) component (destination) that

displays the data, and it provides several ways to do so. The user can either drag and

drop the service operation option from the Data/Service view on to the UI

component or can select an operation to bind to the component from the bind to data

dialog (Adobe, 2010).

It's one of the key technologies of Silverlight, facilitates two way binding of data,

this means that, when data in the data object (source) is updated these changes are

reflected in the UI element (destination) and vice versa. Like, Adobe Flex even this

platform makes use of different data binding techniques (msdn, 2011).

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Data Grid

Data Grid is another component useful in business related applications, where

there's a need to display large number of rows together, but sending them all together

to the client is a time consuming task and also wastage of bandwidth, this

component helps to limit the display of rows per page.

In Flex , this characteristic allows to format/edit data represented in a table by

providing features that allow, resizing, sorting and customizing column layouts,

including hidable columns (Adobe, 2011). It doesn't have a built-in support for

pagination, but it can be achieved with the help of third party components.

This feature helps to present data in a tabular format and facilitates adding, deleting,

filtering, grouping, selection and sorting of data from its associated data source

(Barua, 2010). It also provides in-built support for pagination unlike Flex.

Deep Linking

Deep links are basically hyperlinks, which help to address a specific page or image

on a website.

Flex provides support for deep linking, it's a feature that allows the user to easily

browse/navigate through their interaction history within the application.

Even Silverlight provides support for deep linking.

Deep Zoom

Microsoft developed this technology, it provides the ability to view large

resolution/collection of images interactively. It facilitates smooth zooming and

panning of images without affecting the web application's performance.

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In Flex, there's no built-in support for this functionality but it's provided by a third-

party component.

It's a Microsoft developed feature. It is the fastest, smoothest zooming technology on

the web, which brings the highest resolution images and frame rates with the lowest

load time to users, it also enables the display of thousands of items simultaneously

which gives the designers/developers new opportunities to create rich and innovative

navigation paradigms for the applications as well as the web (Microsoft, 2011).

Drag-to-Install

This feature is quite interesting, it enables an application/widget to be dragged from

the browser window and simply dropped and installed onto the desktop. Thus, even

if the client is offline that particular application can be used on the desktop. It's an

excellent feature, it was supported in JavaFX platform but unfortunately its absent in

both these frameworks.

File Upload

In Flex, flash provides the ability to upload or download files between client and

server.

In Silverlight, this isn't an in-built functionality, but there are third party software

available that facilitate single or multiple file upload.

GPU Acceleration

With the help of this functionality, the application's graphics can be accelerated, in

order to provide users with a rich and enhanced graphical experience.

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The Stage3D APIs (Application Programming interface) for Adobe Flash Player are

a set of GPU-accelerated APIs that enable advanced 2D and 3D capabilities across

multiple screens and devices (desktop, mobile, TV) (Adobe Labs, 2011).

In Silverlight 4 in-built support for GPU acceleration was missing and it was only

possible with the help of third party components. But, one of the biggest addition in

the beta version of Silverlight 5, is the support for GPU accelerated videos and 3D

graphics (msdn, 2011). But, as this functionality is new in comparison to Flex, it

will take time for it to reach the standards Flex has already achieved.

Hardware Platform

Both Flex and Silverlight applications can run on desktops, laptops and mobile

phones.

High Definition Video

Flex provides support for H.264 high definition video.

Silverlight facilitates smooth streaming and viewing of H.264 HD videos.


In simple words it can be described as a feature which helps to translate a particular

application to other languages, so that it can be used around the world. It's the little

drop-down selection option we see on websites, where we can choose the language

we wish to view the website in.

Flex provides built-in support for 10 languages. But, on the other hand Silverlight

provides localization enhancements with bidirectional text, right-to-left support,

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complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew, Thai and 30+ other languages are also

supported (Microsoft, 2011).

Multi-Page

This functionality helps to create multi-page applications.

In Flex one can achieve this by using ViewStack navigator container.

And, it can also be done in Silverlight with the help of Navigation Application

Template provided in Visual Studio.

Multi-threading

This feature allows an operating system to execute multiple threads (parts of

program) simultaneously, in simple terms it can be called multi-tasking i.e.

performing two tasks at the same time.

There is no support for multi-threading in Flex, which means that user cannot carry

out two or more tasks at the same time and until the current task is not complete, the

user cannot move to the next task.

But, this is not a problem in applications created using Silverlight. Here, users can

perform multiple tasks at the same time as this feature is supported.

Offline Access

Allows to access an application outside the browser, in the absence of Internet.

Adobe AIR enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and Flex

technologies with ActionScript for creating standalone applications that can be used

outside the browser (Adobe Systems Inc. , 2011).

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Even applications created using Silverlight support this and can be accessed in the

absence of an Internet connection.

Printing

Flex designed applications provide the print functionality with support for all basic

print features.

Silverlight also provides an excellent support for printing, it helps to create a virtual

print view, which enables the application to provide print-friendly documents

(Microsoft, 2011).


Flex makes use of 2 programming languages, such as MXML and ActionScript for

designing applications.

Silverlight applications can be written using more than 2 languages, basicall any of

the .NET languages, such as C#, JScript.NET Visual Basic.NET etc.

Push Technology

A technology where central server requests for or pushes data to the client, from its a

pre-subscribed information channels.

Flex provides support for this technology with the help of BlazeDS that enables

developers to easily connect to the back-end distributed data and push data in real

time to applications designed in Flex, to make user experience more intuitive and

responsive (Adobe Systems Inc., 2011).

This feature is also supported in Silverlight, which makes use of two types of push

technology (Brown, 2010) :

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WCF duplex services

TCP sockets

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) can be defined as a way,

that websites use to provide a summary of their overall content, for example: news

articles, blog entries, headlines etc, links that provide quick and clutter free access to

important/useful information for the users (Adobe Systems Incorporated, 2011).

Flex applications support this functionality, with the help of as3syndicationlib (free

ActionScript library). This library hides the difference between the formats so that

the user can parse not just RSS but any kind of feed (Google, 2011).

Reading and displaying of RSS Feeds is supported in Silverlight too. The

SyndicationFeed class in Silverlight makes it possible to parse RSS and ATOM feed.

Themes

It defines the look and feel of application's visual components, it can be as simple as

changing a colour scheme or font of the application's components or entire re-

skinning of all the components of the application (Adobe, 2011).This feature is

supported in both the frameworks, with the help of which the applications different

visual components/controls can be modified and stylized.

Unit Testing

Adobe Flex makes use of the framework called FlexUnit which is designed for Flex

and ActionScript applications and libraries, it comes with a graphical test runner

which provides user with great freedom for testing applications. It allows the users to

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edit and generate repeatable tests that can be run from scripts or directly within Flash

Builder and provides the following functionalities (Adobe, 2011):

create/run unit test cases and unit test suites.

navigate to source code from the Flex Unit Results view.

Silverlight makes use of the Unit Test Framework, which is built to simplify the unit

testing process for the users. It provides users with the following (msdn, 2008):

simple unit test that run inside a browser

enables testing of different rich controls and the entire platform

rich in-browser logging

and basic asynchronous testing support.

Webcam and Microphone

Both the applications provide support for webcam and microphone. In Flex, it can be

used for creating a real-time chat application, playing microphone audio locally,

capturing microphone audio for local processing and runtime microphone support

(Adobe, 2011). Silverlight also provides webcam and microphone support, which

can be used in applications designed for chats and providing customer service.

Data Validation

It's an extremely important feature for applications that are data driven, when user's

enter some information on the application, such as telephone number, name, zip

code, credit card number etc, this process makes sure that only valid/correct data is

entered and stored in the database. Both the platforms provide support this feature.

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4.3 Results of Online Survey

In this section, the results of the online survey gathered from respondents who

participated in this study are presented. The purpose of this survey was to gather

information on non-technical characteristics (user's experience of using all the

tools, features and functionality) associated with both the frameworks. This study

required participants who had knowledge and experience of working with both the

RIA development frameworks (Adobe Flex & Microsoft Silverlight). In total, 34

people participated in this study and 32 completed the entire online questionnaire, by

answering all the 10 questions. The snapshots of the response summary are given

below:

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Figure 5:Response Summary Collected from Survey Monkey

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Figure 6: Response Summary Collected from Survey Monkey

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77



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79


4.4 Results of the market standing evaluation system

In this section the results of the market standing evaluation system are presented.

The purpose of this system was to gather information on different aspects that will

help to evaluate the standing and reputation of both the frameworks in the current

market.

Information on some of these aspects such as, web search volume patterns associated

with both the frameworks and their worldwide market penetration was directly

available in the form of charts and graphs, which is why its presented in the next

chapter.

Thus, leaving only information (results) of the remaining aspects to be gathered and

presented in this chapter, which is as follows:

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX

MICROSOFT SILVERLIGHT

No. of threads/discussions

on each frameworks official

website

54,868 threads

90,629 threads

No. of related books

available on ebay.co.uk

89 results

77 results


available on amazon.co.uk

469 results

741 results

No. of Likes on each

framework's online

community on

facebook.com

63,041 likes

2,521 likes

80


CHAPTER 5

DATA ANALYSIS

5.1 Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to carry out the analysis of the collected data. First, the

results of the technical aspects evaluation system used for comparing various

technical characteristics, gathered from each frameworks official website are

analysed. Followed by the analysis of online survey results, used for the non-

technical (user experience) aspects comparison. These results are gathered from 34

participants, who took part in this study by answering the online questionnaire. Then,

the data collected from various online sources to evaluate the market

standing/reputation of both the RIA development frameworks is presented and

analysed. And, to sum up, all the gathered data/results are correlated to make a final

overall comparison / to give a final conclusion showing, which RIA framework is

superior than the other when all aspects are combined.

5.2 Technical Characteristics

In this section, analysis of technical characteristics will be carried out, for which the

information gathered with the help of the technical aspects evaluation system will be

utilized to compare and evaluate which framework provides support for better and

maximum number of technical characteristics.

81


5.2.1 Table of Comparison

The following table of comparison will show which technical characteristics are

present or absent in both the frameworks. Also, the star indicates which feature if

present in both is better than the other framework and no stars indicate that the

particular feature is equally good in both the frameworks.

KEY

= Present = Absent = Marked feature is better than the other RIA

framework

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX


3D Effects

Animations, Transformations &

Effects

Frame-based animation model is used by flash.

Uses WPF animation model,

its time based.

Browser/Operating Systems

Deploys across all major browsers and operating

systems.

Supports all the popular browsers like Firefox 3+,

Safari 3+, Internet Explorer 6,7,8 and 9 and also Google's

Chrome 4+.

Support for Charts & Graphs

User Interface (UI) Controls &

Components

Uses 30+ controls of its own

and other open-source components.

Uses 60+ components of its own, plus more open-source

components.

CSS Styling

Data Binding

82


One way data binding Two way data binding

Data Grid

No built-in support for

pagination

Provides built-in support for

pagination

Deep Linking

Deep Zoom

Third-party component is

used.

Drag-to-Install

File Upload

Built-in functionality

Third part components are

used.

GPU Acceleration

Stage3D APIs are used.

Third party components are

used.

Hardware Platform

Desktops, laptops and mobile

phones.

Desktops, laptops and mobile

phones.

High Definition Video

H.264 high definition video

Smooth streaming and

viewing of H.264 HD videos


10 Languages

30+ Languages

Multi-Page Support

Multi-threading

Offline Access Support

83


Printing


MXML

ActionScript

All .NET Languages

Push Technology

RSS Feeds

Themes

Unit testing

Webcam & Microphone

Data Validation

5.2.2 Overall Support for Technical Characteristics

In the table given below the results (no. of starred technical aspects and total no. of

technical aspects supported by both the frameworks) for the evaluation of technical

characteristics of both the frameworks are presented. Here, the average value of the

results collected i.e. overall technical support is also calculated to find out which

framework provides better technical support.

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX


No. of technical aspects

supported

25

26

No. of starred technical aspects

4

8

TOTAL AVERAGE

14.5 (46%)

17 (54%)

84


Findings suggested that Microsoft Silverlight provides superior support for technical

characteristics than Adobe Flex, which means that, it has much more and better

tools, features/functionalities to offer in a RIA development process.

5.3 Non-Technical Characteristics

In this section, analysis of non - technical characteristics (user's experience with

different tools and features these frameworks offer) will be carried out, for which the

information gathered from 34 respondents who participated in the online survey will

be utilized. This online survey comprised of 10 different characteristics (features &

functionalities) , which the users had to rate on a scale of 1 to 5, in terms of its

usability. First an individual analysis of all the 10 characteristics is carried out

followed by its grouped analysis, which will helps to analyse, compare and

determine which framework provides superior user experience than the other.

Support for Technical Characteristics


Adobe Flex

gg54%

46%

85


5.3.1 Individual Analysis

In this section, results of all the 10 characteristics/questions used for comparing the

user experience of both the frameworks are presented and analysed one at a time.

5.3.1.1 Graphical Richness

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user facilitated

display of much richer graphics.

Flex is a clear winner here with an average rating of 4.3. Silverlight received an

average rating of 3.65 in this category.

5.3.1.2 User Interface Elements

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user provided

more competence in modification and manipulation of the User Interface (UI)

elements.

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

4.1

4.2

4.3

Graphical Richness


Adobe Flex

86


Again, Flex received a superior rating, with a difference of 0.68 points more than the

average rating received by Silverlight.

5.3.1.3 Multimedia Support


better support for the different multimedia elements (animation, audio, video, text

and image).

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

4.2

4.4

User Interface Elements


Adobe Flex

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

Multimedia Support


Adobe Flex

87


In this category, second maximum difference was seen between the average points

received by both the frameworks. Here, Flex beat Silverlight with a difference of 0.9

points.

5.3.1.4 Multimedia Support


superior support for carrying out unit tests.

Here, a close competition was seen between both the frameworks. As, least amount

of difference in their average ratings i.e. 0.38 was recorded for this category.

5.3.1.5 Designer/Developer Tools

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user facilitated

ease of learning and efficiency in usage of various tools these frameworks offered

for application development and testing.

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

4.1

Testing


Adobe Flex

88


Silverlight is a clear winner in this category, with an average rating of 4.56, it beat

Flex with a difference of 0.69 points.

5.3.1.6 Costs

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user had

least/minimal expenses associated with its tools.

Flex won in this category with an average rating of 4.12, which is 0.77 points more

than the average rating received by Silverlight.

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

4.2

4.4

4.6

Designer/Developer Tools


Adobe Flex

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Costs


Adobe Flex

89


5.3.1.7 Performance


better performance in terms of the application's start-up time, seamlessness of the

start-up procedure, download time to the browser, bandwidth usage/speed and

modularization of the download/start-up time.

Here Silverlight lost to Flex by a difference of 0.88 points.

5.3.1.8 Refactoring & Code-Completion Support

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user was superior

than the other, when it come to restructuring the code by giving it more expressive

architecture, which improves readability, perks up maintainability, reduces

complexity and enhances extensibility of the code.

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Performance


Adobe Flex

90


Silverlight beat Flex in this category, received an average rating of 4.44, which is

0.89 points more than what Flex received.

5.3.1.9 Migration


better support for the following elements:

Integration with existing web applications

Provision for using deep links into workflows

Re-use of existing beans

Remote access for existing controls and components

Sharing of session data

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Refactoring & Code-Completion Support


Adobe Flex

91


This is only category where maximum amount of difference was seen between the

average rating received by both the frameworks. Here, Silverlight lost to Flex by a

difference of 1.28 points.

5.3.1.10 Overall User Experience

This feature helped to analyse, which framework according to the user provided an

overall richer designing and learning experience.

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

Migration


Adobe Flex

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

4.1

4.2

Overall User Experience


Adobe Flex

92


Close competition was seen in this category as well. Here, Flex beat Silverlight by a

difference of 0.39 points by receiving an average rating of 4.16.

5.3.2 Grouped Analysis

In this section, all the 10 characteristics are analysed together find out which

framework provides over all superior user experience over the other framework.

This line chart helps to compare all the 10 characteristics together. It's clearly seen

that, most of the respondents rated Microsoft Silverlight higher in just two

categories, which are Designer/Developer Tools (C5) and Refactoring & Code-

Completion Support (C8). In rest of the categories, Adobe Flex was rated more by

maximum respondents.

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10


Adobe Flex

93


5.3.3 Over all Support for Non-Technical Characteristics

The following table lists numerical results of all 10 characteristics which were

designed for the purpose of comparing both the framework's user experience of

different characteristics.

NON-TECHNICAL

CHARACTERISTICS

(USER EXPERIENCE)

ADOBE FLEX


Graphical Richness

4.30

3.65

User Interface Elements

4.30

3.62

Multimedia Support

4.58

3.68

Testing

4.09

3.71

Designer/Developer Tools

3.87

4.56

Costs

4.12

3.35

Performance

4.28

3.40

Refactoring &Code-Completion

3.60

4.44

Migration

4.31

3.03

Overall User Experience

4.16

3.77

TOTAL AVERAGE

4.161 (53%)

3.721 (47%)

Here, the average value of the ratings given by the participants for each category are

displayed, with the help of which the total average of all the 10 characteristics are

calculated to find out which framework is better than the other .

94


The results of the total calculated average suggest that, according to the respondents

Adobe Flex provides much superior user experience than Microsoft Silverlight.

5.4 Market Standing

In this section, analysis of information gathered for evaluating both the frameworks

reputation in the current market will be carried out, for which the data collected with

the help of the market standing evaluation system is utilized to make comparisons

between both the frameworks.

The following factors are compared and analysed in this section:

Framework's worldwide market penetration

Framework's global web search interest

Related books available on ebay.com and amazon.com

Related Threads/Discussions on each framework's official website

Framework's popularity on social networking website (facebook.com)

Support for Non-Technical Characteristics


Adobe Flex

gg47%jv53%

95


5.4.1 Worldwide Market Reputation

In this section the evaluation of both the framework's runtime market reputation is

carried out with the help of information gathered from statowl.com. First each

framework's individual worldwide plug-in version support is analysed and

compared. Then, the comparison of global market penetration of both the

framework's plug-ins with other existing web browser plug-ins such as, Java, Quick

Time, Windows Media Player.

5.4.1.1 Silverlight Plug-in Version Support

In this section the market share of different working versions of Microsoft

Silverlight plug-in are compared with the help of data collected from statowl.com.

For carrying out this comparison, worldwide support received by its different

versions over the last six months was analysed.

Six categories were considered for this purpose: Version 1x, Version 2x, Version 3x,

Version 4x, Undetected and the Others category.

Undetected category was for the ones which couldn't be listed under either of the

categories but was important for this comparison, others category was for plug-in

versions apart from 1x,2x,3x and 4x

In the table given below, percentage values of market share of each category is

displayed month wise and an average value for each category is calculated to find

out which version of Silverlight plug-in received maximum user support.

96


SILVELIGHT

VERSION

FEB' 11

MAR'11

APR'11

MAY'11

JUN'11

JUL'11

TOTAL

AVG

Version 4x

53.68%

55.23%

57.07%

57.71%

59.51%

60.58%

57.13%

Undetected

37.93%

37.18%

36.00%

35.85%

34.61%

34.16%

36.05%

Version 3x

6.66%

6.04%

5.50%

5.09%

4.64%

4.01%

5.40%

Version 2x

1.36%

1.22%

1.10%

1.06%

0.97%

0.92%

1.12%

Version 1x

0.36%

0.33%

0.31%

0.28%

0.24%

0.21%

0.29%

Other

0.00%

0.00%

0.01%

0.02%

0.03%

0.03%

0.01%

Global Microsoft Silverlight Version Support

Figure 10: Report on Microsoft Silverlight Version Support (statowl.com, 2011)

Findings suggested that, currently the 4x Version of Silverlight have maximum

number of users worldwide, 57% chose this version over other working versions of

Silverlight. Least support was recorded for the others category with an average value

of 0.01%.

97


Second highest support was seen for the Undetected version's category with 36.05%.

A huge difference of 30.65% was recorded between the second highest (Undetected)

and the third highest (Version 3x) category and very low support between a range of

0.2 to 1.2% was recorded for the older versions (Versions 1x and 2x) of Silverlight.

5.4.1.2 Flash Plug-in Version Support

In this section the market share of different working versions of Flash Player plug-in

are compared with the help of data collected from statowl.com. The worldwide

support received by its different versions over the time frame of last six months was

analysed for this purpose.

Five categories were considered for carrying out this comparison: Version 6x,

Version 9x, Version 10x, Undetected and the Others category.

Again, undetected category was for the versions which couldn't be listed under

either of the categories, others category was for flash player plug-ins apart from

version 6x, 9x and 10x.

In the table given below, percentage values of market share of each category is

displayed month wise and an average value for each category is calculated to find

out which version of flash player plug-in received maximum support of the users.

FLASH VERSION

FEB' 11

MAR'11

APR'11

MAY'11

JUN'11

JUL'11

TOTAL

AVG

Version 10x

93.55%

93.09%

93.60%

93.17%

93.66%

93.40%

93.41%

Undetected

4.14%

4.72%

4.42%

4.70%

4.40%

4.72%

4.51%

Version 9x

1.84%

1.72%

1.54%

1.70%

1.54%

1.44%

1.64%

Version 6x

0.32%

0.32%

0.31%

0.32%

0.31%

0.29%

0.31%

Other

0.14%

0.14%

0.13%

0.11%

0.10%

0.15%

0.13%

98


Global Flash Player Version Support

Figure 11: Report on Flash Player Version Support (statowl.com, 2011)

Findings suggested that, currently the latest version of flash player plug-in i.e.

version 10x have maximum number of users worldwide, 93% chose this version

over its other versions. Least support was recorded for the others category with an

average value of 0.13%.

A huge difference of 88.9% was seen between the support received by first highest

(Version 10x) and the second highest (Undetected) category and extremely low

support between a range of 0.3 to 1.7% was recorded for the older versions

(Versions 6x and 9x) of Flash Player.

5.4.5 Global Market Penetration of Web Browser Plug-ins

In this section the market share of different web browser plug-ins (WBP) are

compared and analysed with the help of data collected from statowl.com. Here,

99


global support received by these different web browser plug-ins over a time frame of

last six months was recorded and assessed for this purpose.

Five most popular WBPs were considered for carrying out this analysis: which are,

Flash Player, Silverlight, Java, Windows Media Player and Quicktime.

In the table given below, percentage values of market share of each WBP is

displayed in a month wise fashion and an average value of worldwide support

received by each plug-in is calculated to find out which plug-in received maximum

support of the users.

WEB BROWSER

PLUG-INS

FEB' 11

MAR'11

APR'11

MAY'11

JUN'11

JUL'11

TOTAL AVG

Flash Player

95.86%

95.28%

95.58%

95.30%

95.60%

95.28%

95.49%

Java

78.26%

77.80%

77.51%

76.51%

76.45%

75.89%

77.13%

Silverlight

62.07%

62.82%

64.00%

64.15%

65.39%

65.84%

63.95%

Windows Media

Player

64.95%

64.13%

63.20%

61.36%

60.36%

59.33%

62.37%

Quicktime

58.86%

58.10%

58.16%

57.27%

56.44%

56.50%

57.61%

Global Web Browser Plug-in Support

100


Figure 12: Report on Web Browser Plug-in Market Share (statowl.com, 2011)

Here, Flash Player plug-in is the clear winner which has maximum number of users

worldwide, an average value of 95.49% suggested that this plug-in has the highest

usage rate among other web browser plug-ins.

Maximum difference of 37.88% was seen between Flash and Quicktime which

made Quicktime the least preferred plug-in among others with an average value of

57.61%.

A difference of 18.36% was recorded between Flash and Java which made Java the

second most preferred choice of users with an average value of 77.13%. And,

Silverlight was the third most preferred with an average value of 63.95%.

Finally, a close competition was seen between Silverlight and Windows Media

Player, suggested by the least difference of 1.58% between the average values of

both.

101


5.4.2 Global Web Search Interest

In this section, Google Insights for Search was used to evaluate and analyse the

interest level of people in both the RIA development frameworks by carrying out a

comparison between the history of web searches related to both the terms (Microsoft

Silverlight and Adobe Flex) made on Google.com.

This analysis is carried out in two parts:

Interest Over Time

Regional Interest and

In these subsections, the web search volume patterns related to both the frameworks

are compared across specific regions and over time frames to find out which

framework is more appealing and popular on a global scale.

5.4.2.1 Interest Over Time: Adobe Flex &Microsoft Silverlight

In this section data gathered from Google Insights is used for measuring and

evaluating interest level of people in both the RIA development frameworks. Google

Insights for Search have presented data from 2006 to 2011, but, as this study requires

latest data, results of only the last 6 months are compared here.

In the diagram given below a graph is plotted representing both the frameworks

relative interest over time. Here, x axis represents the time frame and y axis

represents level of interest among people.

102


Figure 13: Interest Over Time (Google Insights for Search, 2011)

In the table given below, values depicting interest level of people related to each

framework in the past 6 months gathered from Google Insights are displayed. And,

an average of these values is calculated to find out which web search term

(Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flex) is more popular among people.

FRAMEWORKS

FEB'

11

MAR'11

APR'11

MAY'11

JUN'11

JUL'11

TOTAL

AVG

Adobe Flex

17.00

17.00

16.00

16.00

16.00

15.00

16.16(21%)

Microsoft

Silverlight

68.00

66.00

67.00

58.00

58.00

53.00

61.66(79%)

Microsoft Silverlight is a clear winner here with an average value of 61.66 (79%)

and this victory has been steady over the last 6 months. Highest difference (51.00

points) in the interest level of both was recorded in February 2011, which has

reduced over the time and the least difference (38.00 points) was recorded in July

2011.

103


Even though interest level of people in Silverlight was much higher than that of Flex

through all these months, but, compared to Silverlight, their interest in Flex has been

more consistent, with an average difference between all its values for the past 6

months being 0.4 and that of Silverlight being 3.4.

5.4.2.2 Regional Interest: Adobe Flex &Microsoft Silverlight

In this section data gathered from Google Insights is used for measuring, comparing

and analysing regional interest of people in both the RIA development frameworks.

This analysis will be carried out by comparing top 10 regional ratings (search

volume index) received by both the frameworks.

The following diagrams represent top 10 regional interest values for Silverlight and

Flex, highest regional ratings for both the frameworks were recorded in India and

rest of the regions differed with different ratings.

Comparison of Interest Over Time


Adobe Flex

gg79%

hdfus

21%

104


Figure 14: Regional Interest in Microsoft Silverlight (Google Insights for Search, 2011)

Figure 15: Regional Interest in Adobe Flex (Google Insights for Search, 2011)

In the table given below, top 10 regional interest ratings (search volume index in a

range of 0-100) allotted by Google Insights to both the frameworks are displayed .

And, an average of these regional ratings is calculated to find out which framework's

overall regional popularity/interest level exceeds than that of other.

TOP 10 COUNTRIES

ADOBE FLEX


1

100

50

2

28

48

3

24

46

4

23

44

5

21

43

6

17

42

105


7

17

41

8

17

40

9

17

39

10

16

37

TOTAL AVERAGE

28 (39%)

43 (61%)

Calculated results suggest that Silverlight is a clear winner when it comes to

regional popularity, as its average value was 15 points (22%) more than that of Flex.

Flex's regional rating was higher than that of Silverlight only for the top first country

and for the rest of the 9 countries, ratings received by Silverlight exceeded than that

of Flex with a average difference of 25 points.

5.4.3 Related books available on amazon and ebay

To learn more about the status and reputation of both the frameworks in the current

market, a comparison between the number of books related to Microsoft Silverlight

and Adobe Flex available on top online shopping websites (ebay.com and

amazon.com - America's largest online retailer ) was be carried out. This analysis

Comparison of Regional Interest


Adobe Flex

gg61%

39%

106


helped to find out the overall and individual popularity levels of both the frameworks

on these websites.

In the table given below, results of total number of books related to Microsoft

Silverlight and Adobe Flex available on each website are displayed and an average

value of these results is calculated to find out overall popularity i.e. which

framework is more well established and popular.

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX



available on ebay.com

89

77


available on amazon.com

469

741

TOTAL AVERAGE

279 (6%)

409 (94%)

When titles of both the frameworks were fed in the search items box of both the

websites under the books category, the following results were found:

Individual Website Popularity

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

Related books on amazon.com

Related books on ebay.com

Adobe Flex


107


Ebay listed 12 books more on Flex than Silverlight and totally opposite situation

was encountered on Amazon which listed 272 more books on Silverlight than Flex.

Overall Popularity

Percentage of the calculated average suggested that Microsoft Silverlight is more

popular and well established when it comes down to the comparison of books

available on these websites.

5.4.4 Threads/Discussions on framework's official websites

In this section a comparison between the total number of threads/discussions present

on each framework's official website was carried out.

Gathered results are displayed in the table below:

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX


No. of threads/discussions

on each frameworks

official website

54,868 threads

(38%)

90,629 threads

(62%)

Comparison between the total number of threads/discussions


Adobe Flex

gg94%

6%

108


Results suggested that Microsoft Silverlight's official website displayed a total of

90,629 (62%) threads listed under several categories which discussed different

characteristics and aspects associated with using this platform for developing rich

applications for the web. Silverlight was a clear winner here having 24% more

threads/discussions on their official website than that of Adobe Flex which only

listed a total of 54,868 (38%) threads on their website.

5.4.5 Popularity of facebook

In this section a comparison on the number of likes received by each framework is

carried out to find out which one among the two is more popular on facebook.com.

The table given below displays the number of likes received by each framework's

online community on facebook.com:

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX


No. of Likes on each

framework's online

community on

facebook.com

63,041 likes

(94%)

2,521 likes

(4%)


Adobe Flex

gg62%

38%

109


Comparison of Popularity on Facebook

Results suggested that Adobe Flex was a clear winner in this category, with 63,041

likes it was definitely much more popular than Silverlight which received only 2,521

likes.

5.5 Correlation

In the table given below, percentage values of results of overall support for technical

characteristics, non-technical characteristics and several factors used for comparing

the market standing/reputation of both the frameworks are presented together and an

average of these percentage values is calculated to find out which framework is more

superior than the other in all aspects combined.

CATEGORIES

ADOBE FLEX


Support for Technical

Characteristics

46%

54%

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

Likes on facebook


Adobe Flex

110


Support for Non-Technical

Characteristics

53% 47%

Global market penetration of

plug-ins

95.49%

63.95%

Web Search Interest Over Time

21%

79%

Regional Web Search Interest

39%

61%

Average of Related Books on

amazon .com and ebay.com

6%

94%

Threads/Discussions on official

websites

38%

62%

Popularity on Facebook

94%

4%

TOTAL AVERAGE

49.06%

58.11%

Calculated average results suggested that Microsoft Silverlight beat Adobe Flex

just by a difference of 9.05%

A close competition was seen between both the frameworks in the first two

categories (Support for Technical Characteristics and Support for Non-Technical

Characteristics). In the 1st category Silverlight won by a difference of 8% and in the

2nd category Flex beat Silverlight by a difference of just 6%.

Flex scored higher in two other categories, in Global market penetration of plug-ins

category, where its percentage value was 31.54% more than that of Silverlight and in

Popularity on Facebook category, where it's percentage value exceeded than that of

Silverlight by tremendous difference of 90%.

In remaining four categories again Silverlight was the winner, among these, higher

differences were recorded for the 6th category (Average of Related Books on

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amazon.com and ebay.com) and the 4th category (Web Search Interest Over Time).

In the 4th category its percentage score was more than that of Flex by 58% and in

6th category it was shooting 88% higher than that of Flex.

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CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

Adobe Flex has been on the plug-in RIA development frameworks market for more

than 7 years now and Microsoft Silverlight has been there for more than 4 years,

which makes Flex the more mature framework in this study. But being there on the

market for a time period which is twice as long as the time period of Silverlight

doesn't imply that it's better in all aspects than Silverlight. In a very short period of

time with constant releases of updated versions Silverlight has achieved a position

which makes it one of the top competitors of Adobe Flex in the plug-in frameworks

market.

When the comparison of technical characteristics associated with both these

frameworks was carried out, results suggested that there is not much difference in the

number of different tools, features and functionalities supported by both. Results

suggested that there was just one additional functionality i.e. Multi-threading, which

was present in Silverlight and absent in Flex. Also, Silverlight provided better

support than Flex in the following features which were present in both: Animations,

Transformations & Effects, User Interface (UI) Controls &Components, Data

Binding, Data Grid, Deep Zoom, Application Localization, Printing and

Programming Languages.

Flex provided better support than Silverlight in the following four categories: File

Upload, GPU Acceleration, RSS Feeds and Webcam and Microphone.

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Final results of the evaluation of technical aspects suggest that Silverlight provides

54% support for technical characteristics which is 8% more than that of Flex.

When the non-technical characteristics i.e. the usability and user experience of

designers and developers were compared, Flex was rated more in 8 out of 10

characteristics that tested the usability of frameworks different features.

Participants rated Silverlight more for two characteristics. First was the

Designer/Developer Tools category, here Silverlight wins the battle because of its

support for the popular .NET framework which allows the designers and developer

to develop rich applications with the knowledge of any language that comes under

the .NET family. The second category where Silverlight's average response was

more than that of Flex was Refactoring & Code-Completion. Microsoft has always

been great with code completion, Silverlight uses Microsoft Visual Studio integrated

development environment (IDE) for developing applications which is one of the best

in the market.

Judging by the results of comparison of user experience of both the frameworks,

Flex is what the users prefer for developing rich applications for the web. But,

surprising results were seen when the web presence of both were compared. Results

of global web search interest in both the frameworks collected from Google Insights

showed that the interest over time in Silverlight exceeded than that of Flex by 58%

and Silverlight was also a winner in the regional interest category.

When the number of books available on online shopping website such as ebay and

amazon were compared, results suggested that ebay listed 12 more books on Flex

and amazon listed 272 more books on Silverlight.

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Even when the threads/discussions related to each framework on their respective

official websites were compared, Silverlight was a winner with 24% more threads on

its official website than that of Adobe Flex.

In the reports by riastats.com, which were used to measure the worldwide market

penetration (worldwide users of) of both the plug-ins, results clearly showed that

Flex's Flash Player plug-in is used/preferred by a whopping 95.49% of people

worldwide that is approximately 30% more than the worldwide support received by

Silverlight. But, being half as new in comparison to Flash Player plug-in which has

been there for quite some years now, and still receiving 65.95% support from global

users is not that bad for Silverlight.

Microsoft is working really hard to make Silverlight more powerful and efficient in

factors where it still lacks than other frameworks. It's still is in its dormant stage and

is getting better with time and most certainly has some features which are better than

Flex. But, Flex came out as a winner as it has been there in the market for a longer

period of time, it understands users demands and requirements better than

Silverlight. Thus, for now Flex is what designers/developers prefer when it comes to

building RIAs.

The software industry is such that new technologies are constantly created, tested

and updated in very short span of time. Plus, its connectivity with the Internet and

the World Wide Web open more doors for innovative and ingenious ideas and

concepts, this is the reason why in the future developers of rich web applications will

definitely have more than one option available. The results of the research study will

help RIA designers and developers to pick a framework among the two that best suit

their needs for now, but the future is uncertain, it's based upon the requirements of

115


consumer population and what is it that they want to see in the next best release of

RIA development frameworks. Eventually, the software company which best

understands and addresses the user demands will be the one which gets to stay on the

top.

116


CHAPTER 7

DISCUSSION

7.1 Further Research

As mentioned before, the software industry is such that it undergoes evolution

constantly, today we have some factors on the basis of which the performance of

different RIA development frameworks can be measured and compared. But, in the

future for conducting an evaluation of RIA development frameworks these same

factors cannot be compared and a totally new set of factors would have to be

considered for carrying out this comparison.

Today, desktop/laptop users require rich and vibrant interfaces that are graphically

rich, businesses and organizations require applications that simplify their tasks by

reducing total time and cost of development and this is what the current competitor

in the software industry like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight are trying to

provide to its users.

But, these demands are going to change with time as the technology evolves. Valdes

(2009) an analyst at Gartner Inc. (technology research and advisory firm) came up

with five aspects on the basis of which performance and evolution of future RIA

development frameworks/platforms can be tracked. These factors were, frameworks

integration with the server side, then HTML 5, declarative XML, support for more

tools, features and Integrated Development Environments and last but not the least

support for designing rich applications for mobile devices.

117


With the help of these aspects further comparison of different RIA development

frameworks can be conducted to find out which frameworks are either working on or

planning to work on these aspects in the future.

Also, a further study can be carried out to learn about needs and expectations of

different RIA users and what additional tools/functionalities the developers and

designers are hoping these different RIA development frameworks should provide,

so that they can fulfill the requirements of the RIA users. Thus, this study can prove

to be beneficial for both users as well as developers of RIAs, on one hand it can help

the developers of RIAs to learn about the needs and expectations of users and on the

other hand this information can then be used for including new and improved

functionalities to different RIA development platforms that eventually deliver the

users with what they want.

7.2 Limitations

The objective of this research study was to compare RIA platforms in terms of the

technical support it provides, its user experience and market standing to find out

which framework is more popular in the current market. This is where the first

limitation of this research project was faced. RIAs are a relatively new concept and

not many RIA framework evaluation systems exists in the literature that could have

been used for carrying out a comparison between the two RIA platforms. Either, the

comparison criteria of the existing systems wasn't suitable for conducting this study

or it was too outdated to compare the features of today's generation of RIAs.

Main criteria for identifying participants for this study was based upon the their

current knowledge of RIA development frameworks and its relevancy to this

research topic, their experience of working with both the frameworks and their

118


understanding of the various technical/non - technical characteristics associated with

both the frameworks. This study required participants who fit in this above

mentioned criteria and doing so was a tricky task, as initially only the people

working in the IT industry who might be familiar with these frameworks were

targeted. But, during the test selection process second limitation of this study was

faced, many responded saying that they were familiar with either one of the

frameworks and not both. Thus, to overcome this limitation the next best option to

get participants was used, which was to target people from some of the top software

developer forums, where members are constantly analysing, working with and

writing reviews on different software launched in the market. This option solved the

problem of getting required number of participants for the study.

Word Count: 20,879

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APPENDIX

Results/Response Summary from Survey Monkey

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Threads/Discussions on Adobe Flex Official Forums

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Threads/Discussions on Microsoft Silverlight Official Forums

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Comparison of Web Search Interest with the help of Google Insights for Search

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Popularity on Facebook - Adobe Flex

Popularity on Facebook - Microsoft Silverlight

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Books related to Adobe Flex - amazon Results

Books related to Adobe Flex - ebay Results

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Books related to Microsoft Silverlight - ebay Results

Books related to Microsoft Silverlight - amazon Results

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