RIA and Declarative User Interface Language

(Rich Internet Application) leaves the complicate computing to the Applications (Web Browsers) enabled the Web and the Web is changing the applications (architecture). With the power of the net shortening the distance of reaching information, RIAbackend single or distributed service provider(s) and focuses on the frontend user interactions. Flash has been dominating the RIA implementation, but the proprietary nature limits its potential to scale and lacking a native programming language support prevents enterprise solutions to be built completely on it. Java applets fall short with its nature of complicate Java language for UI.

A Cross Platform Declarative User interface language is in demand!

I started to look at this is trying to create a dynamic frontend UI for delivering MPEG4 H.264 video. With Flash, it is not easy without some kind of conversions involved. I really like OpenLaszlo; especially, it generate the server side dynamic UI and now in DHTML as well. However, it does not support mpeg video palyback. Searching among several solutions, i.e. Adobe Apollo, MS WPF/e, Ruby, Groovy, and now F3!

Apollo, impressive, but it fails to deliver to Linux platform. Microsoft promises the WPF/e, but it is going nowhere still. JRuby, Jython, and Groovy give the power of another scripting language without needing for another software to be installed, but as powerful it is, the complicate it gets.

I am having my eyes on F3 (coming soon) right now. It looks really simple and designed for UI. With the Java nature, I would want to take advantage of Apple QT Java library or IBM Toolkit for MPEG-4. Moreover, continue my Webtop adventure ..

Cheers!