'We're dedicated to building the largest open-source community dedicated to RIAs, breaking down the barriers between traditional preferred languages, programming models and solutions,' says the co-founder & CEO of Appcelerator, Jeff Haynie, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan. To date Appcelerator has seen the strongest amount of interest from Java and PHP developers, Haynie notes, but he says the company has continued to see steady growth across Ruby, Python, Perl and .NET programmers as well.

In the world of Rich Internet Applications, there is no shortage of technology choices to compose a user interface. But what tools will give us the best bang for our buck? Here is a look at some heavy hitters and newcomers in the RIA market, including: HTML & AJAX, Rails and Grails, Flex, Silverlight, Curl, GWT, OpenLaszlo, and Appcelerator.

The pressure is on to keep pace with Web 2.0 entrants into the marketplace. Rewriting is expensive; adding AJAX widgets results in a complex, unmaintainable application. Both require you to hire scarce JavaScript developers. Google Web Toolkit -- the SDK that allows you to write AJAX interfaces in Java -- enables your Java developers to layer a desktop-like interface on top of your Web app. Learn to analyze the service profile of your application, to change HTML views into XML or JSON services, and to resist opening security holes by putting state and control flow logic into the client.

Gizmox announced the release of a fully functional beta version of its Visual WebGui (VWG) with support for Microsoft Silverlight. For the first time, VWG enables Silverlight for enterprise applications by providing a RAD like Windows Forms development experience with drag & drop design that cuts development cycles by as much as 90%.

The Web has evolved into a structured data space of loosely connected databases, enabling granular data access-by-reference to Web-accessible entities, courtesy of HTTP. This evolution and the emergence of AJAX-based RIA technologies lay the foundation for a new generation of libraries, widgets, and frameworks, that together embrace and extend enterprise data access practices of yore. This session will cover access and exploitation of Web-accessible Linked Data using AJAX- and AJAR-based technologies (Asynchronous JavaScript and RDF).

SaaS based applications continue to grow at a staggering rate. According to software market analysts, SaaS represented approximately 5% of business software revenue in 2005 and, by 2011, 25% of new business software will be delivered as SaaS and will grow at a 21% % annual growth rate (CAGR) during the next four years. As the acceptance and popularity of SaaS applications has continued to rise dramatically, traditional enterprise integration software has become the Achilles heel of the SaaS industry. Additionally, the wide variety of SaaS vendors specializing in different areas has resulted in companies attempting to stitch together information from a number of different places. Traditional integration software products are inconsistent with the values of SaaS in terms of cost, complexity and time to implement. SOA and XML driven application integrations are very well suited for this purpose. But demand will continue to grow for easy to use, manageable, highly scalable on-demand integration.

As Web-based applications are pushing the 'Rich User Experience' envelope, AJAX is quickly becoming a standard front-end for any PHP application. But unfortunately as PHP applications that utilize AJAX are being forced to morph from two-tier to three-tier architectures, pushing code to the client adds inherent issues with security and code maintenance. New techniques are being developed which focuses on server-side generated AJAX, allowing developers to code AJAX applications in PHP instead of JavaScript. This session will discuss and demo many of these new techniques which will allow for the development of rich, AJAX user experiences without needing to code any JavaScript whatsoever.

Come see a no-slides, code-only presentation that starts with a blank directory and builds a data-driven, AJAX enabled, ASP.NET web application from scratch that implements common AJAX patterns with the rich set of AJAX Control Toolkit, accesses data with LINQ, and implements standards-based styling and layout using CSS and clean HTML. Learn the new features of ASP.NET 3.5 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and how they integrate together to provide the world's most productive Web development experience. This talk uses the 100% free .NET Framework and Visual Studio tools and the resulting application will work with all browsers, Safari, Firefox and of course IE.

Not only enterprise portals integrators are using AJAX at the portal level but now they can also use it for the development of more user-friendly JSR-168 portlets. With the arrival of new standards, AJAXified JSF Components like IceFaces ot RichFaces became a reality that can be portable across the many JSR-168 portlet containers implementations, in the commercial or open source worlds. During his presentation, we will explain how this has been made possible and how one can write such portlets.

Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

The industry has been debating the meaning of 'Enterprise 2.0' (how to bring Web 2.0 technology to the enterprise). Andrew McAfee has talked about the SLATES mnemonic (search, linking, tagging, authoring, extensions, and signals). Many companies have developed Wikis, Blogs, Tag clouds, Mashups, but the ROI is unclear. Jnan Dash, Chief Strategy Officer of Curl, Inc., feels the low hanging fruit for Web 2.0 deployment in the enterprise is called 'RIA' - 'Improve the user interface of old client-server applications and delight your users while reducing the TCO,' says Dash.

What does the AJAX community want from future browsers? How are these different requests prioritized? Web developers have done amazing things with AJAX for both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications, but what barriers need to be removed to enable the next generation of browser-based innovations? The future of AJAX runtime environments matters more than ever today.

RIAs offer the potential to fundamentally change the user experience and in doing so, yield significant business benefits. The theme of this October's AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 West is 'Beyond AJAX to the RIA Era' and the Call for Papers, which is currently still open, specifically encourages submissions from exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases of the fast-emerging RIA alternatives.

Today, there is a wealth of technologies to take advantage of to add AJAX behaviors to your Spring-based Java Web applications. This session will assume you know the basics of AJAX and Spring, and will dive straight into evaluating the leading AJAX technologies, and how to integrate them with Spring to take full advantage of an existing Spring infrastructure. Attendees will emerge with an understanding of which tools to use when, and how they work in a Spring environment to create enterprise class rich Web applications.

RIAs provide the promise of an excellent User eXperience, but the ultimate success of the UX is driven more by the skill of the developer than the tool selection itself. This session will discuss the foundation and importance of the application of cognitive science techniques to the process of designing and building a rich Web application. The presentation will provide: Overview of Human Factors/Usability and how these techniques have been applied to the Web, Basic concepts (heuristics) that should be met in any web application, and Resources so that attendees can perform this sort of work independently.

Optaros has launched DoCASU 1.0, a user interface framework for Alfresco deployments as an open source project. The project will drive open source adoption rates and help users assimilate Alfresco's enterprise content management systems. DoCASU 1.0 leverages the understanding gained from corporate user requirements and utilizes Rich Internet Application technologies such as the ExtJS AJAX framework.

Microsoft introduced Silverlight as cross-platform, cross-browser next generation RIA solution. This session will use real world implementations to show you how to build a Silverlight application from start to finish, as well overall strategy why we should or shouldn't use Silverlight. No matter whether you have LAMP, ASP.NET or Java Web application, you can take advantage of Silverlight to impress your user with the 'Wow' effects.

JavaScript is one of the most interesting and misunderstood programming languages in common use today. Most developers will go their entire careers without realizing its full potential. It's not often that you get a language that supports the feature set that JavaScript does, while still being as widely deployed. This talk will spotlight some patterns surrounding JavaScript's most elegant features such as closures, lambdas, object and array literals, object prototypes, private members and dynamic scope resolution -- all without boring you to tears.

WaveMaker announced that Mavirroco Consulting has successfully built and deployed an open source web directory and content management system for the Medical College of Tarijas using WaveMaker Visual AJAX Studio. The new internal Web application, called 'ColMed,' allows doctors to securely share contact information, schedules, events and collect payments.

SL Corporation announced the availability of RTView version 5.0. This latest release allows users to mix and match a variety of Web 2.0 technologies - including AJAX and Flash - to deliver the most efficient real-time visibility applications for their needs, without requiring any technical knowledge of the Web 2.0 technologies.

As the mobile Web matures, we see more and more people running around airports with their mobile devices in hand, searching for hotel rooms, reading the news, or just playing video games. People are more connected with their mobile phone today than any other electronic device they use. What was once a nice-to-have is now the norm, and is quickly becoming an integral part of our culture and society. But how do you connect with users through mobile web sites and create exceptional experiences that are both functional and captivating?

The Networked Application is an emerging design pattern in rich Internet application development. The crux of the pattern is to push all user interface code to the client. The client 'downloads' the application, and the application then communicates to one or more servers. This session will explain the motivations of the pattern and look at how it can be implemented using specific AJAX toolkits such as Google Web Toolkit, Yahoo User Interface Library, and Dojo. We will also talk about how the pattern can be implemented using AJAX alternatives such as Flex and Silverlight.

Apple has introduced a number of extensions to the JavaScript programming language to assist iPhone Web developers. Including new fast lookup functions, native SVG graphics processing, CSS effects, database storage and full screen mode. These new functions will transform the way Web and AJAX developers look at the iPhone for application development. This session introduces the JavaScript extensions, and shows practical examples of their usage.

Many new model mobile devices allow the 'Web Runtime' (i.e., the browser engine) to invoke device capabilities from JavaScript, such as access to current location (e.g., via GPS), phone dialer, camera, address book, calendar, email, and SMS, whereas previously these services were only available to compiled programming languages, such as C++ and Java. By giving Web developers using HTML and JavaScript the same power as C++ and Java, we will see a large wave of next-generation consumer and Enterprise Web 2.0 applications that take innovation and productivity to new levels. These new Mobile AJAX applications run not only in the browser, but also as AJAX-powered mobile widgets and AJAX-powered installed applications. Two challenges, however, are interoperability (because different devices support different APIs), and security (along with the new feature, we also have new vulnerabilities). OpenAjax Alliance is addressing the two challenges through its open standards, open source, and security initiatives.

This session will provide an in-depth look into the use of HTML 5 WebSocket and the techniques and technologies required to build Comet applications with it. Additionally, the speakers will discuss the trade-offs between emerging de jure standards (such as HTML 5's WebSocket) and de facto standards such as the Bayeux protocol. Furthermore, the session will cover the server and network architecture that powers an event-driven Web application. Attendees will be introduced to the technologies and requirements for delivering scalable, real-time Comet Web applications, and, most importantly, to the pitfalls they may face in the process.

SL Corporation, a provider of real-time monitoring, analytics, and visualization software, today announced the availability of RTView version 5.0. This latest release allows users to mix and match a variety of Web 2.0 technologies ? including AJAX and Flash ? to deliver the most efficient real-time visibility applications for their needs, without requiring any technical knowledge of the Web 2.0 technologies.

Build stunning animated applications that do amazing things that will knock your users socks off. Drawing on the content of his book on Core Animation, Dudney will take you through the concepts crucial to building beautiful native apps for the iPhone.

Often called the Semantic or Pervasive Web, Web 3.0 brings a level of artificial intelligence to transform the Internet from a searchable catalog to a personal guide that can reason in a human-like fashion and provide users with more services and options for social networks. This session will map out the world of Web 3.0, exploring the unique benefits for end users, as well as opportunities for businesses. Using specific examples, Jon Doyle will demonstrate how Web 3.0 will change the way users interact with the Web - from planning and booking an entire vacation to automatically scheduling doctor's appointments based on personal preferences.

The Co-Web, the collaborative, media converged Web, is upon us. The Co-Web is interpersonal; it is about getting work done together. It is much more than surfing a YouTube/Google Map mashup while Twittering with co-workers. Showtime uses those same technologies to build a Co-Web page where we all interact on the same data at the same time, see the same context and make better decisions as a result. A Showtime Co-Web application uses the same standards as a normal mashup - OpenAJAX plus XMPP, RTP/RTSP and H.264 - yet remakes the mashup as the Co-Web. For the Co-Web - It's Showtime!

JavaScript is a language with more than its share of bad parts. It went from non-existence to global adoption in an alarmingly short period of time. It never had an interval in the lab when it could be tried out and polished. JavaScript has some extraordinarily good parts. In JavaScript there is a beautiful, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders. The best nature of JavaScript was so effectively hidden that for many years the prevailing opinion of JavaScript was that it was an unsightly, incompetent abomination. This session will expose the goodness in JavaScript, an outstanding dynamic programming language. Within the language is an elegant subset that is vastly superior to the language as a whole, being more reliable, readable and maintainable.

This Session will demonstrate why social networking is more than just marketing buzz; it is a relational model that has been used for years to define the way human beings interact, and it is the next step in the natural evolution of the Web. Learn how organizations can improve workflow and productivity by utilizing social software and online collaboration. See how social networking can be used to efficiently define and enable how work actually gets done on your intranet. Discover how your intranet can become a dynamic corporate knowledge base that will scale with the company as it grows and will still maintain usability on it own. Understand why no single user, even the administrator, can possibly identify all of the assets, users and groups and how they need to be connected to each other for your intranet to be a truly collaborative business tool. See how social networking will naturally scale your intranet to define these nodes and ties.

JavaScript 2 is becoming increasingly important. Learn how to take advantage of JavaScript 2 while still running in today's browsers. Leverage your current JavaScript and HTML skills to build applications that run in Flash 7-9, DHTML and more with no code changes! OpenLaszlo 4.2 includes a new JavaScript 2-based compiler that translates JS2 syntax to a variety of formats, including JS 1.5, Actionscript 1 & 2 and Actionscript 3. When Firefox 4 is out, we'll be ready with native JavaScript 2.0 support! Come learn about this exciting new development, and about the new features designed to make developing complex apps easy, including cross-browser history and vector graphics support.

E-mail is extremely easy to adopt and use, and lends itself very well to certain types of collaboration. When two people are attempting to collaborate asynchronously, e-mail is usually the best solution. It's certainly far less frustrating than phone tag. But once more people are involved, email's utility rapidly degenerates. While the rise of free, open-source solutions makes it tempting to build one's own collaboration tools, on-demand or Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are the better choice for the majority of users and uses.

Many of today (and tomorrow's) development projects lend themselves nicely to RIA application patterns. Silverlight offers a compelling RIA development experience that works on Linux, the mac and windows as well as all major browsers. With HD video, vector based graphics and a rich set of controls including DataGrid Silverlight offers a compelling development experience in nearly any programming language you'd like from C# and VB to JavaScript and Python. Learn how to use Visual Studio to create applications, how to create UI using XAML markup and code, how to retrieve data from the web, and how to manipulate data with XML and LINQ. This talk uses the 100% free Silverlight runtime and Visual Studio tools.

In this session Thomas will share his experience in migrating from AJAX to Flex, the advantages/disadvantages that Flex has as the primary client for a consumer web-based SaaS product, and his vision of how Flex + AIR via any desktop + Mobile (in one or more technical forms) takes us a step towards the vision that Mark Weiser presented in his original works on ubiquitous computing.

By producing a popular RIA widget you can distribute your code to millions of users practically overnight. Most widgets are designed to gather data from the web and then present that data to the user. In order to enable this functionality, Google Gadgets for example support a rich programming model based on based on JavaScript and the Gadgets' API. Unfortunately, rich platforms tend to lead to programming errors and security issues. The users of a poorly written RIA widget can have their online accounts breached, web site passwords compromised, local computer data stolen, and even lose control of their computer. This presentation, via code snippets, flow diagrams, and other means, discusses how to write an RIA widget that avoids these pitfalls.

Rich Internet Applications using AJAX technology has truly improved the end user experience. But, as a developer if you are new to it, be warned: AJAX projects can quickly degenerate into a nightmare of spaghetti script. Large JavaScript technology code bases are often hard to write, read, test, and debug--not to mention the complexity of efficiently supporting multiple browsers. If you are a Java developer, you have another choice - the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). GWT is a lightweight, reusable Java technology framework has taken a unique approach to developing rich internet applications to wrangle AJAX coding issues. The Google Web Toolkit addresses code reuse, performance, multibrowser support, debugging, and testing AJAX applications.

In this session that no developer who uses JavaScript or ActionScript will want to miss, delegates will learn how to: Overcome common hurdles and pitfalls of client-side only JavaScript development. Speed up development time by cutting out extra server-side code and processing scripts that are no longer necessary. Clean up your code base by reducing (or even eliminating) the number of languages needed to leverage to accomplish common tasks (i.e. Why bother with server-side PHP scripts to fetch database results when you can do it all in JavaScript on the server? Why mess with Curl to fetch content that your JavaScript code can grab in one line?) Selby will also get hands on with live demonstration of how to: Create JSON data services for your Ajax, Flash, Flex and Silverlight apps, Implement JavaScript RMI, Use your favorite AJAX libraries server-side. Manipulate the DOM server-side, Talk to databases, file systems, networks, and remote sites or services (cross-domain XHRs are now a possibility! The session will show Web developers how they can put their JavaScript skills to work on the server side using technologies like Mozilla Rhino and Aptana Jaxer, which embeds the entire Mozilla browser on the server side.

This session will cover how to integrate various Google APIs including Google's AJAX APIs including Maps, AJAX Search and Feed into superior AJAX mashups. The session also shows how to use Google's App Engine as an AJAX Web application provider. Finally, this session will also show how to socialize your AJAX applications using the OpenSocial APIs and Google Friend Connect.

In every field of design one of the first things students do is learn from the work of others. They study and break down real-world examples in order to understand the underlying principles and patterns that make for successful design. Then they learn to apply these to their own set of problems. The real trick is to apply them in a nuanced manner. To be nuanced is 'to be sensitive to delicate differences of style.' Most of the art in crafting a rich experience on the Web can be summed up with this one word -- 'nuance'. Over the last 24 years Bill has been involved in the study of nuanced design in crafting rich interfaces. Prior to joining Netflix, Bill led the effort to launch the public Yahoo! Design Pattern Library where he cataloged many examples of common design patterns. More recently Bill has been working on an upcoming O'Reilly book on design that explores the nuance of rich Web interfaces.