Beginning Adobe® AIR™: Building Applications for the Adobe Integrated Runtime

2.2. History of RIA

Although the concept of a web application that performs more in line with the traditional desktop application has been around for years, Macromedia first introduced the term RIA in March of 2002. Since this introduction, there have been great advances in the tools and languages used to create RIAs. The growth of Flash and Flex, along with the use of AJAX by companies like Google, has really catapulted RIA to the forefront of web technology. The recent addition of tools from Microsoft and Sun will certainly spread the use of RIA even faster in the coming years.