A Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a Web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software, typically delivered by way of a site-specific browser, a browser plug-in, an independent sandbox, extensive use of JavaScript, or a virtual machine. Adobe Flash, JavaFX, and Microsoft Silverlight are currently the three most common platforms, with desktop browser penetration rates around 96%, 76%, and 66% respectively (as of August 2011). Google trends shows (as September 12) that plugins based frameworks are in the process of being replaced by HTML5/JavaScript based alternatives.
Users generally need to install a software framework using the computer's operating system before launching the application, which typically downloads, updates, verifies and executes the RIA. This is the main differentiator from HTML5/JavaScript-based alternatives like Ajax that use built-in browser functionality to implement comparable interfaces. As can be seen on the List of rich Internet application frameworks which includes even server-side frameworks, while some consider such interfaces to be RIAs, some consider them competitors to RIAs; and others, including Gartner, treat them as similar but separate technologies.
RIAs dominate in online gaming as well as applications that require access to video capture (with the notable exception of Gmail, which uses its own task-specific browser plug-in). Web standards such as HTML5 have developed and the compliance of Web browsers with those standards has improved somewhat. However, the need for plug-in based RIAs for accessing video capture and distribution has not diminished, even with the emergence of HTML5 and JavaScript-based desktop-like widget sets that provide alternative solutions for mobile Web browsing.
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