1. Rich Internet Application Frameworks: a Comparison of Flex, JavaFX, and Silverlight
Hi, I am Minseung Kim, the topic that I am going to talk about is Rich Internet Application Frameworks, a comparison of Flex, JavaFX, and Silverlight.
Minseung Kim

2. Outline Rich Internet Application (RIA) Framework Motivation
Background
Case-Study: Flex/Flash, JavaFX, and Silverlight
Discussion
Conclusion
Here is the outline of what I am going to cover. I first briefly talk about what is rich internet application which we commonly refer to RIA and its framework also and then talk about motivation of RIA framework comparison, why it is important for us and how is it useful for the Web application developer and its users. And then will cover some background on how and where RIAs come from along with the Internet history and three RIA frameworks that I am going to compare, basically what it is, and what features it has. I carefully go over case-study of comparison of three different RIA frameworks, Flex/Flash, JavaFX and Silverlight based on several criteria like performance, availability, and richness. And some meaningful discussion is followed to cover other features for improving and overcoming limitation of current RIA framework. And finally, I conclude the presentation with some summarizing remarks.

3. RIA Frameworks
RIA: the web application solution that effectively and interactively provides best user experience.
e.g. minusa.com, Nike running, FootJoy … A LOT!!!
RIA framework: the tools and environments that facilitate the development of RIA
e.g. Flex, JavaFX, Silverlight, … also A LOT!!!
Before we go into the definition of RIA framework, we have to first look at what is RIA. We say RIA is the web application solution that effectively and interactively provides best user experience. There is another definition by Macromedia, which first coined RIA term in 2002, and other definitions also exist, but the context of what they emphasize doesn’t change too much. There is lots of examples of RIA out there and we often use them without knowing this is RIA. For example, miniusa.com is the online store of mini cooper manufactured by BMW, and it shows us a nice example of RIA by visualizing car models designed by users too meet their preferences. And this kind of things wasn’t really realizable by simple HTML-based web application before. And the development of all this kind of RIAs are often facilitated by different tools and environments which we refer to RIA framework. There is also lost of examples of RIA framework, for example Flex, JavaFX, and Silverlight. We will get to these frameworks in more detail.
(miniusa.com)

4. Motivation Who is a Winner?
What is the best RIA framework for developers and users?
What aspects should be improved and considered over current RIA frameworks?
Flex
JavaFX
Silverlight
Since there exists a los of RIA frameworks out there, web application developers might get confused with which one to use. And it is also interesting to know strength and weakness of each RIA frameworks on a user side to best use RIA on a their specific situation. Another interesting question is what aspects should be improved and considered over limitations of current RIA frameworks. To answer these questions, I selected three widely used RIA framework, which are Flex, JavaFX, and Silverlight and carefully compared them on different criteria.
Who is a Winner?

5. Background HTML is simple and easy to learn
But the simplicity compensates for the lack of interactivity
Users want to experience as if on desktop computer
What efforts we have made?
Before we go into main comparison, I will briefly talk about background of RIA and basic descriptions of three RIA frameworks that we are going to compare. With the birth of Internet, there has been a wide adoption of HTML as a web programming language because it is simple and easy to learn. But this simplicity compensates for the lack of interactivity which often users want to experience as if they are using desktop computer. Knowing this limitation of HTML, web application industry has tried to overcome it during the last decade. First effort was made by introducing JavaScript in 1995 which allows to add some dynamic elements to the user interface. Flash, which is animation player that can be embedded on web page was introduced in Finally, in 2002, RIA term first coined to make sophisticated efforts to enhance user experience. In summary, RIA term is relatively new in terms of Internet history, but the gradual efforts have been made along with its history.
1992
1995
1996
2002
2005
2009
WWW
JavaScript
Flash
RIA
AJAX

6. Three RIA Frameworks
Flex: A group of technologies that support RIA development over Flash platform
JavaFX: Java-based rich user interface technologies developed with Java Standard and Micro editions
Next, I am going to briefly describe three RIA frameworks that I am going to compare. Flex was introduced by adobe systems which defines it as a group of technologies that support RIA development over Flash platform. And JavaFX is a java-based rich user interface technologies developed with java standard and micro editions. Silverlight was released by Microsoft which defines it as a .NET-based web-browser plug-in that enables rich interactive user experience.
Silverlight: .NET-based web-browser plugin that enables rich interactive user experience

7. Case-Study: Performance
1. Counting Primes
JavaFX: 0.412s
Flash/Flex: 1.34s
Silverlight: 0.426s
2. Bubble Animation
Quick remark before comparison is that I will often mention flex accompanied by flash because flash is probably most powerful feature of flex and flex is the tool that facilitates the development of flash, often characteristics of flex largely depend on flash itself. Thus, we can’t even compare it without mentioning and considering in the aspect of flash. First I am comparing three frameworks in terms of performance. First example is counting primes of large numbers. As you can see, Flash/Flex program is relatively slow than JavaFX and Silverlight does. And it seems JavaFX and Silverlight are of no huge difference in terms of performance even if JavaFX is slightly faster. But when we see bubble animation example, there is a performance difference between JavaFX and Silverlight, and we can conclude that JavaFX animation is much faster. Flash/Flex is slowest again In this example. It might be too dangerous to conclude performance comparison by only looking these two examples, but we might say Flash/Flex are not the best choice in these two cases.
JavaFX: 182fps
Flash/Flex: 52fps
Silverlight: 133fps

8. Case-Study: Richness and Availability
Tradeoff between richness and availability
JavaFX provides much interactive application but it runs outside the browser
Flash/Flex and Silverlight are browser plugins but their features are limited by browser
What gives more interactive experience between Flash/Flex and Silverlight? Pros and cons …
Next we are comparing with respect to richness and availability. It turns out that there is a tradeoff between richness and availability. Because JavaFX provides much interactive application by providing desktop-like features, but it runs outside the browser which users have to wait for long time of downloading JavaFX solution. Flash/Flex and Silverlight doesn’t have to be because they are browser plugins and often downloaded faster than JavaFX. But their functionalities are limited by browser. Then the next question is what gives more interactive experience between Flash/Flex and Silverlight? As in some cases Flash/Flex are better and in some cases Silverlight is better , we can not really rank between them. For example, Flash/Flex supports all image file formats while Silverlight only supports JPG and PNG format. But Silverlight has a rich set of programming languages not like Flash/Flex and it enables to provide rich expression that different programming languages might have.

9. Discussion
What aspects should be improved and considered over current RIA frameworks?
Standardization
e.g. AJAX libraries
Personalization
Customers begin to demand the products that meet their needs
e.g. BMW mini website 3D
Can provide more enhanced user experience
e.g. virtual worlds, navigational systems

10. Conclusion Each RIA framework has its own strengths and weaknesses
No best solution at this point
Tradeoff between richness and availability
e.g. JavaFX vs. Flex/Flash
Standardization, personalization, and 3D are key aspects to be improved and considered for the future of RIA