RIA – How They Are Being Used

RIA’s have been popping regularly since the beginning of the year on more and more sites. I have found that most RIA segment into the following categories: Rich Media, Product Selection, Visual Search, Widget Builders and Forms & Data Visualizers. Since the release of Silverlight 2.0 (BETA) and Adobe Flex 3.0, designers and engineers have the professional grade tools and adoption of the technology.  The results are the increase in creative practical use of RIA .

RIA Categories:

Rich Media: High resolution images, video and audio, deep zoom

Product Selection: Intuitive Category Selection, Product Detail & Shopping

Visual Search: Taking search beyond text. Various manners to search the web

Widget Builders: Specific functionality including and social tools & publishing

Forms & Data Visualizers: Data entry forms, maps, graphs, calculators

Rich Media

Kyte TV

National Hockey League (NHL) TV

HardRock Café Memoribilia

Product Selection

Verizon Wireless Ringtones

Borders Magic Shelf

Pizza Hut

Visual Search

SearchMe

Widget Builders

SproutBuilder

WIX

Form & Data Visualizers

Flex Google Map

EarthBrowser

Etrade Retirement Calculator