Towards Web 2.0 applications

Abstract

This chapter introduces a conceptual model for the design of Web 2.0 applications relying on rich Internet application (RIA) technologies. RIAs extend Web application features by allowing computation to be partitioned between the client and the server and support core Web 2.0 requirements, like real-time collaboration among users, sophisticated presentation and manipulation of multimedia content, and flexible human-machine interaction (synchronous and asynchronous, connected and disconnected). The proposed approach for the design of Web 2.0 applications extends a conceptual platform-independent model conceived for Web 1.0 applications with novel primitives capturing RIA features; the conceptual model can be automatically converted into implementations in all the most popular RIA technologies and frameworks like AJAX, OpenLaszlo, FLEX, AIR, Google Gears, Google Web toolkit, and Silverlight.