A post from 2005 concisely defines the term RIA
Bill Scott, former UI director at Netflix and author of “Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions”, defines RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) to have these characteristics:
- The user interacts with items on the page and the feedback is immediate.
- The page does not have to refresh to complete the user’s interaction
- The page can be more like a canvas or desktop with content being objects the user interacts with
As opposed to traditional page based sites which behave as follows:
- The user enters information at the page level or clicks on a link to go to another page
- The page refreshes to show the result of the user’s request
- Everything is framed in the context of a page or document that has content
