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Today’s websites, so called Web 2.0 websites are Ajax-based one, in other words Rich Internet Applications.  Users are familiar to desktop applications with rich graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that led them to expect similar experience on the web based applications as well.

Technologies like Ajax, Silverlight, Flash and Flex playing a key role in providing rich experience for the users.   A Rich Internet Application allows a good portion of the application to execute on the user’s local system.  Mostly, the client application is designed to perform those functions that improve the user’s experience. Communications with the server do not have to be initiated for each user action, like clicking on a button.  Instead, a server itself can update the client with fresh content asynchronously as needed and without waiting for the end user to perform some action.

Social media refers to any media shared online (e.g., videos, music, photos, news, etc.).   Most the social media websites employ Rich Internet Applications to enhance their user experience.  Web 2.0 developers use such RIA applicat
ions to improve the user navigation and site performances.

One of the leading technologies behind RIA in the JavaScript language is a technology called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).   Companies like Microsoft pays heavy attention to RIA development and Social media APIs.  No matter what your application flavor is, the Microsoft SDK for Facebook Platform supports the development of applications across Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, and Windows Forms.

If you have ever used Google Maps, the way you can drag outlying regions into your view. So what’s the magic that makes this work? , Ajax is the short answer. The Ajax methodology moves away from this page-based model. When the user interacts with a page (clicking a link, submitting a form, and so on), the server sends back a discrete piece of information. Rather than serving up an entire page, the currently loaded page is updated.

Silverlight is Microsoft's implementation of a cross-browser, cross-platform client framework that allows designers and developers to deliver Rich Internet Applications (RIA) embedded in Web pages.

Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies that allows you to rapidly develop  applications deployed to Flash Player. Using the Flex framework you can build and compile to the .swf format which is commonly supported by major web browsers.