For those like me who lives in the web programming universe, terms like user experience, usability, Javascript™ frameworks and RIA - Rich Internet Applications - are no news. But when the subject goes towards making it all work together, well news are always welcome. RIA is the natural step for web programming and some great companies already have they vision of the way it should be: Adobe® comes with AIR™ - a mix of well-known flavours (Flash™, Ajax, XML, Flex™, ActionScript™) all mixed-up with some desktop appeal. Microsoft® couldn't be different: Silverlight™ uses a similar recipe, but with that Microsoft touch everybody knows. In the middle of this Mozilla® Group tried a different approach: instead of bring a shiny new plug-in/tool/API they put Gecko to shine with Prism - at my sight, is the simplest but most elegant solution until now - where already well-known web technology and desktop get working together. And last but not least comes Sun with JavaFX, bringing more richness to his Java blend.

At the Javascript corner, major frameworks are following these tendencies. ExtJS, jQuery, Prototype, Yahoo! UI and Dojo Toolkit: all offer - or plan - some richness supporting the solutions like Adobe AIR™ or implementing a whole bunch of DHTML widgets. This last offers a good starting point (and some kindly moments of self-frustration while learning), since make use of already wide spread and well supported technology in modern browsers.

The future is undoubtedly rich. Good news are coming but how fast it will come, only time will tell...