Rich Internet Applications are shaping up to be a real battleground in application development well ahead of the move to Smart Clients and the Longhorn OS. The major contenders are DHTML based web application as seen in Googles Gmail, Flash based apps such as Macromedia Flex and Central or Laszlo and a whole new wave of Java based applications that appear to be using some very clever combinations of either Java+JSF or Java+XML+DOM+”an opensource secret ingredient”. See our overview here.
Nexaweb is one of those very interesting Java+XML based contenders. 
Nexaweb uses Java 1.1 on the client so it does not require Suns WebStart but will run with Microsofts JVM. Nexaweb also uses XUL, SVG, and compressed XML when talking with its client. XML is also used to store a substantial data cache of the clients database view if required. This combination plus a smart Java Servlet means that round trip interaction is minimized, offline as well as online operations are possible, the deployment remains remarkably simple and the browser interface is amazingly rich. Whats the drawback ? The server is not inexpensive and for many web developers such familiar touchstones as HTML, CSS, JavaScript are rarely if ever used. But that is substantially true of the Flash+XML solutions as well. But for a large class of high performance, low deployment cost, rich Internat applications – Nexaweb has some very attractive characteristics. Try the free demos – and see how or if it fills your bill.
(c)JBSurveyer
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