n00b: confused about java's RIA/Rich Client Story

[bryancostanich]

hi all, i'm new to java (but not new to development) and i've been combing through articles, forums, blogs, and wikipedia entries trying to figure out java's rich internet application/rich client story.

with the derth of information available on java, it seems i've only gotten more confused. so my questions are these:

-> what, in general is the story for doing RIA/RC development in java? when i say that, let me be more specific. i want to develop rich java applications that run in the browser. i would ideally like to be able to skin (like in swing, or silverlight) ui elements and not use a post-back/website model for clicks, etc.

-> i read about java's XML rich client stuff, but i'm not actually sure where it runs/what it is. at first i thought it was a RIA offering, but then when i went to the eclipse RCP download page, it told me it was just for developing eclipse plugins.

-> not to start a religious war here, but based on these answers, can you point me to an IDE distro for doing this type of work? i thought i had it figured out with eclipse until it confused me.

thanks for your help in advance.

[lonelyShoes]

I'm not 100% sure as to what you are asking, but it sounds like you would need to read about developing AJAX applications, with JSP and JFaces. For example, you could develop a RIA with a library like ICEfaces or the Apache MyFaces project. Both libraries are super-simple to use in conjunction with popular IDE's like Eclipse and Netbeans.
Haha, I totally know what you mean about "religious war", it's amazing how people can get so worked up over this stuff

[bryancostanich]

thanks. i got it answered over at the sun java forums:
New To Java - n00b: confused about java's RIA/Rich Client Story