I'm finding it hard to understand the distinction between Rich Internet Applications and AJAX calls.
From what I gather, any application that requires client-side execution can be classified as RIA. So, by this definition, should this website be considered an RIA? If you hover your mouse over the left menu on the page, a sub-menu appears without any communication with the web server (and no change in the URL). Additionally, if you right-click on the page and view the page source, none of the elements within that sub-menu are present in the HTML code. However, when you inspect the element, all those components are visible.
- Why do these elements appear in the DOM representation but not in the HTML representation?
- Is such an execution technically an AJAX call? (My understanding is that the browser loads an AJAX engine when it loads a page, so every request goes through this engine - some are dealt with on the client side while others are sent to the server. Can we classify this kind of execution as an AJAX call managed by the client-side AJAX engine?)
- How do we accurately identify an RIA? (There may be applications where JavaScript functions are only used to alter the page's color, for example. Would such an application still qualify as an RIA?)