Wiley Flash Catalyst CS5 Bible 978-0-470-56815-6 Benutzerhandbuch

he Web has changed. What began as a text-based system for scien-
tists and academics to share information has grown into a vital part 
of life for many people. No longer can businesses afford to ignore it; 

for many, a simple collection of static HTML documents will no longer suf-
fice. Users have come to expect a deeper, more involving Web experience; 
your users and your company or clients want Rich Internet Applications. 

The idea of Rich Internet Applications, or RIAs, first came about in the early 
part of this century. One of the early proponents of the idea was a company 
named Macromedia. Macromedia developed its Flash Player technology — 
already the most installed piece of software in history, to provide designers 
and developers with a set of tools that could be used to create RIAs effec-
tively. More important, Flash applications had the advantage of being com-
pletely cross-platform and cross-browser, unlike many other RIA 
technologies such as Ajax. Flash apps could be written and designed without 
regard to how they might perform on other machines or different browsers.

Web pages are for the most part written in Hypertext Markup Language 
(HTML). HTML is a text-based language that allows developers to “mark up” 
text on their Web page with instructions as to how the Web browser should 
display text and other Web page items.

HTML was invented in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at the European 
Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN). Berners-Lee was seeking to develop a 

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