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What exactly is meant by the term "rich user interface"?

Does it mean the same thing when referring to user-interfaces as it does when referring to, say, communications frameworks?

Does it imply that a user-interface can be "poor"? (as in the opposite of rich, not as in poorly designed)

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I believe the opposite of rich in this case would be sparse. –  Stefan Thyberg May 15 '09 at 13:01
If you have to ask, you can't afford it. –  Patrick McElhaney May 15 '09 at 13:40
Queue jokes about financial software and ironic 'well that's rich' UIs –  Aiden Bell May 16 '09 at 10:58
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5 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

From Wiktionary.

(computing) Elaborate, having complex formatting, multimedia, or depth of interaction.

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alt text

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Richness doesn’t imply complexity. –  Gumbo May 15 '09 at 13:05
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rich | not so rich

Note: "rich" is not necessarily the same as "better".

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Hmm, the Google page actually looks a bit fuller than the Microsoft page. –  Frank May 15 '09 at 13:07
@dehmann: it sure does, and yet it seems more lightweight in terms of client-side functionality (hence my note on "rich" vs. "better"). –  Fredrik Mörk May 15 '09 at 13:11
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In my understanding, it generally implies that the UI can do "heavy" things.

Compare clicking a link, waiting, and getting a full-screen refresh containing new information, to clicking a link, and having the new information pop up, perhaps even animate into view, right there.

More features, faster responses, and more "eye candy" are some of the things I associate with the term.

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A "rich" user interface is a web term which describes the next generation of Web interfaces. In the old days, HTML Web Pages were static bodies of text with some images and not a whole lot of interactivity.

The Web today is completely different...with pages providing different levels of interactivity. A "rich" user interface strives to provide the user with a highly interactive, highly stylized, highly usable interface whereas a traditional web application might have been clunky and required numerous page refreshes to complete a task.

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