A Wealth of User Experience

Compared to days of yore, where a website was simply a collection of static pages. The information a single page could have was often typed in manually,  As the average computer has improved, so too have the interactive capabilities of the standard website.  Development has reached the point where some web applications and services could easily be mistaken for typical desktop applications. A modern website which provides a high level of interactivity is considered to be utilising a Rich User Interface.

For an application to qualify as "capable of providing a Rich User Experience," two criteria must be fulfilled:

1. It must be interactive.
2. It must use connectivity.

One point of interest is that the criteria do not explicitly mention web browsers or web pages. This is because it's possible to have several Rich Internet Applications within either platforms. Typically provided through any combination of tools and languages including HTML5, Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash.

Not all interactivity is good for a Rich User Experience.

Desirable features for a Rich User Interface can include:

• Focus - Through modal windows, sliding layouts and using tabs, it's possible to hide information or boxes until the user actually requires it. One example would be a log-in box that won't show until the user clicks to log in.

• Context Sensitive Input - The interface should expect the user to utilise key presses and mouse movements (or other inputs) and react accordingly. Some of the more advanced sites that allow replying or commenting automatically bold or italicise text when a user presses the standard hotkeys.

• Dynamic data - The information provided is live, connected to a database. If a user searches through the products of an online store, the store should provide an active list of its products as opposed to a static table of data that was typed in manually.

What's important here is these three features alone fulfil the above criteria. Focus and CSI react to the user's input, and therefore make the application interactive. Whereas dynamic data can only be provided if the application has a connection to a database.

One website that I believe provides a fairly rich user interface would be Blogger itself. Although a blog owner has access to more features and controls, the typical blog page will suffice in satisfying the above criteria:

Blog Features

• The blog owner may edit, remove or otherwise modify their own page. (Interactive)
• Users reading the page may comment or reply to other comments. (Interactive)
•  If replying, the input box shifts underneath the targeted comment. (Focus)
• Displays  how many comments a post has and (if viewing a specific post) the comments themselves (Dynamic Data)
• It displays all the blog's posts in order, from most recent to least recent. (Dynamic Data)

Without becoming an exhaustive list, the standard Blogger post could be considered a Rich User Interface. While the blog itself doesn't provide much context sensitive input, users can still interact by commenting. Likewise, the comments and related blog posts are dynamic in themselves.

References:
Travis Stiles (2005), Rich User Experience, Retrieved 30 March 2012 
Florian Moritz, Rich Internet Applications (RIA):A Convergence of User Interface Paradigms of Web and Desktop, Retrieved 30 March 2012
Cameron Chapman (21 June 2009), 7 Rich & Creative User Interfaces and How to Create Your Own, Retrieved 30 March 2012
Blogger Website