Internet Applications are accessible from any computer connected. These implementations are important and worth while because they allow the user experience to be consistent, regardless of what operating system the client uses. The most sophisticated examples of rich internet applications exhibit a look and feel approaching that of a desktop environment.
* More responsive. The interface behaviors are typically much more responsive than those of a standard Web browser that must always interact with a remote server.
* Client/Server balance. The demand for client and server computing resources is better balanced, so that the Web server need not be the workhorse that it is with a traditional Web application. This frees server resources, allowing the same server hardware to handle more client sessions concurrently.
* Asynchronous communication. The client engine can interact with the server without waiting for the user to perform an interface action such as clicking on a button or link. Perhaps the most common application of this is pre-fetching data, in which an application anticipates a future need for certain data and downloads it to the client before the user requests it, thereby speeding up a subsequent response. Google Maps uses this technique to load adjacent map segments to the client before the user scrolls them into view.
* Network efficiency. The network traffic may also be significantly reduced because an application-specific client engine can be more intelligent than a standard Web browser when deciding what data needs to be exchanged with servers. This can speed up individual requests or responses because less data is being transferred for each interaction, and overall network load is reduced. However, over-use of asynchronous calls and pre-fetching techniques can neutralize or even reverse this potential benefit. Because the code cannot anticipate exactly what every user will do next, it is common for such techniques to download extra data, not all of which is actually needed, to many or all clients.
