跟界面设计有关的新技术趋势,食品包装设计

Smart Clients are an evolutionary step over rich client and web client applications, capturing the benefits of both and then adding to them. Smart Clients are defined by the following attributes:
  

High fidelity user experience that:

• Exploits the latest in graphics and UI technology
  
• Is personalized/individualized for each user based on context
    

Intelligent connection:

• On/offline intelligence - taking advantage of local data caching and processing
  
• Distributed - central corporate data stores and pre/post processing on a server connected through web services
  
• Interoperable - Smart Clients can easily access data from many heterogeneous sources
    

Information centric:

• Data access is loosely coupled
  
• Data is easy to retrieve, cache, and post
  
• Data access is flexible and granular in setting what, when, and how data is accessed and affected

Designed for operations:

• Secure
  
• Centrally deployable
  
• Local CPU processing leveraged intelligently
  
• Versionable

Depending on the complexity of the application needed, Smart Client application developers will vary in how they apply these many different technologies. Longhorn has a strong focus on building new applications from scratch by building a local client application with Avalon. Developers also want to extend (customize) their existing applications to fulfill new application scenario needs. Additionally, both new and customized applications will need to integrate into existing systems.

Smart Client developers won't make an all-or-nothing choice of web or client, they will leverage the strengths of the technologies they need and create the right solution for the business opportunity at hand. A Smart Client solution empowers the developer to rapidly build the right solutions that provide timely and fresh data access in an occasionally-connected complex world. Simply stated, Smart Clients will surpass rich clients - they're rich clients ++.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/understanding/default.aspx

与此同时。macromeida的flash/flex是推出Rich Internet Applications

The user experience for interacting with today’s moderately complex web
applications is less than satisfying. The web’s pagebased　model and lack of　clientside　intelligence makes even relatively simple transactions (online
shopping, for example) too confusing for many users. Moreover, complex user
interactions, like those in traditional client/server and desktop applications,
are nearly impossible to complete. This technology has led to a generation of
web applications that are difficult to use, costly to support, and, in many cases,
largely ineffective.
In response to delivering improved user experiences, a new category
of Internet applications is emerging: Rich Internet Applications. These
applications combine the responsiveness and interactivity of desktop
applications with the broad reach and ease of distribution of web
applications. Rich Internet Applications drive increased return on
investment (ROI) by simplifying and improving the user interaction of
web applications. They make it possible to deliver applications that
provide a richer, more interactive, and responsive user experience.
Macromedia is widely recognized as a leader in the emerging market
for Rich Internet Applications. The Macromedia Flash client is
available now on 98% of browsers, so almost everyone can use Rich
Internet Applications based on Flash. Macromedia Flex is a new
server product from Macromedia that makes the full power of Rich
Internet Applications accessible to enterprise application developers.
Flex has a standardsbased
architecture that complements current
enterprise developer tools, methodologies, and design patterns. This
white paper provides an overview of Macromedia Flex, and
Macromedia’s Integrated Development Environment for Flex
applications, Macromedia Flex Builder.

For many years the primary focus of solution developers has been in deploying Web-based applications. However, there are certain situations when the limitations of a Web-based application can prevent you from really providing your customers with the best possible experience. In those times you really need a Smart Client application. Today's model for building Smart Client applications provides us with both local processing and access capabilities of a traditional application, as well as the ease of deployment and update that is the hallmark of a Web-based application.