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