RIA meaning in Information Technology ?

A rich web application (originally called a rich Internet application, or RIA or installable Internet application) is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a single-page application, and may allow the user interactive features such as drag and drop, background menu, WYSIWYG editing, etc. The concept was first introduced in 2002 by Macromedia to describe Macromedia Flash MX product (which later became Adobe Flash). Throughout 2000-s, the term was generalized to describe web applications developed with other competing browser plugin technologies including Java applets, Microsoft Silverlight.

With the deprecation of browser plugin interfaces and transition to standard HTML5 technologies, rich web applications were replaced with JavaScript web applications, including single-page applications and progressive web applications.