Browser Integration

[ChrisM 24]

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to display your VI front panel in a web browser?

If so, how do you do it?

Chris McCrory

[Rick Nelson]

Display? Probably. Work with? No.

Web browsers can read various formats (most notably is HTML and graphics
files), and LabVIEW does not allow you to save in HTML format. It could
be possible to change the front panel into a graphics file and then open
it with a browser (check out the files in LabVIEW\Help\Intlinks, and
open using "file:\\c:\[path]"). So I'd look into opening the VI and
maybe trying to use 3rd party software to take a screen shot.

Rick
--

rick@csciences.com

Chesapeake Sciences Corp.
1127B Benfield Blvd Millersville, MD 21108

Tel: (410) 923-1300 x3430 Fax: (410) 923-2669

[Harry King]

In article <37988054.414BDD50@csciences.com>,
Rick Nelson wrote:

>Web browsers can read various formats (most notably is HTML and graphics
>files), and LabVIEW does not allow you to save in HTML format. It could
>be possible to change the front panel into a graphics file and then open
>it with a browser (check out the files in LabVIEW\Help\Intlinks, and
>open using "file:\\c:\[path]"). So I'd look into opening the VI and
>maybe trying to use 3rd party software to take a screen shot.

It is my understading that LabView 5.1 allows web browser integration (not
certain of interaction). However, I don't have it hooked up yet. So, I
can't say for certain how/if it works.

Harry

--
"That government is best which governs least."
-Adam Smith

[Jeffrey Benton]

Chris,

There are two things you can use. First there is a toolbaox called the
internet toolbox. This has tools for doing internet stuff. As of yet I
have not had to do this but I know it is there. Second, there is another
toolbox put out by Nacimiento Software (http://nacimiento.com) called Applet
view (http://nacimiento.com/appletview). This allows you to build Java
interfaces Java which will interact with your labview program. I read about
it in the LTR (labview technical resource) volumn 6, number 2.

Jeffrey Benton
Chris McCrory wrote in message <7n9bnb$dpp$1@uranium.btinternet.com>...
Can anyone tell me if it is possible to display your VI front panel in a
web browser?

If so, how do you do it?

Chris McCrory

[Mark Derome]

If you are running LabVIEW 5.1 it is very easy. If you are running an
earlier version of LabVIEW you need the Internet Developers Toolbox.
In LabVIEW 5.1, select the Project pull down menu, then select Web
Document Tool, you then add the text and whether this is a snap or a
animated page. A snap will take a snapshot of the current front panel
for the VI. Selecting animate will continuously update the web page with
the changing front panel. When you save to disk it will give you a url
for the document.
I've only experimented a little with this feature but it was easy to set
up. It also seems to work better with Netscape then Internet Explorer.
You just have to start the web server (after it's enable in Preferences)
then start your VI.
The Internet Developers Toolkit req
uires a little more effort and I
think your better off with the manual then poor instructions from
myself.

Good Luck,

Mark Derome
M.I.T. Haystack Observatory

Chris McCrory wrote:

> Can anyone tell me if it is possible to display your VI front panel in
> a web browser? If so, how do you do it? Chris McCrory

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> Can anyone tell me if it is possible to display your VI front panel in
> a web browser?
>

To display a panel in the web browser, you can either use LV5.1 or
for a previous version of LV, you can use the Internet Toolkit.
Either of these can publish a JPEG of the panel, and if the
browser supports client-push an updating series of JPEGs.

These are useful for seeing the status of the panel, but don't
directly allow interaction, they are just a picture. With the
Internet Toolkit, you can also allow place HTML buttons and other
items on the same page as the JPEG, like below it. The button
presses will, through CGI, cause changes on the server machine,
which will generate the next HTML form. This is no different
from the stock trend displays. There is a JPEG of a graph
along with other buttons to request other information and
a field to change the call symbol. Each of these changes
result in the HTML server sending a new page based on the
change. The Internet toolkit has VIs for building HTML pages
and responding to CGI.

So with this solution, viewing is very easy, almost trivial,
but interaction requires some modification of your program,
and some knowledge of HTML.

---

If you want to view and interact, then I'd recommend a program
like PCAnywhere or Timbuktu, or any similar program that replicates
the server to clients and allows them to control. I don't know
which one to choose from, but most of them seem quite easy once
any security issues caused by firewalls are resolved. I don't
know of any that work within a web browser, but that doesn't
mean they don't exist.

---

Another post already pointed this out, but you may want to look at
what Naciemento has done. This gets more complicated for complex
panels, but with a bit of editing work, you can get a Java proxy
panel that communicates through TCP to your VI to display and
control panel values.

---

A similar approach, if the browser isn't that important is to take
the panel you want to make remote, copy it, and change the diagram
to talk over TCP to the other copy of the VI. This takes more work
and doesn't work in a web browser, but all of the panel attributes,
are preserved. It should also update quite a bit faster than the
PCAnywhere solution.

---

More options coming down the pike, but that is what you can
choose from today.

Greg McKaskle