I'm an embedded software engineer that recently discovered how to use node.js 
to make web capable GUIs for hardware I design.  I'm working on a project that 
has a fairly rich set of signals to monitor in real time and commands I can 
send to the hardware.  I have everything working perfectly but I would like 
advice of ways to make the development process go quicker.  I have to make 
around 20 different pages, and its taking days to perfect each one.

I wrote a node.js app to decode the telemetry stream from my hardware via UDP 
and node.js dgram, and encode commands to the hardware.  Node then pushes 
telemetry updates on demand.  Telemetry changes as much as 200 times per second 
with 50 to 300 items per page.  The GUI is basically just HTML pages of fixed 
width and height containing DIVs and JavaScript for data presentation.  The 
client JavaScript subscribes to telemetry items.  The server side parses an XML 
file for telemetry format definitions (bit offsets, byte offsets, data type, 
etc...).  CSS files describe the look and feel.

I wrote everything manually so its clean but its very time consuming.  I use 
entirely just divs with text for signal labels and JavaScript that uses 
socket.io to receive updates from the server and update the presentation to the 
user.  I used divs rather than normal HTML elements so my GUIs can be "skinned" 
by swapping CSS out.  It takes forever, adjusting positions, font sizes, etc... 
 Is there a WYSIWYG layout editor out there that is open source and won't 
muddle my HTML or CSS with a thousand unnecessary lines?  I was also 
considering using jquery to make some dive drag gable and scalable.  What is 
the best way to provide something like a WYSIWYG layout editor to the users of 
my GUI?  Possibly give them a palette that they can drag telemetry items and 
command buttons to a workspace.

-- 
-- 
Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/
Posting guidelines: 
https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "nodejs" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"nodejs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

Reply via email to