Inbook,
Design of a Web-Based Virtual Laboratory Instrument Measurement Interface
chapter 13, page 127-134. (2002)Online Laboratory, Virtual Laboratory, Distributed User Interfaces.
Abstract
This paper presents a Web-based measurement instrument interface model and demonstrates its usefulness for educational purposes. We will present in detail how we built an interface designer, a software tool that presents a canvas on which controls are dropped from a list. These controls can then be moved and resized and their properties set through a property window. The binding of these controls with their data source, in this case, from programs running on remote computers, is also made through this property window. The interface designer can switch at any time from the design mode to a test mode to verify the behavior of the interface in real-time. A user interface can then be designed by dragging and dropping the required graphical components, then, at the end of the whole process, by clicking on a button that generates a corresponding XML file. This file is then sent to a Web server to be read by an ActiveX control displayed on a Web page we have called PolymorphiX.
