cRIO silverlight remote panel replacement

[jvon20]

@Christina_R

Not sure about the OP, but I would be very happy to provide some feedback on remote front panels (RFPs). Feel free to message me. 

We have relied on RFPs via Internet Explorer to be GUIs for many different cRIO applications, both internally and for customers.

Development, hardware troubleshooting, and building customer HMIs for compactRIO applications was an absolute breeze with the Silverlight RFPs as you could rely on the front panel to become your web browser GUI.  All you needed to do was code up your application and then publish the front panel with the Web Publishing Tool. Boom. Elegant, efficient. accessible from any connected PC via Internet Explorer.

Contrast that to now, we need to also create and maintain compatibility between:

 - G Web application front end

 - G Web application back end

 - HTTP Method VIs in cRIO Web Service

 - Shared Variables to transfer data between my application and the Web Service (or some other method)

 - LabVIEW application running on RTOS/FPGA

 - All the comms to transfer data correctly between the above ^

For the same projects, development using the new G Web way is AT LEAST 3x slower than before - even after the initial development, because changes need to be synced across different code bases, tested, changed in different code bases, etc. 

Also, G Web today is not easy to customize for appearance whatsoever, and the documentation is still severely lacking for how to customize it. 

I will say, G Web creates much prettier web browser GUIs than the built-in front panels, and it is nice that the connecting browser does not need a LV plug-in installed, but this is not worth the major increase in time to create and then change cRIO applications.

I guess my humble two cents is that not replacing Silverlight web browser-based RFPs with a similar tech was a significant regression in functionality from our POV. I do like G web and think it is a great tool, but in terms of pure functionality, for stand-alone cRIO applications, it pales in comparison to the previous RFP technology.