Anyone else who was an ICC regular NOT go this year, I did not after attending all the others.
Other than me having a good time and renting a bike , company could not justify the expenses of me attending this year
I bought the conference ticket, but held off travel arrangements when a crisis brewed up at a client in late August. Held onto some hope until a week out. Oh, well. /-:
I wasn’t able to attend this year either 
Goddamit Kevin were you banished or what?
I wrote up some notes about the conference if you missed it: http://blog.perfectabstractions.com/2017/09/25/ignition-community-conference-2017-notes/
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New Visualization Module – Perspective
... This new module, called Perspective, will add browser-based clients to Ignition. It is based on front-end web technologies such as HTML5, Javascript, React and CSS3...
This is interesting to see Ignition to become more web-based. Though it does raise some questions. Will Jython scripting still be available in the GUI when using Perspective, or will JavaScript become the primary scripting language? What about the backend scripts (gateway scripts, tag triggers, ...)? Will those stay on Jython?
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The gateway scripts are part of the Ignition platform, not part of any module, so I wouldn’t think that would change. Also keep in mind that Ignition 8 will be backwards compatible, so anything standard that works in Ignition 7 will work in Ignition 8. I really doubt Jython will be the scripting language in the Perspective module (GUI) because Jython only runs on Java and the browser is not Java.
Jython will remain the scripting language. Scripts won't be running in the browser, they will be running in the client session on the gateway. Bindings, scripting, etc... all evaluate in the client session running on the gateway. The browser is largely just a view of that session.
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Will all client scripts run on the Gateway? So if I have a script on a button that gets triggered when I click on the button then it will execute on the Gateway? Wouldn't that require back and forth communication between the client and the gateway any time any script is executed in the client? Wouldn't that give poor performance if there can be no scripts running in the browser and the browser has to send a request to the Gateway every time a script needs to be executed and the clients can't share any of the memory and CPU load of executing scripts? This doesn't sound different than how the Mobile Module works. How will the Perspective Module be different than the Mobile Module?
Will all client scripts run on the Gateway? So if I have a script on a button that gets triggered when I click on the button then it will execute on the Gateway? Wouldn't that require back and forth communication between the client and the gateway any time any script is executed in the client?
Yes, this is correct. The "back and forth communication" is all done over an open websocket, so it is extremely fast.
Wouldn't that give poor performance if there can be no scripts running in the browser and the browser has to send a request to the Gateway every time a script needs to be executed and the clients can't share any of the memory and CPU load of executing scripts?
Well, not necessarily. Scripts themselves are quite efficient (Jython compiles to bytecode, so it is very fast). Most of the memory & CPU load of a client is not in running scripts - it is in the UI and component model. The Perspective module still has this done client side (by the browser in the DOM). Furthermore, by centralizing the data modeling we have an opportunity to be a bit more efficient with things. 50 clients polling the same query? This can be optimized now.
This doesn't sound different than how the Mobile Module works. How will the Perspective Module be different than the Mobile Module?
Oh, it's different. Very different. The mobile module spins up an external JVM for each individual client and renders the UI into a raster backbuffer. This is quite inefficient. Perspective does nothing of the sort - the session simply provides the data to the client directly.
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Cool, thanks for clarifying these things.
Does anyone know when the power points and other materials from the sessions will be available? I’m meeting with a client and wanted to go over some of the material that was covered.
Was there a demo of perspective at ICC? I am really interested in this. I use the web dev for my mobile website and need to make some improvements. I was hoping to wait on perspective and just use that and do away with web dev. I had originally heard that perspective would be out in 1st quarter of 2018, but it looks like it got pushed back.
Will the perspective designer be like the Ignition designer where you have components and stuff premade or will it be like the webdev where you have to script everything you want to do in html, etc? I feel like if perspective is as easy to use as the Ignition designer, it will be a huge boom for Ignition.
Hi @Carl.Gould,
For Ignition 8.0 (perspective), It would be enough to you publish a trailer of the module for your impatient fan that we are. Like GOT
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Was there a demo of perspective at ICC?
No public demo - just some general info and Q&A during the Dev Panel.
I had originally heard that perspective would be out in 1st quarter of 2018, but it looks like it got pushed back.
We don't have a release date - any previous release dates circulating were rumors or wild guesses at best - so I wouldn't say things were pushed back. Beta 'around Q3' was mentioned as a rough estimate at ICC last week. The real goal for us is a polished product, so we're giving ourselves timeline flexibility to make sure we deliver something great, so nothing is set in stone yet.
Will the perspective designer be like the Ignition designer where you have components and stuff premade ... ?
Yes - Perspective projects will have full visual design and configuration support in the designer. It will be much more familiar to designing Vision windows than scripting WebDev resources.
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