Why is the Ignition Designer UI so outdated?

Ignition
21

I’m still going through the Ignition online course, so yes, please rescue me from this endless checkbox-style “development.” :joy:

To be fair, I haven’t spent much time with FactoryTalk or some of the other industrial automation platforms yet, so maybe I’m in for another surprise.

But I think part of my reaction comes from my background. My degree is in telecommunications, I started my career around power-plant instrumentation, sensors and automation, later moved into software development, and now I’m coming back into automation again.

Because of that, I naturally see connections between the two worlds. Underneath it all, we’re still dealing with data, live values, servers, databases, communications, reusable logic, visualization, scripting, etc. Automation obviously has its own requirements, especially around reliability and real-time systems, but many of the development problems themselves aren’t fundamentally alien to modern software engineering.

So when I see something that requires clicking the same boxes or configuring similar objects repeatedly, my immediate thought is: surely there is a way to parameterize this, template it, script it, generate it, or otherwise automate it. I’m not very good at accepting “this is just how we do it” when the tools underneath appear capable of doing much more.

And yes, somebody please tell me there are better day-to-day workflows before I spend the rest of my life staring at a dead-white window clicking tiny checkboxes. :joy:

I also still think something as simple as a proper Designer dark mode plus a few sensible font/UI scaling options would be a great improvement. That doesn’t require turning Ignition into VS Code. The outcome just needs to be thoughtful and consistent.

22

There are lots of requests for new features and feature improvements, and notice what the top trending one is. They are continually prioritizing and addressing them.

24

That answer was just not accurate. The official Ideas page shows established Ignition users have been asking for dark mode for years, so this clearly isn’t just a “new user complaining” thing.

Honestly, some of the reactions here feel more defensive than logical. I hope that’s not representative of the wider Ignition community.

25

I wouldn't read into it too much, but it is a little heavy handed to bash on Ignition for your very first post to the community forum, or at least sound like it.

The designer could use some TLC, sure, and fair point on the dark mode timetable.

Either way, I think you got an answer, so moving on...welcome to the forum :waving_hand:

26

I think the hostility was that a lot of users realize the amount of effort it has taken to make ignition a good program that actually does what users want.

Most of the time that IA has not done something it's not out of disregard for the community its typically because they want their solutions to be well made and well taken by the community.

if IA has to choose between fixing a bug or adding dark mode I think I can speak for the community when I say we would rather have the bug fixed.

you're post disregards the actual software and instead quite literally judges a book by its cover.

I think with time you will come to realize that the pros of the software far out weight the cons of the UI

29

Part of it is probably that many of us also work in other applications regularly that make Ignition look like a dream.. like Concept 2.5 (still in there on a regular basis.. ugh.) or iFix (want to talk about an absolutely atrocious UI...) or Connected Components Workbench (when you try to go online, just don't do ANYTHING after you push that button until the status bar turns red or it may break.. [and will also just crash randomly anways])

32

In industrial automation not everything on the security side is about stopping someone from shutting down your system and losing some production. I work in oil and gas and a security breach could mean an explosion costing lives. So while web based technologies are great many of these systems will continue to be air gapped because the risk is just too great.

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This whole thread...

35

I almost said something earlier when he was monologuing but I didn't want to jump to conclusions

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(post deleted by author)

38

great get AI to fix your dark mode problem or can it only complain for you?

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image courtesy of bmusson.

40

I'm not touching the AI argument, thats already been done to death in this forum. I will say though, the guidelines request that we don't divert topics mid-stream. Here we've gone from a complaint about the UI, to attempting to discuss AIs place in society and industry?

42

It's one thing to joke around a little bit, but this is starting to take things too far. Let's try to be more respectful of each other. We all have our opinions but this is not the place to be disrespectful towards others for their opinions.

43

They probably just don't want things changed that are comfortable to them to appease one user that would be more comfortable with a different UI.

I've worked in many of the popular SCADA platforms that have been used over the last 20 years. I haven't found one with a better UI/UX than Ignition.

I don't find Ignition's UI to be unintuitive. I kind of scanned through your responses and got the impression that you would like more code to develop. I would caution you against that. If you can do it with a binding you should do it with a binding. If you need to use an expression, do that. If you can't do it with a binding or an expression then use a script.

You can do a TON in this platform without writing code. You should. It's more performant and more supportable. Challenge yourself to do as much as possible with bindings.

I would encourage you to work your way through Inductive University to learn how things work and ask questions here if you are unsure of the right approach for what you're trying to do.

This community isn't toxic. They voluntarily help strangers on the internet routinely.

I would strongly recommend searching this forum for answers to questions you have. The search works pretty well and there are an abundance of answers to questions that can be found here.

44

I believe your assessment of HMI design tools and the industrial HMI UX as a whole is pretty typical of someone who is newer in the field and believes they can change the world.

For your first projects you try to pull in all the latest and greatest UX design techniques, colors, styles from your favorite apps and then you realize the actual machine operators, customers, and boss... hates it.

So who's right or wrong in this situation? The people who use the interfaces every day or the designer?

Ignition is very far ahead all design packages I've seen. Sure there are some quirks but for the sheer scale of what it offers those are basically non issues. If we are picking out the lack of a dark mode but not praising the ability to publish a browser based project reading and writing to real PLC tags, sending stuff off to databases ect in less than 30 mins (and that's being generous) then I think the point is being missed.

Either way, processing all your responses through AI isn't a great way to get the community behind you.

45

Also, understand that the vast majority of SCADA programming isn't geared towards those with a heavy software development background.

Ever used one of the "build your own web page tools"? As someone who has some background in web development, those drive me crazy because I always feel like I can do it better with access to the HTML and CSS, but those tools make it extreamly hard to access that information.

SCADA platforms are much the same, they are develped for people who don't know and don't want to know VB, Java, Python, C++, or whatever other language you want to talk about. Most of them have some access to an expression language and a scripting language. From FactoryTalk's cursed inclusion of VBA, to Aveva's use of QuickScript / VBScript. The whole idea is that if the user doesn't want to use those things they can develop their application without that, (In truth there is almost always some need to dip your toes a bit).

IA has develped the designer with that in mind, and personally having spent most of my professional life dealling with Rockwell's various SCADA platforms, the Ignition desginer is a breath of fresh air.

Don't expect it to turn into an IDE, that's not what it is, and never was.

46

Yeah, the attitude that AI use amounts to theft is so irksome, I had to write a song about it. Using AI, of course... :squinting_face_with_tongue:

48

You might be suprised, but not everyone uses dark mode.

I don't. I develop in Visual Basic, Java, Python, C++. I aslo use AutoCad, and OnShape. I do not use dark mode. I find it makes things harder for me to read. And dark mode in the wrong lighting actually causes more eye strain.

You want dark mode, that's fine, you are not alone, but there are many who don't want it.

Some relevant reading:

49

Jumping in as the design lead here, since @Kevin.Herron already covered the technical side really well.

First off, I hear you. It's almost an unspoken rite of passage for every new design hire to have these same concerns. Give them a few weeks at IA and they'll have already mocked up a full modern redesign including a dark theme. Your point is more than fair. That said, Swing is an old toolkit at this point and has a ceiling on the amount of "modernization" you can paint over it.

Shipping dark mode for the Designer is a technical constraint related to Swing+Vision as others have already mentioned. Any change to how the Designer looks, colors, contrast, all of it - doesn't stay contained in the Designer. Changes would propagate out into any Vision project already deployed by our users. That's the blocker (at the moment), not a lack of awareness or concern on our side.

I will say that your font and icon scaling concerns are a separate thing though. That's another good observation and possibly something that could be more easily teased apart from the entire Swing LaF and dark mode conversations. Accessibility is something we work hard to address and continuously improve.

I think someone linked it already but I'll reiterate in pointing you to the ideas page. That's where feedback like this gets tracked and weighed in a way that directly impacts how our PMs prioritize user concerns like this.

Welcome to the community and Ignition too – appreciate your thoughts and insights.

50

Just throwing this out there: the Designer itself could probably be converted to JavaFX, while keeping Vision components built in Swing. There's a SwingNode class in JavaFX that allows Swing components to be embedded.

I know it would still be a ton of work to convert, though. (*cough cough* Claude...) I've worked a lot with both frameworks, and JavaFX was a seriously welcome improvement after struggling with the awkwardness of Swing.