Subject: From: Date:

Converted to ECS Web Interface Martin Terry Mon, 29 May 2000 23:53:53 -0700

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ECSers,

Well, I took a 4 day weekend and took the plunge and converted my Automation
system to ECS's new browser interface. I previously had used ACE as the User
Interface for ECS.

First off, Mark should be commended for the amazing transformation of ECS.
The flexibility and power of the interface is pretty awesome!

Here's a little bit of my current setup -

ECS is running on a P133 in my garage. It's connected to an Ethernet based
LAN in the house. It has a modem that does dial-up for internet access as
necessary. My client machine is a P75 (!) in the Kitchen/Family Room
(previously running ACE) now running IE 4. It's about as quick as the ACE
client was, so even with the low speed machines performance is not bad.

I've spent some time over the last couple of weeks "dissecting" the web
pages that ECS generates automatically. Mark makes generous use of Java
applets, with numerous parameters that are passed to control the look and
feel. I had a pretty good feel for how they work, boosted by HTML and JAVA
for dummies books. :)

I then setup some basic pages of HTML, keeping in mind what I currently get
done in ACE. I swiped a bunch of graphics from the web and coded all the
pages by hand, making generous use of frames.
I've done a little HTML prior to this, but I'm a novice at best.

The result is that I have about 70% of what I had in ACE. It looks much
snazzier than ACE and can be whatever you want it to be. I intend to get all
of what I'm doing with ACE, then add some new stuff like integrating weather
reports, automatic page refreshes maybe even TV listings (but I'm waiting on
this, I expect Mark is working on this now). I'm going to set up some pages
to be downloaded off line then integrate them into ECS's pages.

OK, now the Pros and Cons:

Pro - Flexible, colorful, and can have any look you want. Any of Mark's java
applets on the page automatically update states and so forth when things
change, without having to refresh the page - way cool. Can integrate any
data you can put in a web page. Can have links to the internet (if you have
a full time connection, I don't).  

Cons - Mainly a lack of documentation; no wimps here, you will have to
figure most of this out yourself. For example ICON_W=26 Who would have
guessed this is a percentage of the icon's size? Good luck. 

I tried some animated GIFs, but they wouldn't work - this could have easily
been me or the browser. I'm not a big fan of animated GIFs anyway. :)

Suggestions/Questions for Mark -

Mark, is there anyway to change the background color of the item java
applets? Mine always show up with a gray background. Also, is there a way to
turn off the thin line border that surrounds the applet? I'd like to ditch
it if I could.

Also, the messages link (e.g. ecs:3000/Messages) always shows the single
line message applet on top of the message list, can we list the messages
without this line? I already have that applet on the page and I'm trying to
show the messages in a frame. Speaking of the messages, can we control the
font and background? And can they list in reverse order (most recent on
top?).

Anyway, thanks for the great update.

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