Web Technologies

10.5

The PL/B Web Server (PWS), PLBWIN, and PLBCLIENT runtimes support PL/B GUI objects generated using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. GUI objects generated this way are referenced as web objects.

The PWS runtime interacts with an external web browser to render the generated web objects. The PLBWIN, and PLBCLIENT runtimes use the WebView2 control as an internal web browser to render the generated web objects.

The PLBWIN, and PLBCLIENT runtimes have the capability of creating a hybrid WIN32/WebView2 WINDOW. This allows both WIN32 objects and web objects to exist at the same time.

Web frameworks are used to create web objects with a consistent and modern UI (User Interface). These web frameworks consist of JQuery, JQueryUI, Bootstrap 5, and Bootstrap icons.

See these links for more information:

https://jquery.com/

https://jqueryui.com/

https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.2/getting-started/introduction/

https://icons.getbootstrap.com/

PLBWIN/PLBCLIENT Web support

1. The WebView2 must be installed on the same machine as the runtime command.

2. Runtime web support files are located in a directory named plbwv_html.

3. This directory must exist in the same location as the runtime command.

4. The plbwvstart.html is loaded by the browser to start interaction with the runtime.

5. The file named bs5_icons.html gives a list of available icons.

PWS Web support

1. Runtime web support files are located in a directory named http_root.

2. The location of this directory can be specified using a configuration parameter.

3. To enable Bootstrap 5 support, the configuration parameter PLBWEB_USE_WEBVIEW=ON can be used.

4. Bootstrap 5 support can also be invoked by using a '.plcw' extension (mime) for the PLB program in the client URL.

5. The plbwebstartwv.html is loaded by the browser to start interaction with the runtime.

6. The file named bs5_icons.html gives a list of available icons.

See Also: Introduction