Preview of new Web based RIVA client

[Dean Roddey]

OK, well millions of dead brain cells later, I have a first demo of the upcoming browser based RIVA client. As you can see from the video it's come out quite nicely so far. There are still housekeeping, optimization and tweaking tasks to do, but this is the bulk of the work. The caching of images needs to be persistent (so it doesn't have to download them each time), but I'm fairly sure I know how that will be done and it shouldn't be too hard. Some management of the image cache to keep it from growing over time needs to be done as well. We need to figure out how to handle things like going full screen and stuff like that.

https://youtu.be/0eCT0sLGX74

[Here is the second demo video, which is considerably further along, so probably just watch this one instead of the initial one above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYdOjpktFhU]


Of course we'll keep the current RIVA server for a while in tandem, to give everyone a chance to move over to the new one. This one works through the web server, since it is browser based. Once it's solid and it's time, we can get rid of the old RIVA server altogether. 

This one is a fairly straightforward portage of the existing clients, but it does have some improvements, which you'll see in the video, and the potential for some more.

Some of the more esoteric bits have not been looked at yet either, such as web widgets and web cam widgets, text to speech sent to RIVA clients, and things like. Those may not be addressed for the initial official release, just because we'd like to get it out there and get people using it.

[Dean Roddey]

Oh, and of course another benefit of this scheme is that you automatically get updates. It's all served up from the web server, so if you upgrade CQC, you automatically get any upgrades to the RIVA client, unlike the existing RIVA clients which are delivered as separate applications. So there's nothing to install on your clients, just hit the URL.

As with any such web based stuff, if you want them to be secure you'll need to set up a security certificate on the CQC web server, so that all of the information (including the URL options) are encrypted. Probably not a huge thing within your own LAN, but definitely if using from the outside.

[batwater]

Dean, looks good!

[Dean Roddey]

I'm spending a couple days on other odds and ends to get some reported things fixed, then I'll get back and get it to the point where it's ready for a first release. At that point I'll move to real beta mode for 5.2 and it'll be included in that.

[zra]

Not bad. 

How long before we will be able to try it out?

EDIT, disregard, i see the answer above. 

Thanks.

[potts.mike]

Looking forward to it.

[kfly]

WOW, Very impressive.
Looking forward to testing.

[kfly]

Do you think we should do something like this to make an app for distribution of the "Web client"?

https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice...ingstarted

[bryanb]

Dean, that looks great. A lot of progress in a short period of time. I would like to encourage you to include the web camera widget in the first pass. Otherwise, we'll still have to use an RDP app on the iPad or other tablets. Thanks for all the hard work. Bryan

[jkmonroe]

Awesome.

Quick question - what does the interface look like when you put the browser into kiosk mode? Does it just work?

Native RasPi + touchscreen clients will be a thing now. This is BIG.