I have an unusual situation – I have an embedded video streaming device with a complicated UI, and I need to use an embedded web server to reproduce that UI through a web browser. I’m thinking of using JavaScript/JQuery on a C++ backend (I am NOT coding all this myself, I need to hire people for the grunt work).
The embedded web server is much less powerful than a PC, so I want to write an application that runs the entire UI in the browser, and only communicates with the server to pass new program settings back and forth, get status updates from the device, and control video playback.
In other words, the client gets one big page or a small number of big pages (effectively downloading the application), the application maintains significant local memory storage, and once the pages are first loaded the server never sends anything layout-related.
The application has two rows of tabs to navigate ~40 menu pages, drag-and-select controls to pick cells in a grid, sorted lists, lots of standard data entry options, and it should be able to control up to 16 embedded video players at once (preferably VLC).
Is this possible in JavaScript/JQuery with a C++ backend?
Ext JS would save you a lot on the UI side, it can be used to create very complicated layouts with rich controls in very little time. It even has its own graphical editor where you can create the UI prior to adding handlers.
Its API Documentation is also very good, its far better than most other libraries.
And for the rest, well, I’m pretty sure that there are ready made webservers that you could look into; take a look here – most of these can probably expose a CGI application.