The new Athena Orbiter & UI layer is a complete re-imagining of how the Dianemo UI is engineered, designed & updated. We started with a clean 'sheet' of paper when engineering the Athena UI layer and it is all new code from the ground up. Athena in fact is the internal name for a project that will deliver a number of new technologies for Dianemo that we will be rolling out in the future, the Athena Orbiter & UI layer is just the first.
This video shows the basic Athena Orbiter in action on a live Dianemo system;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KQAeGia26A&authuser=0The Athena Orbiter & UI Layer are still in development and we expect to release them in the latter part of Q4 this year. In preparation for release we are looking for a small number of brave 'Alpha' testers who will be given access to early alpha releases of Athena. Please bare in mind that these releases will be alpha code ie they may well be unstable and break periodically (or frequently!) and we can offer no commitment to direct support for these releases during the alpha testing phase. We are looking to hear from you about your experience with these alpha builds though and your feedback will contribute to shaping the final release version. You must have a Dianemo installation to take part in the Athena alpha program.
If you are interested in participating as part of the Athena alpha program please PM me here on the forum.
Thank you
Andy
Athena Orbiter & UI BackgroundThe Athena UI itself is built using industry standard HTML5. This makes it incredibly easy to customise using standard HTML5 markup and tools. In fact if you are familiar with HTML5 then a text editor is all you need to customise the design or layout of any Orbiter screen. Any graphics App that can output a gif or jpeg file is all you need to adapt or modify any of the graphical assets used in the standard Athena UI pack.
The standard Athena UI files are all located in a directory structure on the NerveCentre and all the HTML5 source files for the Orbiter include plenty of embedded notes on modifying the various sections of each file. No deep knowledge of the underlying system is needed to modify or create a new Athena UI skin either. Creating a new UI skin for Dianemo has never been this easy before, make a change, refresh the screen and its there - no UI Regens are required.
The new Athena Orbiter & UI layer will, we hope, open up Dianemo UI design and customisation to a much wider audience than ever before. The Athena UI is targeted for release during last quarter of 2014 and will be a free update for all current Dianemo customers.