Welcome

The page a station opens on until somebody takes it off: a trail through every area of the program, each explained on the page with a drawing of it at work, which plays by itself until you take a step; the checks that say what the station already holds; and how to hide the page and bring it back.

Welcome is the first entry of the navigation rail, above View, and the page the station opens on, on a new station and on one updated from an earlier version alike, until somebody takes it off. It walks through every area of the program in the order a station is built, one stop at a time, and explains each one on the page itself: what the area is for, three things it does, and a drawing of it at work. Picking a stop never leaves the page; only the stop's own button opens the area.

Who sees it

"Opens on" applies to the default address: the station's own window, or a browser on the network that opens the station's plain address. An address somebody asked for, View's own included, is kept. Each screen answers for its own identity, so a tablet signed in as an operator opens on View while the bench opens on Welcome.

On the published demonstration the page is read-only: Don't show again and Connect an assistant are not drawn. Under the lead, one line in the visitor's own language says why two languages share the screen: "The interface follows the language you chose on the site. The demonstration screens are in English."

The tour

Take the tour, at the right of the title, starts a walk through every area of the program in the order a station is built, opening each page and pointing at its real controls (see The program tour). Where this page explains each area in place, the tour goes to it. The tour creates, edits and presses nothing, so it can be taken on a station in production. The button is drawn for everybody who sees the page, every visitor of the published demonstration included. The help panel offers the same walk on every page, so taking this page off with Don't show again does not take the tour away (see The window). Starting the tour stops the trail.

The trail

The trail runs across the page under the title: one stop per area, each with the rail's own mark and name, joined by a line, under the names of the four stretches it is drawn in.

The stop on screen is filled in the accent and its stretch's name lights with it; the stops before it keep the accent's outline. Process is drawn dashed, because a station that only watches values never needs a model, and the line between two stretches is dashed too. On a narrow window only the stop on screen keeps its name; the others show their mark.

A stop of an area a station builds wears a check once the station holds something there:

The other stops wear no check: each already works on its defaults. The checks are read from the station while the page is open, so a device added on another screen, or by an assistant, checks the Connector here at once.

Playing, and taking over

The trail plays by itself, so whoever opens the program sees at once that there is a sequence and that it moves. The first step the reader takes stops it.

Previous after Connector goes to Account, and Next after Account to Connector. The trail is a row of tabs for the keyboard: once a stop has the focus, the Left and Right arrows go to the stop before and after, and Home and End to the first and the last.

A stop

Above the words stand the stop's page, with its mark and name, where it stands on the trail ("1 of 11"), and Previous, Pause (or Play) and Next. Under them, the stop's title, one sentence on what the area is for, and three points, each with its mark:

Remote access's first point names the address that opens the station on its own computer, http://localhost:<port> on the port the station listens on, which answers without remote access:

Account's first point says what each license needs: "With a subscription, the station has to reach the site at least once every 90 days; with the perpetual license, once activated, never again."

Under the points stands the stop's button, and beside it what the station already holds there:

The drawings

Each stop has a drawing of its area at work, with made-up but believable content, which arrives part by part when the stop opens and keeps moving where the area moves: data running along the lines, a value lighting as it changes, an alarm ringing. The drawing grows with the window. Its words are the area's own, as its page writes them, and its numbers, dates and times are written in the station's formats (Localization). It is decoration: everything it shows is said in the words beside it, so a screen reader skips it.

Help on every page

The line at the foot of the page wears the mark of the Help key, the ? in the top-right corner, which opens the documentation of the page you are on in a panel beside it (see The window). Getting started opens the Getting started page in that panel.

Hiding it and bringing it back

Don't show again, at the bottom right, takes the entry off the rail of every screen at once and opens View; from then on the station opens on View. It changes a setting of the whole station, so it is drawn only for a role that holds Change settings. The switch Show the Welcome page in the menu, under Startup on the Settings page, brings the page back.