As the manufacturing world rapidly modernizes, manufacturers must be at the top of their games from broad new strategies to fine-tuned details. Today, there are sensor products on the market that allow for remote monitoring for everything from home utilities and amenities such as a pool to security systems. Many set-ups are as simple as loading up an app on a tablet or smartphone.

While this is indeed a positive change, HMIs must link to remote access to evolve as a useful tool. Going beyond simple monitoring and interaction, HMIs create a hub of control that many pieces of technology, such as older sensor products and other systems, often lack. In addition, most of today’s HMI systems are web-based, meaning that open standards are beginning to become a relevant powerhouse in the industrial market once again.

These open standards have continued to define web browsers over the last few years. As technology evolves through HMI and other systems, standards are also continuing to grow with the inclusion and adoption of revised standards including:

• CSS3
• SVG
• HTML5

With these new standards, the question still remains on how these new standards will affect the scalable HMI equation. Each has a specific, and different purpose to change the web's open standards.

CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language most commonly used when describing the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language. By presentation semantics, this mostly means the look and formatting of the document. For the most part, this standard is used to style web pages in HTML, XHTML or XML.

SVG

SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, is a vector image format based in HTML, usually used for two dimensional graphics that includes interactivity and animation support. Using SVG, one can define the behavior of the image via an XML text file.

HTML5

HyperText Markup Language, better known as HTML, is used for web page structure and presentation of content. HTML5, specifically, is the 5th such edition of this software. HTML5 is the direct “sequel” of sorts to HTML4, XHTML 1.1, and DOM Level 2 HTML. This software includes many detailed processing models, and HTML’s features are designed to run on minimal power devices like smartphones and tablets.

Paired with the effective HMI programming our engineers perform every day, it is clear to see that HMIs move to open standards will bring about many positive changes and powerful additions to the market and software. Premier Automation is an expert in HMI technology, and our team of engineers which can help select, program, and install HMI systems for your application.