Speaker
Description
At the Australian Synchrotron (ANSTO) we are currently transitioning our user-facing GUIs towards native web interfaces, while retaining our established Qt-based engineering GUIs for staff and engineers. We deliberately separate engineering UIs, built for low-level device interaction, diagnostics, and maintenance, from user-facing web GUIs designed for day-to-day experiment execution. Web-based GUIs are a natural fit for our beamline workflows that extend beyond controlling individual devices, spanning complex acquisition control, metadata capture, and downstream data processing pipelines. Our web applications are custom built to match beamline workflows, while sharing a common set of reusable components from our open-source GUI library. A key driver for the transition is operational efficiency and cyber security considerations: web GUIs can be deployed and updated centrally, enabling faster iteration and consistent behaviour for all users, and the underlying technology is well understood and supported by our cyber security team. Web GUIs also align naturally with remote access, supporting off-site experiments and hybrid user models while maintaining a familiar browser-based experience. This presentation describes our architecture, technology choices, and deployment model, and shares lessons learned from adopting web GUIs as a first-class interface for synchrotron beamlines.
