Documentation

UI Basics

Osprio View uses a single shell with multiple workspace tabs. Understanding the shell matters because close behavior, device ownership, and diagnostics all live there rather than inside individual pages.

Top shell layout ​

  • The top tab strip holds workspace tabs such as Capture, Emulator, Provisioner, Conformance, Serial Monitor, Help, and App Switcher.
  • Tabs are long-lived sessions, not just page links.
  • The active tab can change without tearing down the others.
  • Help and saved-capture tabs can stay open while hardware tabs continue to exist beside them.

Tab lifecycle ​

Each tab has mode-specific close behavior.

  • Capture tabs can block close while capture is running or unsaved data exists.
  • Emulator tabs can block close while emulation is running.
  • Closing a Serial Monitor tab closes its port and discards that tab's in-memory byte log.
  • A Capture tab reviewing a saved .ovb is read-only and usually closes without side effects.
  • Returning to the workspace picker is different from closing the tab: the shell resets the session back to the wizard state and performs the required cleanup first.

If hardware disappears during a session, the shell keeps the tab and marks the workspace orphaned instead of dropping the user back to a blank state.

Global controls ​

The main menu is shared by every workspace. It provides:

  • sign-in and account actions
  • the Help Center
  • diagnostics and debug logging
  • light and dark theme controls
  • replay of the app tour

These controls apply to the whole shell, not only the active tab.

Theme controls ​

Use the theme control in the main menu to move between light and dark themes. The selected theme applies across all open tabs.

App tour ​

The first-run tour introduces the tab strip, workspace chooser, device selection, Help Center, and main menu. It has layouts for desktop and narrow screens. Closing the tour remembers that choice; use Show app tour in the main menu to replay it later.

Installation and updates ​

The web build includes an installable web-app manifest and an automatically updating service worker. When the browser offers installation, you can add Osprio View as an app; availability and the exact install control depend on the browser and operating system. A deployed web update is picked up automatically by the service worker.

The desktop build checks for Osprio View updates through its native updater. When a release is available, the app shows its version and release notes before installation, reports download progress, and relaunches into the installed version. Device-firmware updates are separate: those remain device actions in the relevant hardware flow.

Diagnostics ​

Diagnostics is the shared runtime console for the whole application.

You can use it to:

  • inspect runtime and device-operation logs
  • turn debug logging on or off
  • copy logs together with environment details
  • clear the console before reproducing an issue

The shell is the main subscriber for structured device-operation failures, so diagnostics is where cross-workspace USB and session problems show up.

Practical navigation pattern ​

For most debugging sessions, the useful pattern is:

  1. Keep one operational tab open for capture, emulator, or serial work.
  2. Open help tabs when you need reference material.
  3. Open saved .ovb files in a separate Capture tab without disturbing the live session.
  4. Use diagnostics as the shared place to verify what happened across those tabs.