I'm wondering what the Tactical Console will be like in Hero Lab Online. Will it even have a TC?
It could be a popup window in the web browser that overlays the main page, but more likely it would be a separate browser window so that it could be placed outside the boundaries of the main page.
How will it communicate with the HLO server? Will it be given raw information from the server (in JSON or XML?) and then be responsible for displaying it by itself? Or will the server pre-render HTML and send the result to the TC window for display?
If the former, then a little bit of monkey patching will be able to modify the way the window is displayed and how it functions
if the TC is sufficiently modular. For example, I use
GreaseMonkey with Firefox all the time to modify the page content on the fly. This lets me change how the HTML is displayed or how the JavaScript runs or how the CSS is used. I can add buttons, text fields, dropdown lists, and images to someone else's web page and I can then add my own functionality to those elements. I can place them within the <div>s that the original page already had, or I can create new div's and insert them where I want on the page.
I'm not likely to sign up for HLO (I don't like the idea of perpetual payments -- and yes, I know the whole world is going that route, but it doesn't mean I have to like it
). However, if the TC were sufficiently robust and, in places where it isn't, it were modular enough that I could add my own functionality, then it would be worth a look...
(Another thread discussing the TC is
here, but this thread seemed more technical and included a "wish list" of features on the first page.)