Workspace

The panels Motorcortex Desk is built from, how to rearrange them, and what the top bar does.

2 minute read

Desk is a dockable workspace: every part of the UI is a panel that can be re-tabbed, split, resized, floated, popped out into its own window, or closed. The layout is stored in the browser and restored on your next visit.

Quick start

Open Desk in the browser.
Type the controller’s hostname or IP in the Connection panel and click Connect.
Expand the Parameters tree and double-click any numeric parameter. It appears in the plot and in the Active list.
Hover the plot to read values off the cursor, and scroll to zoom.

Panels

Panel	Purpose
Connection	Connect to a controller, see the connection state
Replay	Load a prerecorded CSV file instead of a live connection
Parameters	Browse, search, write and lock controller parameters
Plot	The real-time plot — always present, cannot be closed
Active	The signals currently plotted: colour, axis, visibility, lock
View	Auto-follow, zoom, cursor, grid and pause
Measure	Point pairs and deltas
Export	CSV range export and continuous recording
Settings	Theme, renderer and plot appearance

By default Desk opens with Connection, Parameters, Plot, View, Export, Active and Settings visible. Measure and Replay start hidden — switch them on in the View menu.

Rearranging panels

Drag a tab onto another group to re-tab it, or onto an edge to split the layout.
Drop a tab away from any dock target to leave the panel floating over the workspace.
Click the ⧉ button in a tab to pop the panel out into a separate browser window — useful on a second monitor. The popped-out window has a Dock panel back button to return it.
Click the ⤢ button in the Plot tab to maximize the plot over the whole workspace; click it again to restore.
Drag the divider between two groups to resize them.

Top bar

Control	What it does
☰ App menu	Reset view (restore the default layout), Save layout… / Load layout… (layout to and from a JSON file)
▤ View menu	Show or hide the optional panels
⛶ Fullscreen	Toggle browser fullscreen

Reset view and Ctrl+Shift+R both return the workspace to the factory layout, including which panels are hidden.