With the advent of template / custom widgets in HABPanel (and for writing rules), there are several essential skills required to realise the power of it.
It seems that in order to master the functionality, knowledge of the following are required:
HTML
CSS
Javascript
Angular JS
Extend
I’m learning these in the order of the above (w3schools has some excellent material). Since learning all of these requires substantial time and effort it would be good to know where to focus.
And if you use the odd extension, like the EXEC binding, you need to understand shell commands; if you want to know what the computers are doing you need to know SNMP; to talk to devices you may need knowledge of RS232, or RS485; control devices with MQTT; and if you develop your own controllers, you will mostly likely talk C as well.
Then there is REST…
I don’t use HABpanel, Sitemaps and a browser does all I need.
So I’ve had to learn
oldstyle OH rules - essentially Xtend - purely from examples
Obviously, how to configure sitemaps, items, and bindings - from examples
Additionally I have modified someone else’s 5-line javascript tool and another’s 10-line Windows/DOS batch files, with a little googling, for some twiddly bits.
I’m sure It helped enormously having decades of exposure to “IT stuff” - the general terminology, networking and communication practicalities, where to find the ruddy logfiles, and so on. But you can get workable results with very little (which is admittedly different from mastering glamorous displays etc.).
