All web HMIs and apps created with WebIQ are single-page web applications (single-page application, SPA for short).

Usually when you go from let’s say this page to the page “Case Studies” in the navigation bar the whole content of the website will be replaced by the contents of the new website. For normal websites this is acceptable behavior. However, if a website (like a web HMI) is used for a long time from minutes to hours, weeks and months reloading the whole content whenever you just want to change a small part of the website (like updating some widget status) would just be not efficient, waste time and energy.

For such cases – the probably best known would be Google’s GMAIL – single-page applications (SPA) have been developed that only load and change certain parts of the website whenever the user does something. This gives the impression of being usable just as any normal application like Microsoft Word on the local system and as such eliminating the border between installed applications and web applications.

SPAs also store the application status in the Web client. This enables applications with a large number of content pages and areas similar in design to established desktop apps.

In addition to WebIQ, many well-known web frameworks are based on SPA architecture, e.g. Angular, React, Knockout, Vue and many more. And many services like Office 365 in the browser, GMAIL and many backend interfaces of web-based services are nowadays all realized as SPAs.