# Overview |

## Welcome to CSS!

CSS means Control System Studio. It is a common panel for various control system applications. For users, it serves as a single entry point for starting applications that use control systems as their backend. For developers, it is a plattform to write portable applications for various control systems.

This manual is intended for users of CSS and its applications.

### Historical Background

In 2005, Mr. Matthias Clausen from the DESY institute (Hamburg) had the idea to build a new controlling software system to overcome the existing software's shortcomings. Today's applications...

- ...are built on various technologies.
- ...differ in look and feel
- ...lack unified navigation
- ...require specific operating systems or backends
- ...are not built for collaboration (e.g. data exchange between applications)

### Technical Approach

We decided to implement the new CSS software on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Eclipse's plugin-architecture makes it relatively easy to extend the system with own features and functions. Due to the fact, that not all developers are firm in developing plugins for eclipse, we will provide extensive documentation and code tenplates to speed up development of new plugins.

If you want to get involved in developing plugins for the CSS you should check out the CSS Homepage.