Built-in web browser

Software
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Zynthian has a dedicated graphical user interface supporting touch, mouse, keyboard and rotary encoders. It also has a web interface for configuration and some extended workflows, e.g. naming patches. Furthermore it provides a web interface for other elements like MOD. It may be advantageous to provide access to the web interface from a built-in web browser. This could render to HDMI if the main GUI is using a dedicated screen or could render to a virtual console if there is only one screen available, e.g. HDMI in use for main GUI. A lightweight constrained (kiosk) web browser may be advantageous to allow the user web access without worrying about desktops, etc.

Thoughts?

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If you find something that works in parallel to the xserver zynthian-ui, we will gladly integrate it.
You are not the first one having that idea

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Hi @riban,

my experiences with a browser (Chrome) as Web-Gui on a HDMI display are not so good. Such a browser takes up a lot of resources (especially memory). This might work, but I think the playability of the Zynthian might suffer quite a bit.

Alternatively, a second Raspi with touch display, on-screen keyboard, a switch and a few Ethernet cables would be a possibility - although a more expensive and somewhat cumbersome one.

Regards, Holger

P.S.: I tried this a year ago with only MOD-UI and Chrome on the same machine (with a HDMI touch display)… as I said: this was not really comfortable…

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Maybe a CEF embedded somewhere in the Zynthian could work?

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I wouldn’t countenance the use of Chrome. It is far too bloated. I will try some solutions and see if I can get something working that we can benchmark. It only needs to serve our webpage so if there is anything that needs tweaking to make it work, that is within our gift. (Maybe MOD-UI might be an issue.) Leave it with me for a few weeks :thinking:.

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