NW Screensaver

A web screensaver platform built with nw.js supporting epic multi-monitor fullscreen and transparency.

Add as many screensavers as you want. You can find some cool ones on the wiki.

When there's a <canvas> on the page, other elements are automatically hidden. It'll also look for an <iframe> and fullscreen that in order to support jsfiddles, waybackmachine etc.

You can show hidden elements and interact with the page by holding Ctrl.

Install and Run

There's no simple scr download yet, so these instructions are really for development:

1. Install Node.js if you don't have it already (it comes with npm)
2. Clone the repo
3. Open up a command prompt or terminal in the repo directory
4. Run npm install or npm i to install
5. Run npm start to launch it

Todo

• Windows screensaver

  • Auto-update (try to use nwjs-autoupdater)
  • Exit faster (I think the lag might be fixed since updating nw!)
  • Edit version info for the scr file (Product Name in particular, as it's used as the name of the screensaver; currently the screensaver shows up as "Node.js")
  • Provide download for the scr file

• Add some screenshots to this README (or a photo to really show off the dual-screeny goodness; maybe a video?)

• A Browse button for adding local web pages as screensavers

• Disable cycling between screensavers while interacting with one

• Maybe make the shortcut to interacting be "tap Ctrl to toggle" (that way you can interact with the page while not holding a modifier key which interferes with some things, like currently you can't scroll because it zooms instead)

• Streamline the settings window / screensaver window flow (probably merge the two windows!)

• Per-screensaver setting to disable hiding elements?

• Automatic offline support? (Maybe some crazy hack like forcefully injecting a service worker to cache pages?? Or maybe using the chrome.webRequest API?)

• Show thumbnails of screensavers by capturing the image of the page, and have a really nice animation/experience for updating it.

  • When you hover over the image, it captures a new thumbnail, animates the old up and to the side and smaller (for comparison), and lets you click to replace the image.

• Some cool integration ideas (with obvious privacy concerns):

  • Make screen bounds available to the webpage, so it can make stuff bounce around off them.
  • Give windows depth in a 3d scene
  • Let webpages access screen captures, use for
    • Env maps in a 3d scene
    • Screensavers involving transformations of the desktop
      • The classic "Science" screensaver
      • Something with smearing
      • Something with folding
    • Things that bounce around on the screen, interacting not simply with the bounds but with the contents of the screen.
  • Or, for starters, let webpages access the desktop background (with wallpaper)