Displaying HTML without BrightAuthor

1 Simple Webpage Script
2 Portrait Orientation
3 Displaying Scrollbars
4 Mobile Scrollbars

There are two methods to display HTML without BrightAuthor.

You can play an HTML page from the local storage without an autorun script by placing the index.html file (along with other files and folders containing the page content) into the root folder of the player storage.
You can use BrightScript to display local or remote HTML content. The sections below pertain to using the roHtmlWidget BrightScript object to display HTML. To learn more about BrightScript, see the BrightScript section.

Simple Webpage Script

The simple script outlined below displays a webpage stored on a remote server. Save this script as an autorun.brs file, place it on an SD card, and publish it to the player.

If you want to display a webpage located on local storage, replace the "http://www.brightsign.biz" URL on line 4 with the filename of the .html file: "file:///mytestpage.html"

Notice that the script has a Sleep(10000) line. This line delays loading of the web URL–this is necessary to compensate for connection delays that may occur on your network. If you don’t use this script, the BrightSign player may not connect in time to load the page, resulting in a “cannot resolve host” error, which indicates that the player does not have an Internet connection. In certain network configurations, especially when the player utilizes DHCP, you may need to increase the sleep amount (in milliseconds) to give the player more time to establish a connection before loading the page.

Parameters for the roHtmlWidget are defined in an associative array, which is then passed during object creation. See the roHtmlWidget page for more information on creating and configuring an HTML widget.

Sub Main()
msgPort = CreateObject("roMessagePort")
r = CreateObject("roRectangle", 0, 0, 1920, 1080)
 
config = {
url: "http://www.brightsign.biz",
}
h = CreateObject("roHtmlWidget", r, config)
h.SetPort(msgPort)
sleep(10000)
h.Show()
while true
	msg = wait(0, msgPort)
	print "type(msg)=";type(msg)
	if type(msg) = "roHtmlWidgetEvent" then
		eventData = msg.GetData()
		if type(eventData) = "roAssociativeArray" and type(eventData.reason) = "roString" then
			print "reason = ";eventData.reason
			if eventData.reason = "load-error" then
				print "message = ";eventData.message
			endif
		endif
	endif
end while
End Sub

Portrait Orientation

To rotate the contents of an HTML page, include the transform parameter when creating the roHtmlWidget object: For clockwise portrait orientation, use transform:"rot90"; for counter-clockwise portrait orientation, use transform:"rot270". If you're using the above simple webpage script, you can add this parameter to the config associative array on line 7.

Displaying Scrollbars

Browser scrollbars are disabled by default. They can be enabled by including the scrollbar_enabled:true parameter when creating the roHtmlWidget object. If you're using the above simple webpage script, you can add scrollbar_enabled:true to the config associative array on line 7.

You can also enable scrollbars using CSS (for example, by referencing the simple CSS file below).

Mobile Scrollbars

Browser scrollbars default to desktop style (i.e. more prominent and visible at all times). You can configure the Chromium instance for mobile-style scrollbars (i.e. less prominent and only visible when scrolling) by writing the overlay-scrollbar entry to the html section of the registry.

htmlRegistry = CreateObject("roRegistrySection", "html")
htmlRegistry.Write("overlay-scrollbar", "1")