Allowing interaction with a second window without breaking full-screen in the first?

Question

I want to build a web-based presentation tool with a PowerPoint-like "presenter view" for the second monitor. I can use the HTML5 full screen API (example) to put the main presentation in fullscreen, but that seems to preclude interacting with the controller window on the other screen. Is there any way to interact with webpage windows on two different monitors when one of them is fullscreen?

Details: Chrome and Safari on OS X use Lion's native fullscreen mode, which is well-known to be broken for multiple monitors (e.g., 1, 2) -- all other monitors just display grey, and you can't even drag a tab to a different display. Firefox 11 just makes an ordinary full-screen window (thank you!), but drops full-screen when you click on any other window.

This is so close to working, and yet so far...

Blida

Note that there's one case that seems to work: have both the presentation page and controller page open in tabs in Firefox, make that window fullscreen from the menubar or F11, then drag the controller tab to your other monitor. I'll use that for now, but it seems fragile, and wish me luck explaining that to users. – Blida

Did you find a solution for this? I'm also seeking some kind of "multi-monitor API" for web pages – Feigin

"Church Web Presenter" seems to have figured out some parts of this: developer.mozilla.org/ca/demos/detail/church-web-presenter -- but it still requires changing a pref. – Blida

see https://mcmap.net/q/355856/-what-needs-to-be-done-to-make-multiple-screen-support-for-javascript-happen for the W3C presentation api solution in chrome66+ – Verticillaster

Answer 1

This is exactly what I'm trying to do but can't seem to work anything out. I've also tried using flash on the 2nd monitor but when it loses focus by going to monitor 1 the fullscreen is gone.

From what I understand this is a security issue. Fair enough.. but surely there is a way.. maybe silverlight or java?

I think you can do it in an AIR app but I want to run this thing right from a browser.

Precept

Answer 2

Some javascript presentation libraries like reveal.js already support presentation notes where you open the presentation in the secondary screen and set it full screen, then open a presenter view and put it on the main screen.

Firefox have a bug that turns off full screen when it's loses focus, to fix that check this tip: just full-screen-api.exit-on-deactivate to false in about:config.

Maccarthy