The latest stable release of the info-beamer OS includes a new feature that allows content other than images and videos to be embedded into the rendering logic of info-beamer. The first package using this feature is an experimental chromium based browser package compatible with Pi4 and Pi5. Unlike the current “fullscreen browser” package, this one embeds natively into info-beamer, so you can use features like rendering browser content across two displays and do smooth transitions between two pages. And it is possible to mix browser content with other content like images and videos.
From the technical side, this browser uses the Chromium Embedded Framework, so a version of the chromium browser intended for embedding into other applications. The current info-beamer OS release supports a method of calling external programs to allow them to render content independently but injecting the output back into info-beamer. The browser uses that: Once it has started it renders the web page into its own buffer and then transfers that back to info-beamer which draws it onto the screen. It might even possible to have the browser itself use hardware acceleration for its own rendering, but that doesn’t work yet.
Currently the browser misses some of the features of the Fullscreen browser package like scripting and language settings, but they should be possible too. You can try out the browser by importing it into your account using this button:
