Make a board
Build a board for the spare screen in a shop or an office. Add clock, text, photo and timer pages, give each its own dwell time, and they cycle in turn. The finished board opens on another device from a link or a QR code.
Build here, show there
The board is built on this device and opened elsewhere through a link or QR code. The screen showing it needs nothing installed — a browser is enough. Your boards stay in this browser, so returning on the same device picks up where you left off.
Each page keeps its own timing
A menu that people need to read can sit for a while; a short notice can flash past. Leave a single page and it simply stays up as a fixed display.
Photos never reach a server
Images and text are handled inside the browser. Prices or staff notices you would rather not publish stay on this machine, and a shared link carries the board itself rather than uploading it.
Uploaded photos do not travel with the link
Photos and videos added on this device live only in the browser's own store and cannot be carried by a link. Those pages are left out when the link is made, so the recipient never sees an empty page — but do not be surprised that the photo pages are missing. To show photos on another device, use the address of a picture already on the web, or build the board on the device that will show it.
The address is the saved copy
With no server, an entire board is compressed into the part of the address after the #. That part is never sent to a server, so it does not appear in access logs. You can also download a file that opens the board on a double-click; it holds nothing but the address, so it is tiny and always runs the current player.
Different pages at different hours
Each page can be given hours of the day in which it appears. One board can cover a whole day — breakfast information in the morning, closing notice in the afternoon — and a span across midnight such as 22 to 6 works. The player also keeps the screen from sleeping, though if the device's own power settings win, you will need to turn those off.
There are eleven kinds of page
Clock, text, marquee, photo, video, free layout, countdown, timer, list, QR and blank. A clock can be digital, analogue or flip; a countdown counts the days to a date and, when it arrives, switches to a message you set. Free layout lets you drag text, boxes and pictures onto a page yourself; position and size are stored as percentages of the screen, so the page looks the same at any screen size.
A look sets colours, font and frame together
Asked to pick a background and a text colour separately, most people end up with white on black. So ten looks — Midnight, Ink and Gold, Neon, Paper and Ink and the rest — are bundled; picking one sets a two-tone background, a font and a frame at once. The edge margin defaults to 4%, because televisions still sometimes crop the picture's edge. Any page can also have colours of its own.
Common questions
Does the board stop if the internet drops?
A board already open keeps cycling, because the browser is doing the cycling. You do need a connection to open it the first time and to pick up changes.
Does it work on a screen turned portrait?
Yes — it stretches to whatever shape the showing screen is. A landscape photo on a portrait screen will leave bands above and below, so match your photos to the screen you plan to use.
Can several screens show the same board?
Open the same link on each of them. Each device runs its own cycle, so they will not turn pages at exactly the same moment.
Where do my boards live?
Under "My boards", stored in this browser only. Clearing browser data or switching devices leaves the list empty, so keep the link somewhere safe.
Can I show video?
An mp4 or webm file, or a YouTube address. Browsers block autoplay with sound, so video starts muted, and the video's length replaces the dwell time.
No QR code is produced.
The whole board travels inside the address, so with many pages or long text it will not fit in one QR code. The screen says so and offers copying the address or saving it as a file instead. Photos and videos are never carried by the link anyway, so shrinking them does not help — trim text pages or list lines instead.