Webpage as screensaver

**fejoiwan** · September 27th, 2015

hi everyone

I'm trying to get xscreensaver to display a website. I know of a few approaches that have been done but none of them worked out for me. I tried the webkit-based webscreensaver by lmartinking:
https://github.com/lmartinking/webscreensaver

This just made my screen black and displayed me an error message:

Code:

Vector smash protection is enabled

The webpage itself was not visible. So based on the approach using an old opera version found here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=883823
I decided to build my own thing based on the midori browser. I edited my ~/.xscreensaver file and added:

Code:

"WebSaver" midori -e Fullscreen -a http://my.website.com \n\

under programms. It shows up in the menu but on activation the screen just turns black. However, when I move the mouse to get back to the OS, the website shows up for a very short period of time - so I guess it can't be all wrong. Besides, when i run the command in a terminal, the website shows up and works properly. The terminal is once again displaying the message

Code:

Vector smash protection is enabled

Anyone has an idea on that? I hope my approach could be useful to other people trying the same thing.

**Bucky Ball** · September 27th, 2015

Thread moved to General Help.

Welcome. Why are you not using the commands given on the link in the order they are given? Under programs in your xscreensaver file:

Code:

webscreensaver                  \n\

Then set the url with:

Code:

-url <url_to_the_page_you_want>

I'm thinking your command might look more like:

Code:

webscreensaver \n\ -url http://my.website.com

The order might be different, but it would only be the order of the two parts of the command:

Code:

webscreensaver -url http://my.website.com \n\

The command in your post has no '-url' before the url address which would cause issues. Not sure if you would need the 'Fullscreen' command.

PS: Just had another look at the webscreensaver page. It is incredibly old in software terms and hasn't been maintained in three and a half years. Perhaps that's why it isn't working on a currently supported OS.

**fejoiwan** · September 27th, 2015

As I said, I tried using webscreensaver. I used it with

Code:

webscreensaver -url http://my.website.com \n\

This just turned my screen black with a little yellow message in the top left corner stating

Code:

Vector smash protection is enabled

And yes, I saw the age. That's partially why I decided to try an approach based on the Midori browser - since the approach based on Opera was very old too and the current version of Opera is not supporting the needed switches.

**Bucky Ball** · September 27th, 2015

Then try the other way:

Code:

webscreensaver \n\ -url http://my.website.com

That is the order they come on the link.

Doesn't matter what browser you use, it is still three and a half years advanced from last time this relic got some TLC. Midori now is Midori 2015, not 2012.

Good luck with it and hope someone has some ideas.

**fejoiwan** · September 27th, 2015

Just to clarify: The approach with midori is competely separate from webscreensaver - which I try not to use at all because of it's age.

**Bucky Ball** · September 27th, 2015

Ah ha. Sorry about that. I'll take a look.

* Looked. An even older method. Once again, good luck with it.

**fejoiwan** · September 27th, 2015

I looked a little further and found a solution I can live with. Using a screenlet as described in
http://askubuntu.com/questions/26017...ome-background
is not exactly as pretty but doing the job from me. Thanks for your time!