Screen sharing by selection does not work

[shamun]

General screen sharing seems to be working but the screen sharing by selection (see screenshot below) is not working. In Google Chrome Stable or Canary while sharing screen you get a selection dialog window where you can select which screen you want to share or which running application you want to share. That is missing in the current nodewebkit version last tested with 12(alpha).

[warrickhunter]

It seems Chrome's desktop capture API is not available in node-webkit.
Does anyone know if this or a similar API can be made available in node-webkit?
Perhaps make available a collection screens/windows etc with the streamId to pass to getUserMedia().

[shamun]

@warrickhunter: node-webkit works for desktop capture API.

The problem that i mentioned is about the small popup window in my screenshot (white window) you can see. That is only missing in node-webkit.

See the issue #576 where Roger Wang mentioned he is working on it, but there was no status/updates regarding that issue yet.

@rogerwang commented on Dec 3, 2014
Hi @jbescoyez , what do you mean by "window picker"? I'll look into it. Thanks.

[warrickhunter]

@shamun: yes I agree with you, the popup is missing. Just to clarify, I was referring to Chrome's desktop capture api which, in Chrome, is accessed by calling chrome.desktopCapture.chooseDesktopMedia(). chrome.desktopCapture is undefined in node-webkit.
Yes it is possible to capture the whole desktop by making the correct call to navigator.webkitGetUserMedia(), however there's no way that I know of to select a particular window/screen. It would be nice if this were added to node-webkit.
Perhaps there's some other OS level API which can gather information about screens/windows? I'm not involved in the development of node-webkit so I don't know where to start.

[shamun]

@warrickhunter: Roger wang was working on it i think.

have you seen his comment on issue #576 (posted on Dec 3, 2014), maybe he have it solved already but not yet committed for other dependencies issue.

[shamun]

What is the Status of this issue please?

[rogerwang]

This is planned to be fixed in nw13. But I'll try to fix it in nw12.

[shamun]

@rogerwang: thank you very much. looking forward to it. you are genius.

[jtg-gg]

@rogerwang I am half way doing it on OSX platform, shall I finish this ?

[rogerwang]

@jtg-gg please go ahead. thanks. looking forward to your implementation.

[redgecombe]

@rogerwang @jtg-gg
I had started implementing something around this as well for use in our app. My approach was, as suggested above, to add a JS API to allow for enumerating and selecting the windows and screens, rather than implement the chooseDesktopMedia API. I think I'm getting close, but it would be great if there was an officially supported API.

@jtg-gg, were you doing an API, or a full picker window?

Great project by the way, thanks.

[shamun]

@to all:

Many Thanks for your contribution. I want to suggest you guys one thing to consider regarding this issue.

(if its possible and easy for you guys else please ignore it.)

1 - Add the new window picker or running application picker just like Google Chrome/Canary does
2 - But also keep the old screen sharing like right now as it was implemented by Roger wang the reasons are as following

Scenario Storm (real life): Why keep method 1 (old) and method 2 (new):

Method 1 (OLD):

As it is now is very handy too in many scenarios.
when it comes to make applications using Python, Go, Java to launch the NodeWebKit on the fly and without ANY human/user input start the screen share and make applications like TEAMVIEWER or LOGMEIN or VNC

Method 2 (NEW which is upcoming soon):

New feature like Google Chrome, Canary has one disadvantage which i faced with some Bank application requirements.

In some BANK (Belgium banks) i need to make an application just like Roger Wang made as in Method 1, they want to execute our apps (Python, Java, Go application) and then simply start screen sharing which was impossible with Google Chrome, Canary because you need be human/real user clicking what to share (we need to automate it for there ATM Machines).

But Roger Wang made impossible to possible with his excellent Method 1 implementation.

So i think it will be wise programming to keep this both feature's
(Google Chrome, Canary do not listen to anyone properly they keep or cut or remove often, we found nodewebkit is a trusted and safe world for us, in a sense we are not breaking many things which were removed often by Google Chrome, Canary).

let us choose as third party programmers of nodewebkit to choose, which method (1 or 2) we nee to use, maybe for compatibility we can set the method 2 as default then it will be compatible with other Chrome, Canary applications.

Summary:

Therefore, is it possible we can keep the existing screen share as it is and if we need Window picker like Chrome we add some additional friendly parameters or so?

Both way of screen sharing has its own advantages, it will be smart programming if you guys keep as it is now and beside that include the new feature. Again please ignore if its too complicated and time consuming.

[jtg-gg]

@redgecombe I am porting google chrome screen picker UI, so it should behave exactly like chrome's screen picker

[jtg-gg]

I've just made a pull request #3163
@rogerwang please review, and merge if you are ok