Question about displaying HTML messages over web/app via REST API

[apgu-blip]

Hello Valentin,

First of all, thank you for the new REST API functionality, it’s been very useful for integrating our tablet with our systems.

We are trying to display occasional messages over the web/app content on the tablet, for example for special days or internal announcements. Ideally, these messages would:

Support HTML or rich formatting (colors, fonts, icons).

Appear on top of the regular content without interfering with normal web/app navigation.

Remain visible even if the web page reloads or the DOM is dynamically replaced.

We have tried using JS injection (/api/js) to create overlays or modify the DOM, but in our web app and it hasn’t worked. We suspect this is because the page uses shadow DOM or frequently replaces the DOM, so the elements we try to inject are removed or not rendered.

Currently, we are using /api/toast to display floating messages, which works reliably, but it only supports plain text and lasts a few seconds, which limits more elaborate message presentation.

We would like to know:

Is there a way to display HTML or rich messages via the FreeKiosk REST API, so they remain visible on top of the web/app content?

Are there any recommended methods or overlay features we could use for this purpose?

If not currently available, could this be considered for future versions?

Thank you in advance for your help and for the great tool.

Best regards,

[mrtncode]

Apart from the fact that the maintainer is very active here and would probably be happy to implement such a feature, how about hosting the HTML page internally and changing the URL via Rest API?

[apgu-blip]

Hi! Thank you very much for your suggestion! I understand what you mean about hosting an HTML page internally and changing the URL via the REST API and add the html personalizations…

I’m not a programmer, but I’ll try to look into it and see if I can make it work, as it seems like a good way to show more elaborate messages.

Thanks for your help!

Best regards,

Victor

[valentingomy]

Hello @apgu-blip

I will look into adding a native overlay feature to solve this properly!
In the meantime, the solution suggested by @mrtncode is a good workaround.

I'll keep you posted here.

Best,
Valentin