Historymap in new window, side panel, or overlay?

[Yuu-Han]

Regarding the overlay idea (in case I forget):

• Injecting historymap into webpages using content script does NOT work, as it's not persistent (it disappears each time a new page is opened and loading)
• One feasible way is: render historymap in a desktop app, which supports overlay a transparent window on other apps (another benefit is, this would allow historymap to work for other apps beyond the browser)
  • Electron is a framework for building cross-platform apps (windows, macos, and linux) with javascript, html, and css
  • Create transparent windows. Here is a preview.
  • A template for using vite, vue 3, and typescript in electron
  • Quasar integrates electron and further supports web and mobile app

[kaidatavis]

I am a bit concerned about a desktop app, partly because of the size overhead and the development efforts needed (we are a super small team :-). I think tool like Electron effectively has the chromium inside, which can be a bit overkill for simple app.

Something similar is Tauri, which seems promising but I didn't get time to look into. There is more information on similar tools on State of JS (and many other libraries and tools that would distract you forever :-).

I don't remember if I mentioned this before: another thing we tried before is to have a remote server that stores all the data and do the visualisation, which can be left in separate tab. However, the lag between the server and browser can be considerable sometimes.