Takuya Matsuyama

Posted on Oct 4, 2021

Getting side-by-side preview in a terminal app Hyper

#hyper #electron #tutorial

Hi, it's Takuya.
I'm publishing YouTube content, sharing my dev workflows.

Want a side-by-side preview in a terminal app

For web coding tutorials, it'd be great to show your coding and output side-by-side.
Typically, you would do that by simply arranging two windows: An editor and a browser.
But that's annoying because every time you make a tutorial, you have to align the windows side-by-side.

Hyper, a terminal app built with web standards, once had a built-in webview feature:

As you can see above, it displays a preview on the right side of the terminal window.
It looks pretty neat.
So, you can make tutorials without having a separate window for preview.

But it looks like the feature has been removed for security reasons:

built-in hyperlinks alternative not working properly · Issue #2748 · vercel/hyper

It was 3 years ago, a quite old issue.
I understand the risk of loading web pages in Electron apps.
However, webview of the recent Electron prohibits NodeJS integration by default. So, I think it's safe to embed in Hyper, especially when you understand what you do.

Hacking Hyper to get back the built-in webview feature

So, I decided to get that feature back to Hyper, and successfully did it.
Here is how it looks like:

Demo video:

Takuya Matsuyama 🐾

@inkdrop_app

Now I can show you my web coding workflow without having a separate window for preview. Neat.

09:08 AM - 04 Oct 2021

How to build

I've made built-in-webview branch for the hack:

https://github.com/craftzdog/hyper/tree/built-in-webview

Clone this repo and built it yourself as following.

npm i
npm run dev
# On another terminal session
npm run app

How to use

Split the window right by pressing Cmd-D.
Then, type echo <URL-to-open> and hit Return.
Click the URL in the terminal.
Then, the pane becomes a webview that loads the URL.

How I hacked Hyper

Check out the diffs

First, you have to allow webview tags in app/ui/window.ts:

   const winOpts: BrowserWindowConstructorOptions = {
     minWidth: 370,
     minHeight: 190,
     backgroundColor: toElectronBackgroundColor(cfg.backgroundColor || '#000'),
     titleBarStyle: 'hiddenInset',
     title: 'Hyper.app',
     // we want to go frameless on Windows and Linux
     frame: process.platform === 'darwin',
     transparent: process.platform === 'darwin',
     icon,
     show: Boolean(process.env.HYPER_DEBUG || process.env.HYPERTERM_DEBUG || isDev),
     acceptFirstMouse: true,
     webPreferences: {
       nodeIntegration: true,
       navigateOnDragDrop: true,
       enableRemoteModule: true,
-      contextIsolation: false
+      contextIsolation: false,
+      webviewTag: true
     },
     ...options_
   };

Hyper partially remains the old implementations. You can reuse them.
The terminal component already has url prop.
You can display webview when the component has url prop.

In lib/components/term.tsx, change the terminal component class like so:

@@ -430,18 +436,35 @@ export default class Term extends React.PureComponent<TermProps> {
         style={{padding: this.props.padding}}
         onMouseUp={this.onMouseUp}
       >
-        {this.props.customChildrenBefore}
-        <div ref={this.onTermWrapperRef} className="term_fit term_wrapper" />
-        {this.props.customChildren}
-        {this.props.search ? (
-          <SearchBox
-            search={this.search}
-            next={this.searchNext}
-            prev={this.searchPrevious}
-            close={this.closeSearchBox}
+        {this.props.url ? (
+          <webview
+            src={this.props.url}
+            style={{
+              background: '#fff',
+              position: 'absolute',
+              top: 0,
+              left: 0,
+              display: 'inline-flex',
+              width: '100%',
+              height: '100%'
+            }}
           />
         ) : (
-          ''
+          <>
+            {this.props.customChildrenBefore}
+            <div ref={this.onTermWrapperRef} className="term_fit term_wrapper" />
+            {this.props.customChildren}
+            {this.props.search ? (
+              <SearchBox
+                search={this.search}
+                next={this.searchNext}
+                prev={this.searchPrevious}
+                close={this.closeSearchBox}
+              />
+            ) : (
+              ''
+            )}
+          </>
         )}

         <style jsx global>{`

And, change the URL click handler to dispatch an action instead of opening up the page in an external browser:

@@ -160,7 +160,13 @@ export default class Term extends React.PureComponent<TermProps> {
       this.term.loadAddon(
         new WebLinksAddon(
           (event: MouseEvent | undefined, uri: string) => {
-            if (shallActivateWebLink(event)) void shell.openExternal(uri);
+            // if (shallActivateWebLink(event)) void shell.openExternal(uri);
+            // eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/no-unsafe-call
+            store.dispatch({
+              type: 'SESSION_URL_SET',
+              uid: props.uid,
+              url: uri
+            });
           },
           {
             // prevent default electron link handling to allow selection, e.g. via double-click

In lib/reducers/sessions.ts, add the reducer for SESSION_URL_SET like so:

@@ -11,7 +11,8 @@ import {
   SESSION_SET_XTERM_TITLE,
   SESSION_SET_CWD,
   SESSION_SEARCH,
-  SESSION_SEARCH_CLOSE
+  SESSION_SEARCH_CLOSE,
+  SESSION_URL_SET
 } from '../constants/sessions';
 import {sessionState, session, Mutable, ISessionReducer} from '../hyper';

@@ -129,6 +130,9 @@ const reducer: ISessionReducer = (state = initialState, action) => {
       }
       return state;

+    case SESSION_URL_SET:
+      return state.setIn(['sessions', action.uid, 'url'], action.url);
+
     default:
       return state;
   }

It works like a charm!

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Latest comments (17)

Cuong Vo • Dec 20 '23

Hi Takuya, I came across your post and did as your guide but I had trouble with the node version which crashed the build step. Could you tell me the exactly version of nodejs for your hyper fork. Thanks

Francisco Castro A. • Mar 3 '23

I have problems with the dependencies as I have 23 vulnerabilities and I tried to solve them but I could not, someone could or there is a tutorial on youtube?

Muhammad Mu'in Mundzir • Mar 3 '23

Did anyone have trying it on Ubuntu and works? Wondering how to make it work since I can't install it properly, got node-pty error

ᴹᵃᵈᵉ ᵒⁿ ᴱᵃʳᵗʰ ᵇʸ ʰᵘᵐᵃⁿˢ. • Jan 31 '23 • Edited

for who ever fail to compile try to disable typescript check
with put
// @ts-nocheck at the top level
to all over error file that printed when run dev, because it used old version and we just want the feature so i think is fair. Then after notice run dev got no error u safe to go with run app. Hopes help y'all have a nice day!

And for windows it should works fine or you can build by ur self it maybe just a little confusing for some newcomers but do a little bit research and it will solved.