bs-tal

BrowserSync TAL Plugin

Plugin that provides client-side scripts for BrowserSync, supporting the transimission of key events to any TAL application.

What is TAL?

TAL was developed internally within the BBC as a way of vastly simplifying TV application development whilst increasing the reach of BBC TV applications such as iPlayer. Today all of the BBC's HTML-based TV applications are built using TAL.

What does BrowserSync give us?

BrowserSync (with these TAL addons) allows us to launch a TAL application on a number of remote devices, and then remote-control those devices via a desktop browser.

Use cases

• Live feedback of CSS or JS changes
• Regression testing prior to a release
• Explorative testing, discovering differences between different devices.

* Support for device-to-device controlling would be interesting too *

How do I get it setup?

Install BrowserSync:

npm install -g browser-sync

Install the BrowserSync TAL plugin:

npm install -g https://github.com/rosswilson/browser-sync-tal.git

Create a config file (you could check this into your application codebase):

# browser-sync.js
module.exports = {
    "proxy": "www.my.application.com",
    "plugins": [
        "bs-tal"
    ]
};

Run BrowserSync:

browser-sync start --config browser-sync.js

Point remote devices at http://YOUR_IP:3000 (e.g. from your TVX page) - this is echoed out in your terminal for convenience. Any keypresses received by the application running on your computer (Chrome/Firefox) will be sent over the network to all connected remote devices.

Prerequisites

Currently the plugin calls InputApi.keypress(talKeyCode) which is expected to be globally available on the remote device. This is a small function that receives a talKeyCode (e.g. VK_UP or VK_LEFT) and bubbles a TAL KeyEvent event.