Why we built pixl
Because the sequencer lived on one machine, and the show did not.
Anyone who runs a pixel show knows the shape of November. The sequencer is on the desktop in the office. The idea for the next song arrives on the couch, at work, or standing in the yard looking at the display. The laptop does not have xLights installed, or has an older version, or has the files from two weeks ago. So you wait until you are back at the right machine.
pixl started as the answer to that. If the sequencer is a web page, then any machine with a browser is the right machine. Your layout, your sequences and your audio are in one place, saved as you work, with a snapshot history when you need to go back. Two people can open the same project.
What being in a browser makes possible
- No install, no version. Open the page and you are on the current one. A friend helping with your show does not need to set anything up.
- Files that look after themselves. Autosave on every change. Snapshots you can restore. Nothing to back up by hand.
- Things a server can do for you. Automatic lyric timing listens to the song for you. The shader assistant writes and compiles a new effect from a sentence. Both need a service behind them, and a web app has one.
- Panels that behave like windows. Drag, pin, resize, or pop a panel out into a second browser window on your other screen.
What we gave up
Speed, mostly. A browser is a fine place to draw a preview, but a desktop program with a decade of native rendering work behind it will always render a big show faster. Effect breadth, too: xLights has far more effects, and years of edge cases handled in each. If you have a large show and a machine you are happy at, desktop xLights is the better tool, and we say so on its own page.
Open, on purpose
xLights is open source under the GPL, and its community is a big part of why the hobby is what it is. pixl uses the same licence. The whole thing is on GitHub: read it, run it locally, host it for your club, or send a fix. Here is how to run your own.