Clickable source links in generated decks (+ optional tall-PNG export idea)

Author: kitchen-engineer42Created Jun 24, 2026Updated Jun 24, 2026

Hi — first off, thanks for frontend-slides. It's become the backbone of an automated daily-brief deck I generate and share as a single self-contained HTML, and it's genuinely great. Two small things from real-world use; the second is just a suggestion and entirely your call.

1. Generated decks render source/citation URLs as plain text (not clickable)

SKILL.md and html-template.md don't mention rendering in-content URLs as <a href>, so generated decks show source/citation links as plain text. When a deck is shared as HTML or deployed (Phase 6: deploy-to-URL / PDF / email), viewers can't actually click through to the sources — a footgun for any citation-heavy deck (research briefs, link roundups, talks with references).

Suggested fix: add a generation requirement — e.g. in html-template.md ("Required JS/HTML features") or SKILL.md Phase 3 ("Key requirements") — that any URL/citation be a real anchor:

xml
<a href="https://…" target="_blank" rel="noopener"></a>

styled visibly (a small .link a rule + a affordance reads well). Small change, big quality-of-life for shared decks.

2. (Optional — only if you feel it fits the tool) a tall-PNG "scrolling poster" export

Use case: recipients often read on a phone in a chat app, where scrolling one tall image is far more convenient than navigating a 16:9 deck. Stacking each 1920×1080 stage vertically into a single tall PNG works really well for sharing.

If you think it belongs here, I'd be happy to contribute it — it can be zero-dependency (headless Chrome screenshots the slides stacked via a temporary CSS override, then downscale; no Pillow/ImageMagick needed). But I completely understand if it's out of scope or you'd rather keep the skill focused on the decks themselves — just flagging the use case in case it's useful to others too.

Thanks again for the great work!

Source: zarazhangrui/frontend-slides