Digital Workshop

Hi, I created a basic Kiosk browser in Opus Pro (bought it at last!) for the school I now work for.
This is for parent use in the foyer, this works perfectly at home under XP, when I take it in to the school network, I get the message "the internet browser is not available" in the window of the browser object.

IE 7 is set as the default at home and work, the schools page can be seen at the workstation I am trying to run this on in IE. So I cant see it as being a proxy server issue, by pass for local addresses is also enabled.

Having searched these forums, the only only similar topic I found was Vista related.

I have read that Opus uses an activex control from IE, but I cant understand why this wont work, when IE does on the target machine.

Please note, I am logged in as a local admin.

Be grateful for any input.

Many thanks, Kurt

OK, after much playing I discovered that the ILMOle.dll was required for this to work. Have I missed something in the build options?

On a browser related query, is there anyway of redirecting pages that open in new windows, to be displayed in the same browser object, being a kiosk app I can't have a new window in IE being launched!

Many thanks, Kurt

I'm watching this thread w/ interest, to learn some bits. Not bringing any real experience of this though.


Isn't that a bit contradictory? My first thought is to publish it as a Web Pub. But I suspect that counters the idea of a kiosk interface/control environment.

What do you 'get' with new windows... that Multiframe, Frames, or other methods don't do?

Perhaps share a little more of your design/layout thinking?

Hi Lar_123, thanks for your interest. Yes - I realise the new window problem may seem contradictory, however I have recently joined a school and offered to build them a kiosk browser for parents and children in the foyer area, this pc is well and truly locked down, as it is on the school network.

It shows the school website, which has links to parents info and students portal areas, these would usually open in a new window on a standard pc, being a locked down pc I cant have IE launching new windows when I have deliberatly locked everthing else down.

The obvious solution is to re-code the website so that this is avoided, unfortunately it is a content managed site which would be impossible to back port these kind of changes. I was hoping for some kind of 'force new window to open in current browser' tick box

In all seriousness, I am contemplating a fudge so that the kiosk browser stays in the foreground, any opened windows should sit behind and ignored, our pc's are set to automatically shut down overnight, I am hoping for a more elegant solution.

Thanks for your interest. I am willing to share the source, but would have to remove any school logos.

Cheers, Kurt

kurt,

Any chance this is simply a matter of adjusting some settings for IE on that machine? ( I wanted to add attachment -- screen clip of IE7 Settings, but hiccup here... so just check IE 'internet options' >>> Tab Navigation or such. Can force 'new Tab' or 'same Window' there POSSIBLY )
I'm wondering how much of these application-settings Opus Browser window would "inherit".

Hi Kurt,

Congratulations on the new job.

I might be way off track here, but I think that 3rd party applications like Opus access the Trident Engine which is used by MS to render webpages. IE itself is simply a shell and uses this. In which case, I'd assume that it was up to the 3rd party application how the engine was implemented which means that settings in IE are relevant to IE only and as Opus does not contain any way of controlling pop-ups there seems little you can do.

As I said, I might be off track on how it works and the DW developers can advise better. I'm simply going on what I know about other 3rd party applications and how they implement the engine.

Also IMHO, I'd avoid your fudge as it won't be apparent to end users what is happening and I can foresee users repeatedly clicking links which appear dead but are hidden and spawning multiple windows. If you do decide on this approach - I think there is a kill process DLL installed with version 6 that might kill the iexpore process and keep the windows down. Never actually used this, or even sure if you can use it for this as we have a custom DLL for that job.

It's probably also worth considering that both IE and FF have the ability to operating in kiosk mode.

Just my two pence worth.

Mack

Hi mackavi, re: job,thanks!

I had seen the kill process dll, when I installed the new 6.4, I'll look into that.
I had assumed (maybe wrongly) that the F11 toggle in IE was the kiosk mode, we cant have students wandering off to places they shouldn't, however if there's another kiosk mode I wasn't aware of I will look into this next week.

I did it in Opus to have control over branding and virtually no buttons at all.

Many thanks all.

Kurt

Use iexplore -k www.microsoft.com

This does not disabled alt tab / ctrl-alt-del but this could be done outside of IE.

This doesn't stop people shutting down IE (like you can in Opus) but oddly, you could use this in reverse and have an Opus publication running that checks that the kiosk is still running and relaunch it if somebody has shut it down.

Mack