Jim Angus <[log in to unmask]> wrote in article <v01530505af2a431c1557@[204.140.246.62]>... > > > >>Does anyone know of a variation (a hacked version) of Netscape (or another > >>browser) that has some features disabled, features such as: > >> > >>1. The menu bar > >>2. The ability to quit > >> > >>Even better, is anyone aware of a web browser that prevents desktop access > >>entirely when running? (we can use At Ease to limit desktop access) > > Nobody here seems to have mentioned that the Windows 95 versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer (I don't know about Mac versions) both have an inbuilt but scarcely documented 'kiosk mode', which is extremely simple to call up. This also worked with a couple of old versions of Mosaic which I tried. You just start the browser using the RUN command, adding -k at the end of the command line. The computer can easily be configured to do this each time it is switched on. The browsers start up with (almost) nothing visible apart from the HTML display produced by the default start-up URL you have set up using the appropriate configuration options. This is potentially great, because users can't get out to the Windows desktop PROVIDED that you don't let them use the keyboard. UNFORTUNATELY, there are just a couple of rather irritating snags to be aware of. Netscape still displays the blue title bar at the top of the screen, which is just great because anybody can touch or click the top right hand corner and exit the browser . . . and get onto the desktop. So that's no use for our purposes unless each monitor is carefully adjusted so that the title bar disappears off the top of the screen. Hardly an elegant solution. Internet Explorer behaves rather better, with no title bar. Its only annoying feature is that it insists on displaying a vertical scroll bar down the side of the screen, even when your HTML is carefully written so as not to require scrolling. The rather dated old Mosaic browser actually behaves better than either of these others in these respects! But it won't do anything fancy like Web pages with Java features etc. Having sorted that out, you now have to think about the way users are going to navigate around the Web pages you are introducing them to. You've gone and removed the BACK button etc, so users can only click or touch the hypertext links included in the Web pages. Quite a few software firms have produced special browsers specifically for public internet access using touch-screen displays. They typically have their own set of special buttons: BACK, FORWARDS, SCROLL etc. but these do take up some screen-space. Regarding 'internet security' and 'inappropriate material' as well the even more obvious problem of users simply 'wandering off and getting lost out there', there's a lot to be said for downloading selected Web pages from the internet and letting visitors access these 'locally' from the computer's hard disc. You can update these regularly, and only appropriate links from them will be enabled. Several pieces of software exist for doing this, such as Web Whacker for example. This 'free' material could usefully be displayed alongside your own specially written, locally stored Web pages. As a company specialising in popular interpretation of scientific subjects this new medium is of great interest to us. We are science centre and interpretive exhibition designers rather than computer boffins, but we do know lots of ways of USING information technology to communicate appealingly with people. (Pardon the sales message!) I hope this information has been useful. -- Ian Russell [log in to unmask] Interactive Science Ltd http://www.interactives.co.uk