>On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Maria Economou wrote:

>> We are preparing a set of HyperCard stacks for an interactive kiosk at an
>> exhibition organized by the Ashmolean Museum. We were advised to use At
>> Ease to secure our hard disc during the exhibition, so that visitors cannot
>> mess up the hard disc files whenever the computer crashes.

We have successfully used HyperCard for an interactive kiosk. We set the
program to load on start-up and hide the menu bar. The visitor was allowed
to use a mouse but not a keyboard. It ran smoothly once I turned off all
the system extensions, and I avoided the use of the modal dialog boxes that
require the user to click ok before continuing. I found that if someone
left the kiosk when there was a dialog box open the system would hang after
a few minutes. I also set an internal timer to reset the program to the
introductory screen after a few minutes of inactivity. All in all, once
debugged the system worked very well. Kids loved it, and those who had
never used a mouse before got the hang of it in about 30 seconds. I also
placed internal counters on the various cards so I could tell if the users
were getting to the cards I wanted them to.

Another program to consider for interactivity is Netscape. It runs on a
local network as well as on the Internet, and with the appropriate helper
applications can play video and sound. Once the in-house system is
fine-tuned, unleash it to the world.

Jim Swanson                [log in to unmask]
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
Banff,Alberta              http://www.digitalbanff.com/db/