A kiosk is an information screen that the user can control; but the user cannot access the computer behind it. This is useful for providing information in museums and libraries for example. One way to set one up on a Linux system is to make a user called kiosk; and set up the computer to run Mozilla in full screen mode and browse only the html pages that you want the user to see. It may take Mozilla 1.1 or later to do a full screen kiosk. I use Mozilla 1.2.1; and neither Mozilla 1.0.1 or 1.3 would go completely full screen on my setup. There is no command-line command that will do this; but you can make your Mozilla homepage a page with Javascript that will do the trick.
You can use Javascript to disable right click as well. The code and instructions are on this page at Disable Right Click.
Set Mozilla up to open your Javascript page as the home page; and then hide all the toolbars you can. Make sure that Javascript and opening of unrequested windows is enabled. Then Mozilla should open full screen with a titlebar on top. Press F11 go full screen, then Control Q to quit. After setting this up, to remove the titlebar and lock out the user, you can use Window Maker -- an X11 window manager that can customize the window. It's an rpm on the third CD of Red Hat 8.0 (but removed in Red Hat 9.0); and you need to install the Window Maker Libraries too. There is a Red Hat update to the latest version for this also. More information is at Window Maker.
In Window Maker, you can run Mozilla with a command like mozilla, /usr/bin/mozilla, or /user/local/mozilla/mozilla. Then right-click on the titlebar and select attributes. Check disable titlebar, omnipresent and save. Then Mozilla should open full screen with no titlebar. If it won't open full screen, you can add -height 600 -width 800 to the command line to try to force it full screen. Control Esc opens the window control menu if you want to get the titlebar back; and Control Q quits Mozilla. You can set up your system to start in Window Maker by default and automatically launch your Mozilla kiosk. If you set up the kiosk stand with no keyboard and just a mouse or trackball with left-click capability only, the user will be locked out and can only view controlled content.
You can do the kiosk with no window manager by starting Mozilla directly from Xsession. In the login manager, add a session called kiosk and, in /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession, add "kiosk) exec mozilla". Here is what the appropriate section of Xsession looks something like after adding the new entry:
now, we see if xdm/gdm/kdm has asked for a specific environment
case $ in 1)
case $1 in
failsafe)
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0
;;
gnome)
exec gnome-session
;;
kde)
exec startkde
;;
kiosk)
exec mozilla
;;
esac
esac
When you log in to kiosk, Mozilla will open with no titlebar, borders, or window control. The only way out is control-alt-backspace.
If you want to do the full screen kiosk trick in Internet Explorer in Windows, you can enter this command at the command line in the run window (just substitute the location of the file you want to open):
iexplore -k file:///C:/Kiosk/index.html
Or, you can set up a shortcut using something like this line (just reverse the / marks):
"C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer/IEXPLORE.EXE" -k C:/Kiosk/index.html
The -k tells Internet Explorer to open full screen; and the Java code is not needed. Alt + F4 exits from the full screen mode. -JD
You can set up the Mozilla Kiosk in KDE and then tweak it and run it from Windomaker. With a Knoppix persistent home, the setup will stick. Running Knoppix 3.2 from the CD, at boot, I use: knoppix desktop=wmaker screen=800x600 home=scan noeject
These cheatcodes can be put in a custom boot floppy or CD as described on the Knoppix Tricks page. Note that if you use this trick, the word knoppix must be added at the start of the append, as in knoppix desktop=wmaker rather than just desktop=wmaker. Otherwise, it will just boot into kde.
Then, at startup, Windomaker auto loads the full screen Mozilla kiosk I have set up.
From a terminal in Windomaker, you can run saveconfig; but it didn't seem to make any difference, so I don't use it.
Suggestion: You can use a package called Bastille Linux to help secure your kiosk login. http://www.bastille-linux.org/ -Michael
Be carefull with what you allow users access to on your kiosk computers, i went to a museam that had windows machines running IE in fullscreen mode however the keyboards had a shift key avilable, holding down shift and clicking on a link opens it in a new window, doing it alot will crash IE i ended up playing solitare =P