Re: [Epiphany] kiosk mode

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco it gnome org>]

Il dom, 2003-02-23 alle 21:29, Gergely Nagy ha scritto: 
> Hi all,
> 
> I have to set up a kiosk box in a hotel entrance for web browsing. I
> chose epiphany because I like it anyway, and the interface can be nicely
> configured via epiphany-ui.xml. I was able to easily disable the save
> as, and other unwanted features. I soon had to find out this is not
> enough, a save dialog is offered also when you click on a file that
> cannot be opened in the browser directly. And there are other issues
> wich call for patching...
> 
> Before starting to patch epiphany I thought I'd discuss it with you
> first. If there is interrest the kiosk patches could be incorporated to
> the official binary.

Thanks for doing it. 

> Right now I modified /usr/share/epiphany-browser/epiphany-ui.xml (I use
> the usefulinc.com deb). This however limits the usage for other users on
> the system. Perhaps epiphany could look for something like
> ~/.epiphany-ui.xml - so in essence a per-user gui config feature. This
> might not just be usable for a kiosk scenario. Any thoughts on this?

It would be possible to extend ephy-file-helpers.c (ephy_file) to look also in ~gnome2/epiphany.
But the approach of directly editing the ui seem a bit risky to me. It would easily go
out of sync with the main ui file, we could have problems with the generated menus code and
it would require kiosk projects to edit the file to make it fit their needs.
I think a lock down approach would be better. Btw what did you need it to edit ?

> Some other things for a kiosk mode
> - preferences password protected?

Do you really need this ? Gconf make easy to edit the schemas and install the same settings on several computers.

> - kiosk mode activation: compile time switch / command line switch / cfg
> file?

As Havoc suggested, I think we should have a Gnome wide solution for this. I havent
followed all the discussion but in general the plan is to have some gconf keys that
sysadmin can use to control which features are locked down.
A common place to lock down different gnome applications and a common way to handle
the lock in the user interface (for example what you do when cookies editing is locked ?
Make the menu insensitive, hide it ... ?) are somewhat necessary.
I'd certainly like to merge such patches in epiphany and to help mantaining them,
while I'd not been keen to mantain special case code for kiosks (or a single kiosk project).
Certainly patching epiphany seem an easier solution on the short time, but you could have
problems mantaining it later :)

> - read only bookmarks
> - mime type handling restrictions (no save, exec, etc)

These fit perfectly in the lock down model.

> - close button on toolbar (no need for wm, can use tabs)

I think you can just edit toolbar.xml in the user home to get this.

Marco