Sideways Tiger


Sideways Tiger
Originally uploaded by gilesbooth.

Trying to get a Kiosk running in Mac OS X has been a challenge… then we decided we wanted it in portrait format. Tried the undocumented Tiger screen-rotation feature on my Powerbook – didn’t work, maybe because I don’t have an external display, maybe because the OS is too up-to-date. Updated the work MacMini to an old version of Tiger, though, and the option appears – launch System Preferences and hold down the alt (option) key when you click on ‘Displays’ and you get an extra button – rotate.

I can’t help thinking it shouldn’t be this hard. Plus if I get new MacMinis, the trick might not work if the OS is more recent. Still, in Windows you need to buy PivotPro or get the right video card driver.

And of course the version of Applescript bundled with Tiger seems to make apps that give a warning dialogue box when you make calls to the command line, which sucks if you want to use one to run at start-up to launch Opera in kiosk mode (something that you can only do from the command line).

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