I’m really keen to get a web browser in OS X running in Kiosk Mode – this means full screen, no scroll bars, AND NO MENU BAR. It also means locking down the browser to severely limit its functions, so it can be used in displays in museums, etc.
It’s surprisingly difficult. Most OS X browsers don’t seem to have a kiosk mode. One that claims to is Opera.
The instructions at http://www.opera.com/support/mastering/kiosk/ don’t really help me much – I’ve tried and failed to run Opera from the command line with a -k or -kioskmode switch.
Opera allows you to run it in full-screen mode, but to launch it in full screen mode you seem to have to do some crafty tricks with Universal Access – after a very long Google session I found this web page which shows how to do it. I had to tweak the application name slightly, and here’s what I did with Mac OS 10.4.3 and Opera 8.51…
Go to System Preferences and under Universal Access, tick ‘enable access for assistive devices’
Then launch the Applescript Script Editor and paste this script in:
—
if my do_menu(“Opera”, “View”, “Full screen”) is false then error number -128
on do_menu(app_name, menu_name, menu_item)
try
tell application app_name to activate
tell application “System Events”
tell application process app_name
click menu item menu_item of menu menu_name of menu bar 1
end tell
end tell
on error error_message
return false
end try
end do_menu
—
Then save this in Script Editor as an application and, if you like, put this app in login/startup items for a new user account you’ll create for the kiosk mode. Then lock down the kiosk user account as far as possible.
It’s not pukka kiosk mode, but it’ll do the job for some applications, especially ones where you can work without a keyboard connected.