AppleScript Studio & Reader Advisory Kiosks


I set up one of the Mac Minis and put it out for the public. It's running OS X 10.3.9. I can see it from my desk, so I've been pulling a B.F. Skinner, watching how folks interact with it. A lot of patrons are just blown away that there's a Mac Mini for them to play with.

Unlike the music kiosk setup, where I swap out the Finder with iTunes, remove the Dock, and use a loginhook to clean up everything, I decided to just use Simple Finder. I use a simple AppleScript Studio app that I created as the starting point for the kiosk. There are only four programs running: Simple Finder, my Kiosk app, Safari, and Delicious Library. DL takes a while to come up, so I have the Kiosk login automatically, with the Kiosk app and DL as startup items, but hiding DL.

Here's some pictures. The first is the simple splash screen of the Kiosk app. Notice that I took out all the window buttons. This is a case of turning a disadvantage into an advantage. Most PC users think the red "close window" button is the "quit program" button. DL actually works that way, I just found out. I'd rather it didn't. But if a patron is using Safari or DL and closes the window, they end up back at the splash screen. Que rico suave.:



This is the reader's advisory kiosk in use, down in the non-fiction section of my library.


I still need to work on a few things:

Install an idle script to revert to the pristine look when it logs in.

Set up Safari either to go to only specific sites, or somehow remove the location bar. I can remove the location bar using Interface Builder, but that also takes out the navigation buttons.

My Kiosk app and my stripped Safari don't play well with the Simple Finder setup. I saw a post on the Apple Discussions board that said I need to give CFBundleIndentifier a line in the Info.plist of the app. In the meantime, I've got them aliased in the Shared folder. It works, but it could be prettier. I need to devise a cool icon for my app too.

Play with Tiger to see if I can do with it what I'm doing in 10.3.9. Simple Finder runs a little differently in the Accounts preferences, but it says I can restrict which sites are available in there, so I think that would be easiest.

Posted: Wed - May 11, 2005 at 10:37 AM      

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