Netscape for the Public - Our answer

[Walter Giesbrecht]

This is good news. However, a message posted on one of the 
comp.infosystems.www newsgroups indicated that Netscape already has a 
kiosk mode (at least in version 1.22 for Windows). Simply place a 
[space]-k after netscape.exe on the command line, and you have a kiosk 
version (just like what you have to do for Mosaic). It looks a little 
strange, since there are no buttons, no place to enter a URL, nothing at 
all. *However*, all the functions that can be activated with a 
Control-key combination are still accessible, i.e., you 
can still save to disk, go backwards and forwards (using the Alt-left and 
right arrow combinations). You can also still send mail -- as long as the 
appropriate line in Preferences has been filled in. If you leave this 
line blank, no mail can be sent. Since the Preferences are not accessible 
to the user in this mode, he/she cannot fill in the information after the 
fact.

I've shown this to a few people around here. The major objection is that 
the still-available functions are hidden (so to speak), so a cue card 
with the available functions and their keystrokes would have to be 
posted. Otherwise, it seems to do what we've all wanted *without* having 
to make any changes to the program code. It does require that you make 
the appropriate changes to progman.ini to prevent users from making 
changes to the command line, but public workstations should have this in 
place already anyway.

Sorry if all this is already common knowledge; it was news to me! Can 
those of you using Netscape on other platforms tell us if anything 
similar works for you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walter W. Giesbrecht               walterg at yorku.ca    
York University Libraries