InTiles offers the unique feature of surrounding the kiosk browser with up to 40 multi-purpose buttons. Buttons can be used to navigate to websites, but they can do much more. Each button has an Action property that can take one of several values:
When building an interactive kiosk, your aim is to attract users with an appealing look and feel. InTiles provides you with 40 buttons around the kiosk browser to achieve this aim.
Each button has a Style property that defines the type of content and the layout. The first 5 styles include:
Text with an image – horizontal or vertical layout
Each of the 40 multi-purpose buttons surrounding the kiosk browser can be resized using one of 3 ways. Understanding how this works is key to building the kiosk interface you want.
The first two are straight forward:
The third is a bit more challenging:
You can give your kiosk users a choice of up to 5 languages. When the user selects a new language by clicking on a language button, all the text displayed and all the URLs associated with buttons take on a new value.
This is a great feature even if you only need one language because it allows you to change any of the text presented to the users.
When you first run InTiles, it will not be secure yet. You have to click on the Reboot in kiosk mode button located at the bottom of the settings window.
This will disable undesired key combinations such as Control-Alt-Delete and set InTiles as the default application at startup replacing the usual desktop. Let’s see how this kiosk lockdown is achieved.
InTiles was built using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft latest technology. WPF is what makes it possible to build a kiosk interface that is both visually stunning and extremely flexible. Looking good is not enough for a kiosk browser, it needs an engine to display the web content. InTiles has two to choose from.