Five apps for creating a kiosk

Introduction

Kiosks make it easy to display information about your\r\ncompany, allow users to interact with website-driven company directories, get\r\ndetails about products, advertise your products and services, and much more.\r\nBut how do you set up a kiosk? Surely they are complex creatures that require\r\nmuch care and attention!

Not even remotely. Kiosks can be created using a standard\r\nmachine or even a tablet. With simple and cost-effective solutions, you can\r\nhave one up and running quickly. If you don’t want to invest too much time and\r\nmoney into the project, the five kiosk apps listed here are well suited for the\r\ntask. In some instances, these apps will require you to have the HTML pages already\r\nset up and ready to go. Let’s dig into them and see if one will serve your\r\nneeds.

Note:\r\nThis gallery is also available as an article.

SureFox

Other features include the ability to enable/disable zoom\r\n(you can also set the percentage of zoom), complete device lockdown (pro\r\nversion only), browse privately, prevent auto-suspend, do tabbed browsing, view\r\nfull screen mode, and configure remotely.

SiteKiosk

You can also set up SiteKiosk to retrieve data from a centralized\r\nlocation (so you can deploy multiple instances with a single configuration) and\r\neven do remote maintenance. SiteKiosk costs $99.00 for the Android app, $149.00\r\nfor the basic (Windows version), and $200.00 for the Plus version, which adds\r\nVOIP support and can serve as your centralized configuration for multiple\r\ndevices.

Porteus Kiosk

It does one thing and one thing only: It runs a web browser.\r\nYou’d have to be really crafty (and know your way around Linux) to get anything\r\nbeyond that. The distribution is also incredibly secure. (It uses an isohybrid\r\nformat that, even when installed on writable media, is still “burned.”)\r\nWhen you boot up the Porteus live image, you’ll be greeted with a simple setup\r\nwizard. When the wizard is complete, you will find a web browser and nothing\r\nmore.

FrontFace Lockdown

Lockdown offers plenty of options that should suit just\r\nabout every possible need. You can also set FrontFace to shut down automatically\r\nat a certain time of day, create custom profiles for different purposes, and\r\ndisable the reboot/shutdown option. NOTE: If you happen to lock yourself out of\r\nFrontFace, you must boot Windows into safe mode, run FrontFace Lockdown, and\r\nthen unset any changes you made to lock you out. FrontFace is free of charge.