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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Kiosk mode in Windows Mobile

I had a number of questions after my talks during the MS Days 2007 in Sofia.
And there was a question that I failed to give a complete and detailed answer.So here comes the answer...
Before taking this path, take a break and think if the kiosk mode is actually needed for your app. Windows Mobile is designed as a general purpose OS, intended for personal usage. The kiosk mode app will prevent the users from using it as their personal device. You may want to check the Marcus Perryman's post for arguments about Kiosk Mode vs Deep Integration choices
Anyway, there are several options to have the app in kiosk mode over Windows Mobile:
1.Replacing the standard password prompt
One should create a DLL, export the PromptForPasswd function and than hacking the registry to use your custom password prompt. There are some side-effects and also this method may fail on some devices. So test it with a real hardware.
Check out this resource for details

2. Maximizing your application's main form
In general maximizing the app's main form will get you a kiosk-alike behaviour. However, the user may press the hardware buttons to get to another app. Some OS events (like inbound phone call)may pop up another app in front of yours . In other words this solution will not give you a complete kiosk mode.
Check out the newsgroups:
SHFullScreen
Full Screen on CF.NET

3.Replacing the standard shell
Check out this post for additional info about shells

4. Hiding the Windows Mobile task bar
This is not a complete solution, but a complementary technique.
Check out the following link for an example

5. Using third-party framework.
Check out the following ones:
Spb Kiosk Engine
PocketKiosk Builder


Links
Spb Kiosk Engine
PocketKiosk Builder
Hiding the taskbar
Prompt For password
Marcus Perryman on Kisok mode in Windows Mobile
Windows Embedded Blog on kiosk mode in Windows CE
Newsgroups on Fullscreen with SHFullScreen
Newsgroups on Full Screen/CF.NET
Kiosk mode on Pocket PC
Kiosk Pattern from Satter Ramblings
WM Shell replacement

Update
Check out this post for more resources as well

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

http://www.askarya.com/pocketpc/pocketkiosk/kioskmode_article.asp