Kiosk Browsing vs Full Screen

Steve_Jackson · December 11, 2018, 12:44pm

I have a question in regards to Kiosk
browsing. If I append the “?kiosk=true” to the end of my dashboard URL, the three dots menu disappears but I still have the chromium browser navigation bar and menu options. If I select “full screen” from the three dots menu the three dots menu disappears as well as all the browser information. I achieve true full screen. What is the difference between the “?kiosk=true” and selecting the “full screen” option from the three dots menu?

josh · December 11, 2018, 1:23pm

The difference is basically what you’ve noted.

Kiosk Mode removes the ... menu in the bottom right corner and hides the indigo colored top navigation bar.

Tapping the fullscreen button from the menu will put the dashboard into Kiosk Mode AND take the browser full screen if the browser supports it.

Steve_Jackson · December 11, 2018, 2:22pm

Is there a way to enter full screen using an embedded URL? I am not at all familiar with internal browser functions so I apologize in advance if this is a dumb question.

josh · December 11, 2018, 5:01pm

If you want to have a dedicated fullscreen dashboard, Fully Kiosk Browser is usually the recommended solution:

What are you looking to accomplish though?

Steve_Jackson · December 11, 2018, 5:30pm

Thanks Josh. Unfortunately, That won’t work on my device. It’s not a big deal. It works very well the way it is. Not knowing a lot about browsers I thought it might be something that was simply embedded in the URL.

josh · December 11, 2018, 5:49pm

What are you looking to accomplish? Perhaps there’s another approach or it’s something we might consider building into a future release.

Steve_Jackson · December 11, 2018, 6:20pm

I was just looking for full screen without having to press the full screen button in the menu. I think I incorrectly assumed that it was very simple and being done with a command imbedded in the URL.

My use case is very narrow on an old device. It’s definitely not worth spending development time on when there are browsers (Fully Kiosk, etc.) that will accomplish this on a vast majority of the devices currently being used for Sharp Tools. I really appreciate the offer to help though.

xnbsx · December 12, 2018, 8:56pm

This is how I solved this issue.

Opened sharptools dashboard in chrome on my iphone. Clicked “…” and then “fullscreen”.

I then copied THAT address (even though it only included ?kiosk=true and nothing about fullscreen"), and opened it in safari. It opened right away in true fullscreen, and then I “added to homescreen”.

I tried a few times within safari itself and maybe it was something I did but it didnt truly work when I tried it all within safari. That being said I was jumping all about and I am timed out right now from trying “due to unusual activity” as I was making about 12 dashboard apps at once. Ha

Steve_Jackson · December 12, 2018, 9:57pm

How did you copy the address if the browser was in full screen and the address bar was not on the screen?

xnbsx · December 12, 2018, 10:26pm

in chrome, the full screen still shows the address bar. But when i move to safari, and then make that page a “web app” the address bar by isnt available as its a “web app”

josh · December 12, 2018, 11:07pm

Chrome has the same feature on modern Android devices. It basically adds the dashboard or whatever page you are on as a ‘web app’ as @xnbsx mentioned. You mentioned that you were using an older Android device and Chromium (instead of Chrome), so I’m not sure if this option is available to you in any of your browsers.

Steve_Jackson · December 12, 2018, 11:30pm

No, the address bar is gone when selecting full screen in Chromium. I would have thought Chromium and Chrome would act the same since I believe they are both sourced from blink. Oh well.

I am experimenting with smaller tiles so the page doesn’t scroll. It seems to be working ok. This is the tablet that sits by my chair that I use for ST, Harmony and IP camera monitoring.

xnbsx · December 13, 2018, 12:27am

On my wall mounted tablet, I made a web app from the same link I made for my iOS web app, and both of them worked great. full screen, no address bar. The only issue is on Android, the navigation/account bar is still displayed on the top where iOS it is not.

josh · December 13, 2018, 1:59am

It doesn’t look like the app is in Kiosk Mode on the Android screenshot. The easiest way to do this from your Android device is:

Open the list of dashboards
Tap the ... next to your desired dashboard and choose View (Kiosk Mode)
Note: this will make sure you are in Kiosk Mode with the top navigation hidden and the bottom right ... menu hidden, but not ‘fullscreen’ so you still have access to the browser controls
Open the browser’s menu and choose Add to Home screen

Stan_Silverman · September 23, 2019, 3:28pm

I’ve read this thread but I don’t think my question is answered.

I’m using Fully Kiosk on a Fire 10 and have it configured to start the dashboard URL on power up.

Question: Is it possible to start the dashboard in full screen? As it works now, one must press the “…” menu and select full screen from there.

Thanks.

josh · September 23, 2019, 3:41pm

You’ll want to include ?kiosk=true in your Fully Kiosk Browser Start URL.

So if your start URL is currently:

https://sharptools.io/dashboards/XXXXX

You’ll want to change it to:

https://sharptools.io/dashboards/XXXXX?kiosk=true

Stan_Silverman · September 24, 2019, 4:03am

Many thanks. Works fine - as you knew it would.

Denver · October 21, 2020, 2:16pm

I am using fully kiosk with my fire hd 8 (10th gen) and Fire hd 10 (9th gen) but it is super laggy and I can’t get the browser to go away no matter what I do even in full screen.

James · October 21, 2020, 2:37pm

Hi @Denver, that certainly doesn’t sound right. Those newer Fire tablets should be just fine. Here are some troubleshoot steps/tips:

Merge multiple spacer tiles into bigger tile(s) if possible. Having many 1x1 spacer tiles can impact the performance
Are you using the the Fully Kiosk Browser APK for Fire OS specifically?
- You can download the Fire OS apk from Fully Kiosk Browser’s website directly.
  Fully Kiosk Browser & App Lockdown Help - Fully Kiosk Browser
  
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Do you have Google Play Store and its services side loaded on those tablets? From my experiences, it slows down the overall tablet performance overtime.
- You may want to factor reset one of the tablets to see if you can reproduce the same issue on a fresh system.
If these still don’t help, send us a video and it may help us to better troubleshoot this for you.

What do you mean? Do you mean you cannot to you cannot close Fully Kiosk Browser or you cannot navigate between dashboards?

Denver · October 21, 2020, 2:45pm

By browser I am referring to the URL at the top of the page when I go to kiosk mode. I want it to be a true full screen like action tiles is. I have 18 tiles total with no spacers which really isn’t that many for it to lag sooo bad and I have the Fire OS version which was sent to me from someone else at sharp tools. I am using fully kiosk APK fire OS. I had initially downloaded the none fire one off the play store and had little to issues but very minimal lag. And when i download the fire OS version above you sent it made it lag horribly.