Design Notes

Platform

SIM WIN is a Firefox add-on that is runs Firefox in a kiosk mode using an overlay to remove UI and restrict input. XUL runner would be a better choice as it makes it a standalone install and won’t interfere with main Firefox installation (you can set up another Firefox profile to avoid this for now). This is not done for now as using firefix wnsure we have access to everything like plugins and allows full interaction when developing (use -nokiosk and/or -nofullscreen command line options) Another possibility is to hide the main FF window and open another without any UI.

Media playing uses the VLC plug in which works well (except sometimes crashes if refresh page). This supports most media but may want to add flash and real.

Architecture

Pages are XUL pages rather than (X)HTML as this gives full privileged access to the platform services. Inline SVG is mixed in using XBL and XBL provides light weight component abstraction.

Dojo’s data abstraction layers are used to give consistent data API wherever and whatever the data – this will be important for server features later. This part of dojo works fine in XUL on local files in Chrome. Other Dojo features may be useful (like the slideshow or django templates).