News

AppMac offers sneak peek at new public kiosk software

October 3, 2002

PARIS -- French Mac software developer AppMac Software has released a preview of wKiosk 1.0, a secure Internet browser for Mac OS X designed for public kiosk use.

wKiosk is a renamed version of the eKiosk 4 browser, which debuted in September at Apple Expo in Paris, according to a company news release. AppleMac claims wKiosk represents a significant change from eKiosk 3.1.1, which was based on Microsoft Internet Explorer and AppleScript. That software worked only in "Classic" Mac OS.

wKiosk was built using Mac OS X's Cocoa framework; it is based on Netscape's Gecko engine and is compatible with Flash and QuickTime.

Web browsing using wKiosk is done in full-screen mode, prohibiting access to the Finder. URL control function can be employed to keep users from visiting certain sites.

AppMac plans to release the final version of wKiosk -- in French and English -- in late November. Screenshots of the browser can be viewed online at AppMac's site.