What is the easiest and most effective way to limit a web browser to one specific website?

May 16, 2007 9:34 AM

What is the easiest and most effective way to limit a web browser to one specific website?

I need to setup several laptops at an event. I want to have each laptop display a specific website, but I don't want anyone to be able to navigate away from that website.

Part of the problem I have is that the laptops I will be using belong to people who use them for work and have all their stuff on them, so I want to set it up in a way that has as little effect on their current setup as possible.

I don't think any of them use the Opera browser. So I was thinking I might be able to use Opera and adjust it to limit it to a specific website in some way. That way, I can make the adjustments and use it and then just remove Opera when all is said and done, leaving their normal browser (Firefox, IE, whatever) the same as it was before easily.

Also, for bonus points here, does anyone know of a Linux Live CD environment that would be able to suit this purpose? That way I could get the laptops completely out of their normal operating environment temporarily and when it's all done just go back to normal use.

posted by doomtop to computers & internet (8 comments total)

The Google term you're looking for is "kiosk mode".
posted by jellicle at 9:41 AM on May 16, 2007

Opera kiosk mode has URL filtering.

KioskCD is a Linux LiveCD that may be interesting. You may have to tinker with settings to allow only one website, perhaps with host files.
posted by ALongDecember at 9:46 AM on May 16, 2007

If it's windows I think you could go into the Internet options, set IE to allow only green zone websites, and put the url in the green zone, or whatever it is called. I haven't used IE in years, but I think it still works that way. Undoing it after the event would only take a couple of minutes.
posted by COD at 10:13 AM on May 16, 2007

What I did:

- Use a Mac (more stable, no floppy, no viruses)
- Make sure you have an external hard-drive to boot from
- Boot from that drive
- Set-up Safari in Kiosk mode (using the Saft plug-in))
- Rename the "Safari.app" to "Finder.app" and put it in the place of the Finder on the internal drive. In case the browser crashes it will come up auto-magically again.
- Boot from internal drive, with "automaticaly login as user x" set in the "Accounts" pref pane login options
- make sure user X has very limited privileges
- Profit!
posted by maremare at 10:20 AM on May 16, 2007

Oops, misread that part about "existing laptops".
posted by maremare at 10:22 AM on May 16, 2007

Do the websites need to be live (online)?
If not then you could mirror the site to the pc itself which would certainly restrict access.

You could even boot the pc from a linux live cd, remove the cd, and then place a cd with the mirrored site in the drive. You could take it a step further and create a live cd with the contents of the site on the same cd, or any variation on this idea.
posted by eeno at 10:47 AM on May 16, 2007

A cheap-o hack that should work on any browser is to set the proxy server settings to be the host in question. Assuming the host doesn't proxy, then it will return "What? No!" responses for anything that isn't that very site.
posted by cmiller at 1:43 PM on May 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

network them and set up your router to redirect all outbound port 80 traffic to the website in question.
posted by Megafly at 5:12 PM on May 16, 2007