projects/infopoint-html.mdwn

   1 [[!meta title="Infopoint HTML Viewer"]]
   2
   3 The Infopoint HTML Viewer is a light-weight, full screen viewer for web pages.
   4 As the name indicates, it is primarily focused on machines whose one and only
   5 purpose it is to display web pages (like network monitors, stock charts, or
   6 news).
   7
   8 Screenshots
   9 -----------
  10
  11 <div class="gallery">
  12 [[!img defaults size="150x"]]
  13 [[!img infopoint-html/default.png alt="Default view after installation"
  14   caption="Default view after installation"]]
  15 [[!img infopoint-html/customized.png alt="View of a customized web site"
  16   caption="View of a customized web site"]]
  17 </div>
  18
  19 How does it work?
  20 -----------------
  21
  22 The software is built on
  23 [XULRunner](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner), the same framework
  24 Mozilla uses for Firefox and Thunderbird. It starts on system boot and simply
  25 displays a borderless window with the full size of the display, containing
  26 the contents of the web page you configured.
  27
  28 Due to its XULRunner ancestry, the Infopoint HTML Viewer can show any content
  29 that your good old Firefox can show, including `http://`, `ftp://` and
  30 `file://` URLs,
  31 <abbr title="(Extensible) Hypertext Markup Language">(X)HTML</abbr> with (or
  32 without) JavaScript and <abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr>,
  33 <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>/<abbr
  34 title="Extensible Stylesheet Language">XSL</abbr> documents, pictures and
  35 plain text.
  36
  37 Cool, what do I have to do?
  38 ---------------------------
  39
  40   * Get a machine with a network connection and a big display. For example, you
  41     can hook a [Raspberry Pi](http://www.raspberrypi.org) to a TV.
  42   * Install a fresh [Debian](http://debian.org/distrib) system on it (“base”
  43     package set is totally sufficient). For the Raspberry Pi, you might want to
  44     use [Raspbian](http://raspbian.org).
  45   * Add my [[personal Debian repository|rohieb-name-repo]]).
  46   * Install the Infopoint HTML Viewer: `apt-get install infopoint-html`
  47   * Configure the URL you want to display: edit `/etc/default/infopoint-html`
  48     and change the `URL` option. Also be sure to set `AUTOSTART="yes"`.
  49   * `/etc/init.d/infopoint-html start`, or simply reboot.
  50   * Voilà!
  51
  52 Resources
  53 ---------
  54
  55   * Source and issue tracker can be found on
  56     [GitHub](https://github.com/rohieb/infopoint-html). Feel free to fork :-)