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I'm building a minimalist OS (based on linux) which will network boot to provide a system for public display screens; (The kind of thing you see at airports with flight times etc on). Does anyone know of a web browser, which is preferably open source, which can be started from the command line?

Specifically, I need the program to be able to open fullscreen & maximised to a URL specified by the command line. This is because it will be run by the X startup script after X is running.

I've tried chrome & chromium but they don't allow for fullscreen from the command line, only maximisation. I've also looked at opera, but since it's not open source you have to accept an EULA when it starts, and since the system network boots the acceptance will be forgotten.

Does anyone know of anything else I should look into? Ideally it would have to have a good support for CSS & Javascript but past that I'm willing to look into anything.

Cheers in advance

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2 Answers

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Google Chrome does that, using the --kiosk option:

google-chrome --kiosk http://example.com
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doesn't open it full screen; only maximised. By full screen I mean what you get by pressing F11 – jackweirdy May 31 '12 at 21:44
Here (Debian Squeeze, Google Chrome 19.0.1084.52) it goes full screen with no GUI. – cYrus May 31 '12 at 22:59
Odd, it's working now (ubuntu 12.04, chrome 19) – jackweirdy May 31 '12 at 23:05
Note that you have to launch that command with no other Chrome instances running, otherwise it will just open another window. – cYrus Jun 1 '12 at 10:31
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I know an older version of Chrome had a command line switch --kiosk that allowed it to start in full screen mode. Doesn't work in the newer ones though (In Windows, at least) and I do not know when it stopped working so I can't give you an exact version.

Maybe you can write a script that sends the F11 key after launching the browser to put it into full screen mode.

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--kiosk is a bit different than full screen mode (i.e. can't switch back to windowed mode). – cYrus May 31 '12 at 17:58
Ah, I did not know that. I was under the assumption that the public display terminal will not have a mouse or keyboard for the public to interact with it so you don't really need to protect it from anyone once you have it in full screen. – sachleen May 31 '12 at 18:00
@sachleen is right, That's what I was looking for :) – jackweirdy Jun 1 '12 at 12:42

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