Re: FLASH: Any special issues with Touch Screen Kiosks?

[Hal Medrano]

Hi Jefferis,


My company developed a touch-screen intranet system for Pepsi Center, a

large sports complex in Denver.  The arena has 95 luxury suites equipped

with touch-screen kiosks, as well as 14 other kiosks scattered around the

arena.  Spectators can use this kiosk to order concessions and merchandise,

view streaming videos, locate any seat in the arena, look up stats and bios

and news, and order tickets for upcoming events. We used IE on Windows NT,

an HTML frameset with Flash controlling the nav, and back-end programming

in Java and Perl.  Flash links up through CGI to the concession company's

databases, and the videos are hosted locally on a streaming video server.

The seat directory was built entirely in Flash.  And wouldn't ya know it;

the darned thing works like a charm.


We used a product called NetKey by Lexitech.  Among the features supported

by NetKey are:


--timer for an attract loop that plays after a few minutes on inactivity.

We used AfterEffects to build the attractor video and output it as an MPEG;

--ability to lock people out of the local disk.  This disables such things

as Ctrl-Alt-Delete to quit an application or close the browser window.

--database for allowable and disallowable URLs.  This means customers can

link off our kiosk out to Ticketmaster to buy tickets, but if they try to

follow some extraneous link from Ticketmaster, they get frozen out;

--customizable layouts, onscreen keyboard.  A lot of other packages froze

us into a static layout (keyboard on top, nav buttons on left and that sort

of thing).  We found NetKey's main advantage to be its flexibility.


NetKey has its own dev environment, but it's very easy to learn.  We've had

no complaints and I'm happy to recommend the product on the basis of

personal experience.


As for Flash, more depends on the hardware and screen resolution than on

the kiosk package.  At 800 X 600, Flash runs great; at 1600 X 1024 (the res

for the luxury suites), we had to cut back on some of the FX we desired (I

wish Windows had harware decoding for Flash, but that's another issue).  We

didn't use rollovers in our case, but I see no reason why we couldn't.  And

the design freedom Flash gave us...let's just say our clients are thrilled

and it's opened up a whole new market for our group.  Frankly, Flash

performed extremely well, and we're planning to use a similar combination

of features for future arena projects.


That's about all I can give you.  If you live in or pass through Denver,

stop by Pepsi Center or the Colorado Ocean Journeys Aquarium to see Flash

in action on kiosks.


I wish you much success on your own projects.


Hal Medrano



>Jefferis wrote:

>

>> I have a client inquiry about doing a kiosk for his site. I primed him

>> with a few questions about several database issues involved, but wanted

>> to know if in general there are any special issues associated with

>> producing Flash on Kiosks and using Touch screens?

>>

>> The touch screen technology I assume simply uses the touch in place of

>> the mouse. Assuming the kiosk hardware can handle that, is there anything

>> about the Flash itself that might pose difficulties?


Hal Medrano

New Media Group

U S WEST Creative Services


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