A lot of our customers requested a payment device that would make it possible for them to put an end to the problem of endless surfing at their free-of-charge Internet terminals. This is why we developed time limiter.
Maybe the biggest advantage this new device provides is that you will need no additional hardware (payment devices) aside from your computer.
You will want to employ time limiter at terminals at which your customers can surf the Internet for free. Time limiter will then limit the usage time of each user to a specific period of time.
Note:
If you want to employ the time limiter, you should also make sure to turn on the
SiteKiosk screen saver. As soon as a user terminates the session before the time is up, the screen saver will come on after, for instance, 3 minutes of idle time and will reset the time limiter.
Note that the time limiter does not support time and rate zones as these are money and not time based.
Quick links:
System requirements
Hardware
No additional hardware is required
Software
- min. Win98/ME/NT/2000/XP
- Internet Explorer 6.x or higher (8.x recommended)
- SiteKiosk PAYMENT BUNDLE
Configuring the Payment Module
In general
The time limiter is not an actual access control or payment device. It can, therefore, also not prevent a user from, for example, starting another surfing session after the first one is terminated. Please make sure to enable the SiteKiosk screen saver on top of the time limiter. In order to activate the time limiter, select the entry "Others: Surftime Limiter" from the list of available devices in the section Payment Devices and click on Activate. You can also activate it by clicking on Configure and selecting the option "Enable Time Limiter".
Session Limit
Here you can set the period of time after which you want SiteKiosk to terminate the user's session automatically and to return to the Start Page. In case the user terminates the session before this period is over, the surfing time will automatically be reset after the screen saver has come up.
End Session Dialog Box
Here you can decide whether you want to have a dialog box shown to the user which contains the information that the surfing time has elapsed. You can specify the duration in seconds in which you want this dialog box to be displayed.
You can choose between two different display options:
- Lock computer and disable user input while dialog box is visible
The user will be unable to use the computer while the dialog is being displayed. The computer will be locked up completely.
- Show a closable dialog box with an 'OK' button on it
The user will be shown a dialog box which can be closed by clicking the OK button.
Adjust the time limiter's browser dialogs
Example:
The German Internet portal Freenet provides free use of the Internet terminals they set up each year at the computer fair CeBIT. In a case like that, adjusting the browser dialogs wouldn't make sense as you can tell from the following explanation:
Adjusting the Stringtable
The file Stringtable.xml contains all the languages supported by SiteKiosk and its corresponding xml files. These files contain all the text elements that are displayed in the browser. You can adjust these elements for every language listed.
In order to do so, start by opening the file Stringtable.xml. You will find the file in SiteKiosk's installation folder under Language\Browserskins. Now, look for the language for which you want to change the settings and find the file name of the corresponding xml file located in the subfolder Default-ieskin. In this file, look for the section "Time Selector Device" which will look like this:
<!-- Time Selector Device -->
<string id="3500">Time Limiter</string>
<string id="3501">You can surf for</string>
<string id="3502">.</string>
<string id="3503">Go!</string>
<string id="3504">This terminal will be locked for {0}
seconds.</string>
<string id="3505">Your surfing time has expired. Thank
you for using SiteKiosk!</string>
<!-- /Time Selector Device -->
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Explanations concerning the String IDs:
- string id="3500"
Heading in the initial dialog box
- string id="3501"
This text will be displayed in the initial dialog box before the amount of time you specified in the configuration tool. The text for the amount of time (e.g. xx minutes, xx seconds) is generated automatically between string 3501 and string 3502.
- string id="3502"
This text will be displayed in the initial dialog box after the amount of time you specified in the configuration tool.
- string id="3503"
Button label in the initial dialog box.
- string id="3504"
Notification when the end of the surfing time is reached provided you selected the option Lock computer. The term "{0}" will be replaced by the value specified in the configuration tool.
- string id="3505"
Notification when the end of the surfing time is reached provided you selected the option Show a closable dialog box.
Notification
Just like the rest of all browser components, the notification that you can have to be displayed by the time limiter at the end of the session is based on an HTML page. You will find this page in SiteKiosk's installation folder under ../SiteKiosk/SiteCash/HTML/TimeLimiter.
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