Disable/Overwrite edge swipe gestures in Windows 8 with firefox/javascript

Question

Is there a way to disable / overwrite the edge swipe gestures in Windows 8? My goal is to build a kiosk browser which runs on Windows 8. I used to take Firefox with FF Fullscreen AddOn for this, but in Win 8, the Win 8 TOUCHSCREEN edge swipe gestures are still active.

I tried so much hints and possible solutions, which I found in the web, but no one helped:

1) Classic Shell, Start8, Registry hacks and so on: working for touchpads, but not for touchscreens

2) user account with assigned access: runs only with a Metro App. In Metro FF, there is still the adress list

3) Windows settings: there are no Windows settings. My touchscreen has no settings

4) another (special) touchscreen driver: I need a solution for many kinds of hardware

Now, I think there are some solutions left:

5) Build another (Not Firefox) application, which runs in the background and catches the edge gestures (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj553591%28v=vs.85%29.aspx). But this application needs to runs in fullscreen mode and will cover Firefox.

6) Catch the edge swipe gestures with javascript.

Now the main question: Is there a way to catch the edge swipe gestures with javascript?

Are there any solutions? thanks in advance.

But this is a javascript question. In case, this belongs not to stackoverflow, should /can I move the question to poweruser? — Mazl, Mar 21 '14 at 19:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 26 '14 at 07:27

Edge swipe gestures cannot be caught in javascript, so the only way is to completely disable the charms bar.

Windows charms bar is operated by explorer.exe. So if your app can run without it then you can hack around it by first disabling the autorestart of explorer.exe via (run as administrator):

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v "AutoRestartShell" /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Then the lines below represent my launch.bat - which works in the end as expected:

;; kill explorer (this disables all windows functionalities)
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

;; start your kiosk app - should block the batch execution (so explorer.exe doesn't get executed at the end)
"\star\your\firefox\app.exe"

;; after you close both the app window and the opened chrome window relaunch explorer.exe to give back the functionality to windows
explorer.exe

I use the approach outlined above to let a keyboardless kiosk app run. Because with a keyboard you can still close the app with alt+f4.

Disable/Overwrite edge swipe gestures in Windows 8 with firefox/javascript

1 Answers1