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I have a client that hosts a touch screen kiosk in their lobby. It's essentially an internal html website. They want customers to be able to click a link and have a pdf print without seeing a print dialog or having to back track... completely unnoticeable printing.

I have read articles and tried snippets of code for almost a year without finding a reputable solution. There are those out there that rightly warn of security breaches or that it cannot be done at all.

The client's old touch screen structure was made entirely in Flash which I am avoiding. BUT, they were able to pull this off. I am sure this question has been asked a thousand times, but is it really impossible?

The current CPU running the touch screen is Windows XP. They do have an IT guy that works close, but I am not sure what to ask. He never offered any other solutions.

Thank you

Diventare Creative
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  • Please add more detail about OS / Platform. Also, is there a web server running on the Kiosk machine? Could one be installed? – Pekka Jan 11 '11 at 22:43
  • I think the kiosk machine runs off of their internal server,and is not accessible from the outside. I am not positive if that runs on its OWN web server. – Diventare Creative Jan 11 '11 at 22:57

3 Answers3

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Not 100% sure what you're trying to accomplish but maybe you could trigger a server-side program to run instead of relying on the kiosk itself to handle the printing. You could configure the server to send these PDF requests straight to the printer.

Abe Voelker
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  • +1 That does make sense. On the server have a action that do the printing, because I don't see a way to JavaScript itself do printing silently, GL – Fabiano Soriani Jan 11 '11 at 23:05
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Chrome running in kisok mode, started with the --kiosk AND --kiosk-printing switches and with a default printer set, can print silently using javascript print().

This is Windows only AFAIK.

Terry Carmen
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Maybe you can bake a custom browser for them (using webkit for example) that prints without asking.

Hoatzin
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