How To

The Browser Kiosk

Some exports are for working. This one is for showing. Export Browser Kiosk builds a searchable, browsable page of your collection: every cover big, search by title, issue, publisher, or creator. At a show it is a portable comic book store: put it on a laptop or a big touchscreen and buyers browse your stock without a single bag leaving its box. At home it is something simpler and just as good: your collection on the big monitor, searchable and admirable, for the evenings when you just want to look at what you own. The kiosk runs from static files with no internet at all, which is exactly what a convention hall's Wi-Fi calls for.

The kiosk landing page for a store called Heroes and Villains Comics Unlimited: 1,073 books, a featured Silver Surfer #36 cover, a search box, and a collection to browse. — The kiosk's front door: 1,073 books, searchable, running from static files with no internet.

A kiosk search for Avengers, scrolled into the grid: rows of Avengers covers with grade chips, KEY badges on the key issues, and a copy count on a book with two. — Every cover big: a search, the grades, the key issues badged, and how many copies you have.

A snapshot, on purpose

The kiosk changes nothing and asks nothing. It is exactly as current as the moment you exported it, refreshed by dropping in a new export, and that is a feature: a browsing customer cannot edit your records, and a dead network cannot take your booth down. Every card carries its copy's label QR, so a book on the kiosk screen can be scanned with the phone, where the live inventory answers whether that copy is still here. The export is free, like every export: it never spends credits.

Refreshing it is a page inside the kiosk folder, not a rebuild. Open update.html, point it at the kiosk folder, drop in the new export zips straight from Downloads, and apply. It writes the collections into place, replaces the old ones, and keeps your branding (name, logo, screensaver setting) exactly as you set it. No unzipping, no folder wrangling.

The kiosk's Update this kiosk page: step one finds the kiosk folder (703 books, August 29), step two lists the dropped export zip as an update to 1,073 books, and step three reports 2,164 files written with the branding kept. — Three steps: choose the folder, drop the zips, apply. 703 books become 1,073 and the branding stays.

See it in real life: the kiosk runs a booth all weekend, answers a buyer's question, and survives a sold book in The convention table. The working half of the big-screen story, the Admin Review, has its own guide.