The toolbar provides the navigational buttons to browse through web pages. You can disable the toolbar through the interface. You also have the option of disabling it through the XUL code. Like the menubar, we can selectively add and remove the toolbar buttons through the code. However, because we want the toolbar displayed and we have already preconfigured the toolbar the way we want it to display, we'll just be concerned with a few items.
You'll notice that as you go through the code, you'll see entries for items that we have removed, like the URL bar. If you are super security conscious, you can comment out these entries to ensure that they are never added back. However, since we have removed all options to allow that, we won't do that extra step. Also, if you don't want users accessing the session history using the dropdown buttons next to the forward and back buttons, you can disable those buttons in the code. We'll leave them as they are.
In the previous version of the tutorial, the throbber, the animated graphic that runs when a page is being downloaded, was located on the Toolbar and could be displayed improperly when you removed certain toolbar elements. However, it now sits in the Menu bar and isn't affected by changes in the Toolbar buttons. You shouldn't have to adjust the button properties for it. You can choose to disable it but I think it helps users by letting them know that the browser is loading a page.
The remaining sections of code define the Personal toolbar, the Sidebars, tabbed browsing display and the Statusbar. We have already disabled access to the first three. We need to make just a few minor changes to the Statusbar. When visiting secured web pages, the Statusbar displays a security icon. Someone who clicks on that icon then gets a new window displaying information about the secured page. We don't need users to be able to access that information in our kiosk setup so we'll disable that. While we are at it, we'll also disable access to the page information and theme icons. Take note that with the exception of the Personal toolbar, all of the remaining toolbars fall outside the main <toolbox> section.
Last updated: December 31, 2003
Created: November 30, 2002
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