or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk


I Don’t Like The New Firefox Search

   February 12th, 2015 Brian Herzog

This post should have the subtitle, Turning back the clock, one "feature" at a time.

So the internet is all about sharing, right, no matter how small and insignificant the topic? Here's a small and insignificant tidbit I thought I'd share, because I'm an anti-change curmudgeon and this was actually a major deal to me.

I've started the process of updating all the Firefox browsers in my life to the latest version. Apparently the last time I updated was version 32.0.1, and am now updating to 35.0.1. Mostly everything is fine, but I HATE how the "improved" search bar works.

Most of you will probably be familiar with the old way:

ffsearch-old

You type in your search terms, and can choose whichever engine you'd like to use. And what you type in stays there, and which engine you choose also stays.

The new way is different:

ffsearch-new

I feel like listing all the reasons I don't like the new method would be petty and whiny (although not unlike me), so suffice to say the way it works just does not fit my workflow.

But happily, Firefox is open source, and offers a way to change back to the old way. A quick search online lead me to the answer:

  • Go into the about:config
  • Type oneoff in the Filter box
  • Double-click to toggle browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false
  • Restart Firefox

The old search bar interface comes back, and once again all is right with the world.



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Reference Question of the Week – 8/1/10

   August 7th, 2010 Brian Herzog

It's been a busy week - lots of people on vacation, so we're both short-staffed and busier than usual - and often I've been rushing from one patron to the next without much of a break in between. However, this patron's question stopped me short:

Patron: Can you show me where to put my UTI?

I was almost convinced she couldn't possibly mean a "urinary tract infection," but she immediately turned around and walked off toward the public computers - curiosity (and customer service) got the better of me, so I followed her over.

When we got back to her computer, she pointed at the screen and said,

See, there's no place for me to type in my web address UTI.

Okay - she meant URL (thank goodness). It's an easy fix to turn back on the Navigation Toolbar in Firefox:

Firefox Toolbar menus

While doing that, I said something like, "there, now you can type your URL in the box." When she heard me say "URL," she replied,

Oh, that's it, URL. I knew what I said didn't sound right.

No, it did not.



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Using Firefox On Our Public Computers

   May 8th, 2008 Brian Herzog

firefox logoMy library is in the process of re-doing all of our public computers. One major change we're making is to switch to Firefox for our web browser, instead of the Internet Explorer/Public Web Browser combo we've always used.

The reason we're switching is a simple one - Firefox is just cooler. It lets us have more control over how the browser functions, and lets us offer more tools integrated right into the browser. Better for us, better for patrons.

Here's a list of the customizations we're making:

Add-Ons

  • Public Fox - this is designed to make Firefox a public web browser, as opposed to being used and customized by a single, private person. We're using it to lock down add-ons, preference, about:config, and a few other things, as well as control what file types can be downloaded
  • Menu Editor - also for the control freak in us, this one lets us remove menus from the tool bar (we're getting rid of bookmarks, help and history)
  • Greasemonkey - one of my favorites, this lets us embed custom coding on webpages, such as a link from Amazon to our catalog, and helpful links on our catalog's "no search results" page (more info on those on our Tech Tools page)
  • Add To Search Bar - this fun one lets us easily add our library catalog right to Firefox's search bar. The other searches we chose to include are Google, Yahoo, Amazon, the Internet Movie Database, Answers.com, Wikipedia, and Merriam-Webster
  • IE Tab - For all of those "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" websites, this one lets you toggle back and forth between the Firefox and IE rendering engines, so IE-only pages and scripts will load in Firefox
  • Image Zoom - just like what it sounds, this adds zoom controls to the right-click menu, to make images bigger and smaller. This one is most useful to patrons who get emailed digital photos at 1024 x 768 resolution, which is too big for our screens. This lets them zoom out so they can see all of their grandchild's face at the same time
  • Update 5/30/08: Print Preview - We realized that we had forgotten to put the Print icon on the toolbar, and then that Firefox didn't seem to have a native Print Preview toolbar icon. This Add-On gives us the Print Preview icon

Options Settings

  • Turn off all automatic updates - we use Deep Freeze, so we do our own updates
  • Turn on smooth scrolling
  • Turn on check spelling
  • Set homepage to our Reference start page
  • Always save downloads to My Documents
  • Always show tab bar
  • Turn off all warnings, except when redirecting from secure to an unsecure page
  • Don't remember anything, delete cookies and clear private data when Firefox closes

Other Customizations

  • Disable mailto: links - one repeated tech question from patrons is "I want to send an email but I'm getting some connection wizard." This happens when someone clicks a "mailto" link on a webpage, and Outlook launches as the default email program. Since patrons need to log into their own web email to send messages, making nothing happen when someone click a mailto link is actually an improvement
  • We also took whatever steps we could think of to ensure computer security and patron privacy - this means not keeping any history, and making sure that when Firefox is started, it does not restore from a previous session
  • Update 5/30/08: Add the Print and Print Preview (see Add-Ons above) icons to the toolbar (we chose to use icons only and not text because it used less room)

A lot of these were judgment calls, and there is no single right way to adjust your settings. Also, there're lots of other useful Add-Ons out there too, and more at https://addons.mozilla.org. If you have any suggestions for security or usefulness that we didn't include, please let me know in the comments.

Update 5/15/08: I've had a couple questions about Public Web Browser, so I thought I'd elaborate. It is a great product that works with Internet Explorer (or other browsers, I'm guessing) to lock it down and make IE more applicable for a public library computer. It has always done exactly what it was designed to do, and the librarians who developed it provide wonderful service. Our switch to Firefox has nothing to do with PWB - we just prefer Firefox to IE.

Update 5/30/08: Added an Add-On and toolbar setting to make it easier for patrons to use Print and Print Preview.



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