Comments on: Hacking Firefox at my library: instructions & stuff

By: Andrea Mercado

Andrea Mercado — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:24:10 +0000

I *love* the idea of baiting people into Firefox by disguising it as IE! That’s so awesome! Especially since the Firefox skins make that so easy, and as long as you know how to redirect a desktop icon, it’s wonderfully deceptive.

Is there anything interesting you want the browser to do that you haven’t made it do yet?

By: heidi

heidi — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:58:26 +0000

Thanks Andrea! I’m the one that sets up the links on our desk IE Browser, most of the links are for things I know we can get search plugins for. I really just need to do it because I think I think using FF on the desk is so much easier with the right things installed. I’ve already created a search plugin for our catalog a long time ago too. Those things are actually darn easy to create!

The CuteMenus2 plugin is new to me, so that’s a helpful one.

Also as a side note, while I didn’t do this for a library, I set up Firefox on my mom’s computer by disguising it as IE. I found her a theme that looked like IE and even changed her FF desktop icon to look like IE’s because she was already used to clicking on it. Then when I showed her a few of the search plugins and other features that were different from IE she thought those were way cool.

By: Andrea Mercado

Andrea Mercado — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:58:16 +0000

@Sue: Thanks for the kind words! If you use any of it, any feedback would be super. “As usual the technology wasn’t the problem.” ! Too often this is the case. Glad to hear that things are progressing, though. It’s also great to hear that you’ve been having such a good time pimping your browsers.

Something I’ve noticed about our public library patrons: they like simplicity and consistency. I find that if we add too many things to the browsers here, when they go home and the browser doesn’t do just the same thing, it’s confusing. Most (but not all) patrons don’t want to install more widget at home.

This might just be a difference between academic and public library users. Since academic users seem to love tools, it make sense, whereas most public library users, in my experience, are looking for basic browsing and fewer tools. Of course, this isn’t a defining observation; I’m sure there are public library patrons out there who love this stuff, I was one of them.

By: Sue Woodson

Sue Woodson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:10:11 +0000

Wow. This is great. Many thanks for all the work you put in.

We’re finally getting FF up on our public machines over intersession. As usual the technology wasn’t the problem

FYI — We’ve added the LibX toolbar http://libx.org to FF on our public machines. It’s a fantastic tool. One of my favorite features is an autodiscovery element that will create links back to our catalog from other sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble (once it sees the ISBN.) You have to configure it for your own library but it’s not all that hard.

happy holidays

By: Andrea Mercado

Andrea Mercado — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:43:42 +0000

@heidi: Most of our departments use Firefox by default, because it helps everyone avoid the potential problems that come with IE (I tweeted my nightmare with a staff machine that was all sorts of IE spyware infested), and because we have several people on staff who appreciate open source happiness.

It wasn’t hard to do, really, since to staff it’s just another browser. Getting people used to tabs was fun (this was before IE7 and IE tabs), but for the most part if a specific segment of staff is having a problem, we just set the options to open new windows in windows instead of tabs.

As for toolbars and plugins, that totally depends on your staff and what they do. If your staff uses del.icio.us, or some other bookmarking site, I’d say install the plugin for that.

Install as many search widgets for the Firefox integrated search bar as your staff may use. I know we use the Google, Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia searches all the time, and I personally use the searches for Urban Dictionary, A List Apart, and a few others. Feel free to customize this bit at will. I know that NOBLE developed a bunch of search widgets specific to our catalog which we use; creating those is really easy to do, just check out the documentation page for more info.

I also very much like the CuteMenus2 plugin (mentioned in the post), since it makes the menus very visual, which can help the less-technical navigate around. I don’t really like using additional toolbars, since I think it clutters things up (and people tend to move them accidentally).

Other than that, it really depends. Most people, unless they know that Firefox can do something fancy and particular for them, will just use it as a browser, and not many bells and whistles are necessary. But, if you have particular things in mind, lemme know, and we can brainstorm a few ideas.

Alternately, you can just poke around and play with plugins. If you have a moment of “I wish Firefox could do ,” you should search the plugins directory for that keyword, you’ll be surprised what you’ll find (I always am).

By: Andrea Mercado

Andrea Mercado — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:28:56 +0000

@Karin: Glad to do it! I know, it’s a lot of stuff, and I struggled with how to actually present it so that it wasn’t a crazy nightmare. My notes to myself are much sparser, but I know my readership is much skill-varied in the ways of hack fu. So I s’pose it’s better thorough than full of holes. Hopefully people will ask questions in the comments, and I can help clarify/simplify things that way.

By: heidi

heidi — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:56:00 +0000

Hi Andrea, I was thinking about configuring Firefox on our circ/ref computers at the desk. We have FF installed but we haven’t been using it. Have you done this at your library? Do you have any suggestions on toolbars or search plugins if you have?

Good tips for public computers, thanks!

By: Karin Dalziel

Karin Dalziel — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:38:21 +0000

Ow. My brain hurts. Thanks for writing all that up!