LibraryTechtonics

I think I’ve done enough tinkering and tweaking with the Firefox hacking that I think I can share the instructions with the world. This post is on the long side, because I tried to make the instructions as clear as possible without too much tech speak, and without drowning you in too much minutia, while actually giving you proper instructions. Enjoy!

Now, you will need more than basic computer poking skills to make this work, and I must say, these instructions may not be *perfect* (for sooth, I’m basically trying to clean up my notes without having to rewrite everything). There are files to download and copy into places (userChrome.css and mozilla.cfg), and there are links to those files in the instructions. Make sure you get this working exactly how you want it before you try it on any other machines. Trust me, you don’t want to get to machine 4 and realize that you need to correct something big (I’ve *totally* been there ;D). If you have questions, post comments here, and I’ll do what I can.

Quick computer configuration context notes:

• We have 4 “kiosk” machines right in front of the Information Desk, meant for catalog and quick internet stuff. Patrons only have access to a browser, readers for Adobe, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, My Documents, Recycle Bin, basic Accessories, and Windows XP Accessibility tools.
• The Reference room has 4 computers, and the Computer Lab has 6 computers. These computers are more “normal,” with the full Office Pro suite, FTP and web editing freeware, IM clients (Yahoo!, MSN, and AIM), Picasa, browsers and more.
• All public computers have Deep Freeze Enterprise (which requires unfreezeing/refreezing the computer for the changes to take), Firefox installed.

Now, for the actual instructions…

Step 1: Install basic plug-ins
Go to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7

Install basic plug-ins for:

• Acrobat Reader (WITHOUT Adobe Photoshop® Album Starter Edition): This one takes the longest, and requires that Firefox is open when it starts, so do this one first.
• Flash & Shockwave: both of these require Firefox to be closed, but are fairly quick, so do them second. This will insure that all the crazy web games for kids will work. Do a check by going to the test page on the Adobe site and making sure that the little animations actually work. If the Flash animation isn’t going, click on the puzzle piece to install it. If the Shockwave animation isn’t working, click on the puzzle piece to get to the download of the manual install.

All our machines have Java, Quicktime Alternative, and Real Alternative installed, so we don’t need those plug-ins, but you may need them if you opt for the originals (the latter two are just as well at the real ones, without all the nagware madness and update/app mail notice freakishness).

And, well, Windows XP comes with Windows Media Player.

Step 2: Install & Configure Add-ons
ALL MACHINES:
CuteMenus2: Iconifies your menus, making them very visual.

REFERENCE KIOSKS ONLY:
Auto Reset Browser: Closes all the windows and open a new browser window after a specified time of inactivity. To change settings go to the Extension Manager (after you restart the browser), click Options (I set the refresh to 600 sec = 10mins).

Step 3: Other Firefox bits to configure

1. Type about:config into the Firefox address bar (where you would normally type a URL). Type browser.sessionstore.enabled in the bar at the top of the page (not the address bar, but a blank field in the page), and double-click on it to set it to false. Do the same with browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash. This should keep the browser from spewing a session restore dialog when the machine is restarted (I think this is why Auto Reset Browser tells you to disable Session Restore on the addon page). You can read more about what you can do with about:config file by checking out the knowledge base page on mozillaZine.
2. Go to View >> Toolbars and uncheck Bookmarks Toolbar to turn that off.
3. Tools >> Options menu fun (the caps indicate the tab within the options dialog box):
   • MAIN: Save files to My Documents.
   • TABS: New pages should be opened in a new window, to help people who might be confused by opening pages in new tabs.
   • TABS: Uncheck Warn me when closing multiple tabs.
   • CONTENT: Uncheck Block pop-up windows (because some sites require pop-ups, and it’s easier to leave them on than to confuse the user).
   • CONTENT: Click on the Manage… button under File Types. Search Adobe Acrobat, click on Change Action… to set to Open them with the default application (no more .pdf printing confusion from opening within the browser).
   • PRIVACY: Uncheck everything in the History section.
   • PRIVACY: Check everything in the Private Data section and in the Settings button window.
   • SECURITY: Uncheck Remember passwords for sites.

Step 4: Icons
Startup folder: Copy & paste Firefox icon, rename it Internet, delete the Public Web Browser icon. That way, Firefox will open on startup. The home page for the browsers is a web-based “button” interface to help people get around from within the library, because they like the button thing (but it’s not as crazy restrictive as, say, WinU or something like that).

Step 5: Hiding menu stuff
If you want more details on the stuff you can edit using the userChrome.css file, check out the Chrome element names and IDs page on on mozillaZine, as well as this discussion thread on Addons Mirror.

• Copy userChrome.css (right-click/Ctrl-click to Save as… or drag and drop somewhere) to C:\Documents and Settings\public\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxx.default\chrome (this will only make the change to the “public” user, in this case. You would need to copy this file to each user that you want to affect).
• The userChrome.css file has code in it to hide specific whole menus and specific menu options, including Option and Add-ons. This is why all that other stuff needs to be done first. However, if you ever need to see these menus, the quick and easy way is to:
  1. Open the userChrome.css file
  2. Comment out (/* at the beginning of the line, */ at the end of the line) the
     • menuitem[label="Options..."], and/or the
     • menuitem[label="Add-ons"],

     lines (respectively, including the comma at the end).

  3. Save the file.
  4. Restart Firefox, and the menus will appear, so you can make your changes. When you’re done, uncomment the lines (delete the /* at the beginning of the line and */ at the end of the line), and save the file. You will need to restart Firefox logged in as the “public” user, in this case, to see the changes.

Here’s a composite image of all the menus in Firefox (click on the image for a larger view). CuteMenus2 makes them nice and visual, which actually helps people a lot.

This is what the full window looks like, with our library start page loaded up.

Step 6: Locking down Firefox
Many, many thanks to silentk::cbx3 for his awesome posts — “Security Firefox for schools usage” part 1 and part 2 — for helping me figure this part out! For details on how this works, check out those posts.

The mozilla.cfg file contains stuff you really, really want to lock down. But why do we need this if we did all that other stuff with the options and hiding the menus and whatever? Using the mozilla.cfg file will make it so that even if they figure out how to unhide the menus from Step 5, they can’t actually change anything.

Let’s look at a quick example. You could prevent users from installing more plugins by editing the about:config file (see Step 3, above). However, if you do it that way, the next time the user tries to install a plugin, the browser will show a super-helpful message explaining that the option is disabled, and it will give the user a friendly button to press to re-enable the setting. That’s suboptimal, at best. So, consider this step insurance, especially against those super-industrious nosey users.

There are three parts to this step. Part one is to create a text file which contains the code that locks down specific items. Part two is to do something called byteshifting, so that Firefox can actually read the instructions you set in the text file. While “Security Firefox for schools usage - Part II” notes that byteshifting is unnecessary, the file didn’t work for me on Windows XP without that step. Part three is to tell the browser where to look for the instructions, so it’ll actually do what you tell it to.

Now, in an effort not to give away all of our hacky secrets to, say, the super-industrious Reading patrons ;D, you can download a modified version of our mozilla.cgf file (right click/Ctrl-click the link and Save as…, or drag the link somewhere to save), already byteshifted. Opening the file will just read as garbeldy gook, because it’s all in Mozilla’s crazy moon language. This mozilla.cfg file locks the following settings:

• Start Page is whatever you set it as in the Firefox Options
• Browser cache limited at 50mb
• Disables automatic updates to the browser (So that it won’t harass the user with constant update notices. The Windows permissions on our computers don’t allow for users to install new programs, and with Deep Freeze installed, the updates wouldn’t take, anyway.)
• Javascript and Java enabled
• Downloads go to the last folder chosen to save downloads (will default to the folder set in the Options)
• Keeps users from installing plugins, for serious.

If this satisfies all your wants and desires, then you can skip the next two paragraphs and follow the all.js file instructions that follow.Alternately, if you want to get all sorts of custom with yo bad self, you can check out the very detailed notes in the “Security Firefox for schools usage - Part II” post to make your very own file. If you’ve already gone through all the steps listed here, the bits you’ll need will depend on your library’s configuration. If you want help figuring it out, take a look at that post first and give it a shot, then post questions here as a comment (I can’t make custom files for people, but I can help you figure it out).

Once you have your mozilla.txt file all set, save it in a safe place, just in case you want to change it later. Now, you need to byteshift the file to convert it to a mozilla.cfg file, so that Firefox can actually read and execute your instructions. You can do this by going to the Upload mozilla.txt to get mozilla.cfg (byteshift 13) section of the Automatic Mozilla Configurator home page (about midway down). You will now have a nifty new mozilla.cfg file, which you should copy into the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\ folder.

Now you need to tell your browser how to find your new instructions.

1. Make sure that Firefox is CLOSED.
2. Open the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\greprefs\all.js in Notepad (double-clicking on this file will likely give you a Javascript error, so be sure to open it from Notepad, and have Notepad show you all file formats instead of just .txt files, then you’ll see it).
3. Comment out thepref(”general.config.obscure_value”, 13); // for MCD .cfg filesline, so that it ends up looking like//pref(”general.config.obscure_value”, 13); // for MCD .cfg files
4. Copy this line just below the line from step 2 above pref(”general.config.filename”, “mozilla.cfg”);so that the resulting code looks like this//pref(”general.config.obscure_value”, 13); // for MCD .cfg files
   pref(”general.config.filename”, “mozilla.cfg”);
   
5. Save the all.js file and close it.

Easy way to manipulate plug-ins after you install the mozilla.cfg: Comment out the pref(”general.config.filename”, “mozilla.cfg”); line (by adding the // at the beginning of the line), then save. When you’re done, uncomment the line (by deleting the // at the beginning of the line) and save.

If at any point you want to alter the instructions in the mozilla.cfg file, you must make the changes in the mozilla.txt file, then byteshift it, then paste it over the existing file. It’s a lot of steps, so make sure you have what you want before you make it final.

Step 7: Other housekeeping – to do when testing

• Open Adobe Reader application once, and be sure to check the box that tells Adobe not to show that big screen when it opens.
• Check Firefox to make sure it works.

So yeah, that’s the long and long of it. Remember that you can play with just parts of these instructions to, say, customize your copy of Firefox on your home computer, or make a snazzy custom browser at work.

Just a note, I’ll be out of town starting Sunday, back on the web officially Tuesday, and I’ll do what I can about answering questions in between. Happy Merry to you all!

About a week and change ago, I gave a presentation (many thanks to Jessamyn for referring me) at the day-long continuing education workshop “21st Century Libraries: Making Technology Work for Library Users,” which also featured Linda Braun and Casey Bisson.

I retooled my presentation from NH, adding the fabulousness of William Shatner as Your Beta Hero (many thanks to Neil Gorman of Comicology for that), as well as a neato interactive Human Bingo game that helped illustrate social networking through actual play. However, the true thrust of the presentation remained that knowing the culture of sites is knowing the tool: having an account isn’t enough, and playing with the other kids (not just the librarians!) in the different Web 2.0 playgrounds is totally key. I also, once again, pimped the idea of 23 Library 2.0 Things, because my instructor brain loves bite-sized, self-paced stuff, and I think librarians do, too.

I think overall the presentation went really well, and I think it’s my best presentation to date. At some point, I’ll record the audio and make a slidecast out of it, since it really makes more sense with the audio. In the meantime, I’ve had at least one request to do the recording live streamed, so if there’s anyone out there who wants to sponsor that, I’d be game (alternately, I may set up a WebEx trial just to do it, we’ll see).

It’s a bit spooky how well all 4 presentations dovetailed together (Linda spoke twice, the keynote and an afternoon presentation, Casey and I spoke once each), it was almost like we all sat in the same room and figured out how to make them relevant to and flow cohesively into each other. If I had to tag the day, I’d use: social, community, beta, culture, literacy, fun, new, different.

In the course of the other presentations, Linda showed off a whole lot of awesome sites, Casey talked about serving users online and how community is beneficial to the library, I was recorded singing [link added 4:11p] Jingle Bell Rock care of Linda’s computer and The Sims On Stage (see pic left care of Casey Bisson; great for karaoke night or afternoon at the library for teens and up!), and people asked a whole lot of questions. Judging by some of the things I heard at this session, librarians are still looking for some level of control in a community controlled environment, which will make for rough waters in the online Library 2.0 future, but librarians very much want to learn. I’m hoping our presentations offered a place to start in reconciling these bits.

Many thanks to Karen Mellor and her team for setting up such an excellent day!

You may have heard of Jelly, the build-your-own-coworking movement that’s popping up in major cities. Basically, someone hosts other work-at-home people in the area, providing space, wifi, and the comforts of a casual working environment.

Like many librarians, I work a part-time job (25 hours/week) in scheduled shifts, some days, some evenings, some day-to-evenings, and a weekday off, and I do other stuff, like working for the PLA Blog, in my other “work time.” It so happens that the Jelly in Boston meets the first and third Mondays of the month (my weekday off), and I love the concept, so my plan is to hit Jelly after Social Media Breakfast 4.

The crowd seems to be predominantly techie, which makes some sense, since programmers/designers/developers/managers and the like tend to do a lot of freelance-at-home work. But, there’s no limit on the type of work you do, everyone’s invited. Furthermore, I might learn something about what they’re working on just asking them questions. Sounds like an excellent way to get work done and social network a little at the same time.

I’ll report back on the day… in the meantime, if you’re interested in hitting — or starting — a Jelly near you, check out the official site.

Weather permitting, I’ll be heading to Social Media Breakfast 4 (which is totally sold out, btw) on Monday morning to hear Geoff Livingston weigh out whether people are trying to target audiences, stakeholders, or community members using social media. Geoff posted a really interesting preface to his talk on his blog, outlining the differences between the three types of “targets” (complete with pics as visual stimulators of thought, and dictionary definitions for clarity), and a really interesting bit on the types of relationships each target represents.

Reading the comments so far (I’m guessing there will be more), this statement from Geoff’s response this morning really struck me:

…I’m not seeing it as a battle of semantics, more one of attitude. To me having the attitude that you can use social media to talk to audiences indicates that you think you are in control, that the people you are communicating with cannot make good decisions (Keen), and that it’s your stage to perform on. The audience can only cheer or leave depending on your performance. This approach seems to be one for other media forms.

- Geoff Livingston, 15 Dec 2007

To me, this is where libraries still teeter, which was evidenced by some of the comments and questions I heard at the Rhode Island CE presentation I did last week (more in on that in another, overdue post), and what I’ve heard at presentations and events before. Librarians still want a serious amount of control, and by this definition, that means we are still treating our patrons as an audience, not as an interactive community or even as decision-influencing stakeholders, going by Livingston’s definitions.

Libraries will need to see social media from the patrons’ perspective, and apply it mostly on the patrons’ terms to really be effective in that arena, and that means allowing access in a way that is inherently uncomfortable behind the green library curtain. And while libraries and librarians are trying, and are making some progress getting feet wet, it won’t be a real, participatory paradigm shift until we all get past that audience mentality and really get into the community and stakeholder mindset of application.

I think it’ll be a really interesting talk. Until my new laptop arrives, I won’t be live blogging anything, so I’m hoping to write up my notes shortly after.

Boston Media Makers meets the first Sunday of every month at Sweet Finnish in Jamaica Plain, MA. It’s “live Twitter“-style, where everyone around the table gets 3 minutes to talk about what they’re working on, ask questions, do little show-and-tell demos, that sort of thing. Steve Garfield, local vidcaster extraordinaire (check out his tutorials and resources on how to video blog), has been working on a method of live broadcasting the meeting, and this meeting was broadcast on a new streaming net TV site called Mogulus.  We were even able to take questions from the Mogulus chat room for the stream, which was nifty. Hurray for trying new stuff using practical applications.

This is the first time I’ve been to a BMM meeting, and I’m one of two women in the room. Not surprising, but worth noting (especially if you’re a techie gal/librarian or a gal interested in tech looking for something like this).  I was also one of the few people in the room with a PC.

Attendees range from movie maker types, new media marketers, programmers, designers, people from companies and organizations looking to use the media to help somehow, and more.  It’s great to be in a room with so many different types of people listening to their ideas, discoveries, demos, debates, and more.  Face-to-face communication is awesome.

Some of the nifty things that were talked about at the meeting, going around the room:

• Giant Squid Audio Lab mics: the Tram 50 is an awesome quality but budget option (although I can’t find it online… I’m worried that I heard it wrong). The cute fuzzy mic covers for filtering wind are excellent stocking stuffers (making them DIY is really easy, though, too).
• Got an iPhone, iPod, Zune, some other portable? Get iYule. The money goes to a charity, which is awesome.  The nice gent who mentioned it said that his iPhone even felt a little warmer in his hands when viewing it. ;D
• A really interesting discussion on the rise of sites like Utterz and Seesmic, pros/cons, feature comparisons.
• Social Media Breakfast 4 has been scheduled, and they have their own site now. I’m already registered, if you’re in the Boston area and wanna meet tech & media folks, you should come.
• A fellow all the way from London with a company called Windfalldigital, working on some really super interesting multimedia exhibit stuff on science, including a “choose a character” interactive exhibit on genetics (much akin to the Holocaust Museum and the Spy Museum). He showed a really interesting video… I hope it shows up well in the session recording.
• Someone just starting out with video and audio, looking to broadcast interview for his blog about how life online leads to life offline.
• The new WordPress for Dummies book is apparently really good, and includes an excellent section on WordPress MU.
• All sorts of love for Voxci. I’ve been rolling around ideas for using it, and Jack Hodgson is going to help me help him by encouraging me to use it.
• Gravityland looks like an intriguing experimental take on interactive fictionalized web media entertainment.
• Comparing Networked organizations (less hierarchy, more task-oriented roles) vs. traditional top-down organizations (managers, middle managers, underlings), and the recommendation to read The Starfish and the Spider.

Boston Media Makers is an example of how social media online isn’t always a digital vacuum, and that social media can and usually will lead to IRL (in real life) interactions, especially with people who really get it.

Do you attend meetings like this in your area?  Why or why not?  If you do, what types of social media types attend?  If more meetings like this were streamed live, would you watch/listen?