[WEB4LIB] WebSPIRS 5 bug alert

[Stacy Pober]

A technical rep from the library consortium we belong to (the one from which
we buy Silver Platter products) brought this to their attention at my 
request.  Silver Platter's response was that it only happened in one particular
version of Netscape (not true) and only when the user had multiple browser 
windows open (also not true).  It makes me wonder what kind of testing they
are doing there - is it an IE-only shop? 

As for the Fetch free journal list, there's over 8300 titles now, so the 
browsable lists were unwieldy.  That's one of the reasos why it's only 
a searchable list.  Plus, I update that one very frequently, and it's 
much easier to update a single database source file than the generated 
browse pages.

Best,
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Libraries
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu
http://www.manhattan.edu/library/

Quoting Robyn Barker <rbarker at ciis.edu>:
> While I like intuitiveness and easier navigation of the new WebSPIRS 5
> interface, my enthusiasm is not whole-hearted.  The display area for
> search results is way too small, especially if the record includes
> citations.  One can ameliorate this somewhat by grabbing onto the top of
> the results frame and yanking it upwards.  Better would be a display
> option to permit the results to be displayed in another window.
> 
> I've been thinking of telephoning the Silverplatter tech folks, but your
> experience doesn't leave me optimistic.
> 
> Thank you for sharing with us your free e-journal search site.  Do you
> have an alphabetized title listing?
> 
> Robyn Barker
> Systems Librarian
> California Institute of Integral Studies
> 1453 Mission St.
> San Francisco, CA  94103
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stacy Pober [mailto:stacy.pober at manhattan.edu] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 6:36 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] WebSPIRS 5 bug alert
> 
> Links to Webspirs 5 versions of Silver Platter databases only
> work correctly the FIRST time the user clicks on a Webspirs 
> database within a session.  If the user then goes back to our 
> database menu page and clicks on the link for any WebSPIRS 5 
> database different from their original choice, it will simply 
> send them to their initial choice.  The only way to prevent this 
> is to completely close the browser down and then re-open it 
> between clicking on different databases in version 5 of Webspirs.
> 
> Worse yet, if the database used has multiple files (as is the 
> case with most of the Silver Platter databases we get), the 
> patron may not even realize they are in the  wrong database.  
> The only place that the name of the database would show up is 
> the database choice pull-down menu, and it will read: 
> "View databases being searched".  
> 
> Unless the user opens that menu, they may not realize they're 
> still in their initial database, not the one they selected 
> subsequently.
> 
> This bug does not show up if you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer
> v. 6.0 but it does occur in Netscape 4.79 and Mozilla 1.0 Release 
> Candidate 2.  I don't have Netscape 6 on this machine, so someone
> else will have to experiment.
> 
> Our main menu of databases is: 
> http://www.manhattan.edu/library/palsgate.html
> 
> We're currently linking to all three versions of WebSPIRS.  Other
> than the lack of a good signal for the database choice, I was 
> relatively pleased with v.5 until finding this bug. (And of
> course, it showed up when I was demonstrating the use of the 
> database menu to an entire class.)
> 
> Silver Platter says this will be fixed in October.  Considering the
> amount of user confusion it could cause, I would really like it if
> they would act a bit sooner on this issue.  I tried posting this to
> the SPIN-L database, but I cannot seem to post directly to it. 
> I see non-SilverPlatter employee posts there every once in a while, 
> so I don't think it's an announce-only type of list.  Is there some 
> trick in posting to that list? 
> 
> At this point, someone's bound to pipe up with advice that we should
> ditch Netscape entirely.  Certainly it looks like the world is going
> in that direction.  I maintain a database of free online journals
> < http://ejournals.manhattan.edu > and find that a significant 
> percentage of web developers don't seem to be testing their pages
> in Netscape at all. I've come to some sites that have javascript
> pop-ups that warn you the site won't work at all or correctly in
> Netscape, and more sites don't work in some essential way but 
> give you no warning of this.  
> 
> Still, I think that as long as a significant portion of our
> users have Netscape on their computers, our sites should be usable
> in Netscape.  I don't care so much if they're not as attractive,
> but all the essential navigation should be available.  And even 
> if Netscape is not completely compliant with all web standards,
> isn't Mozilla supposed to be pretty good in that respect?  When 
> a page doesn't work in Mozilla, I suspect the problem is in the 
> page design rather than the browser. 
> 
> -- 
> Stacy Pober
> Information Alchemist
> Manhattan College Libraries
> Riverdale, NY 10471
> http://www.manhattan.edu/library/
> 




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