[Web4lib] Pop-up blocker on or off?

[Robert Sullivan]

> Do those of you who are responsible for imaging a bank of machines set the
> browsers' pop-up blockers to on or off?
>
> For the computers in the reference area, I had assumed we would want pop-up
> blockers on with great care taken to allow pop-ups for the various
> subscription databases. But the fellow who's imaging the machines in the
> larger computer lab is just turning the pop-up blockers off. Perhaps he
> didn't like setting all the exceptions.
>
> What's the latest trend on this?

We began using the Google Toolbar blocker and the XP blocker at about
the same time, and it took a bit of experimenting to figure out which
sites needed adjustment and how to handle it.

We started with our consortium's domain so that our public catalog
would not be hindered, but now that our ILS (Polaris) is moving away
from popups that's no longer an issue.

Similarly, we had to allow for the Syndetics add-on to our catalog -
they may also have changed, so I'm not sure if that's still a problem.

We added our state library's domain when we tried to access their
scanned government documents and discovered the PDFs came up in their
own window.

The only actual subscription we had to add was Westlaw and that was a
couple of years ago.  Other databases seem quite happy.

We just script these through the Registry during setup now.  Note that
if the window comes up without a toolbar (as Syndetics did) you can't
allow it through the Google blocker manually; it must be configured
through the Registry.  Let me know if anyone needs that information.

-- 
Bob Sullivan
Schenectady Digital History Archive
<http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/>
Schenectady County (NY) Public Library