[Yulcat-l] Cataloger's Desktop Toolbar & Firefox

[Steven Arakawa]

Those of you who use Firefox as your browser for accessing Cataloger's 
Desktop may have noticed a problem in the display: the toolbar does not 
display.
[The toolbar has the Start Over, Print, Backtrack, Prev Selection, Next 
Section, Clear Search, and Bookmark icons and ordinarily displays below the 
TABS Browse, Document, Results, Doc/Results, Search, Preferences, What's 
New, Help, Bookmark, Feedback, Logout]

The new version of Cataloger's Desktop does not display the toolbar in 
Firefox version 1.0.7, which is the version most of you probably have on 
your workstations. It's my understanding that the toolbar does display with 
version 1.5 (based on a posting on the Cataloger's Desktop list). However, 
as Ernie has indicated in a message posted some time ago (on YULCAT?), 
staff should not be using 1.5 because it causes problems in display with 
some library web pages.

TEMPORARY SOLUTION: The toolbar displays if you use the currently supported 
version of Internet Explorer. When I was doing the introductory 
presentations on the web version of Cataloger's Desktop, I did not 
recommend IE because it had problems managing cookies essential to the 
proper operation of CD. Since the new version of CD does not use cookies, 
you should not have a problem with bookmarking, preferences, etc. if you 
use IE. The one annoyance that I've encountered so far is that you have to 
at least type the first letter of the username to get the username/password 
prompted, something that has not been necessary with Firefox.

LONGTERM SOLUTION. There is a later version of Firefox 1.5 that has 
apparently resolved the display problems. WWDCS will push it out after 
testing. In the meantime, please do not download Firefox 1.5. I also can't 
guarantee that the version of Firefox 1.5 that will eventually be pushed 
out will be compatible with the CD toolbar since my information is 
anecdotal from the  Cataloger's Desktop list posting; I haven't been able 
to test it since I don't have that version on my workstation.

PS: CDS, the publisher of Cataloger's Desktop, only supports IE and 
Netscape, so they are under no obligation to make the program compatible 
with Firefox.

----------------------------------------------------------
Steven Arakawa
Catalog Librarian for Training & Documentation
Catalog Dept. Sterling Memorial Library. Yale University.
P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240
(203)432-8286 steven.arakawa at yale.edu