Changes to Email Address and images in LivePerson Chat

Now that we have a real library@ email account again, I went into the Admin Console in LivePerson to change the email address for those wishing to send an email if our chat is not active.  That is, students are given the option to go to Ask Academic or to email if it is outside of our normal chat hours or if no one answers a chat request.

ALSO ...
We received an email today from LivePerson Chat in regards to their commitment to secure connections.

As part of our ongoing commitment to maintain a highly secure platform, we will soon implement a configuration change that will no longer allow a non secure HTTP connection between your visitors, agents, and the LivePerson Platform.  You are receiving this email because we have detected that your account may be affected by this change. ... If you are using custom images in your chat windows that are not hosted on HTTPS, your visitors may receive a mixed content warning on their browsers ...

We did have our own "branding" kind of images which were there from long ago and had no link to anything we are currently doing.  These are not on a secure server and we have no available LS secure servers upon which to place them.

Steve and I discussed this and looked at the standard images offered by LivePerson that most closely matched "our look."  We changed all instances of branding to innocuous images on these windows:

• Pre-Chat survey
• Chat Window
• Exit Window
• When we are offline (email) windo

QR Codes in the Library Catalog

After a little investigation, I learned that the Library Anywhere QR codes function is available without charge to Library Anywhere subscribers and one does not need a Library Thing account to embed the code in the bibliographic record display.

This is done by a widget so does not reside in the record itself but is generated on the fly when the bib record is displayed. It involves adding some simple code to the bib_display.html file and enabling the QR code function in our Library Anywhere settings.

I've done this successfully in the Staging (test) directory of the catalog. I have discovered one quirk that I don't see a reason for and will continue to try to determine why the instructions below the QR code disappear if the item does not have a book cover.

You see see what it looks like by searching the staging catalog on campus only. The staging url is http://alicat.austincc.edu:2082/

One of the other iii libraries included a link to information about QR codes and I thought that was a good idea so I created a new FAQ about QR codes and linked to it from the bibliographic record.

Simmons mobile stylesheet

In this morning's IUG list, Simmons shared their mobile style sheet and some hints. Since it looked fairly straight-forward, I played around with it for about 30 minutes in the staging directory. However, since it is in staging, I am unable to see the results on my cell phone because the student wireless network cannot get past that firewall.

I did test with the Opera mobile launcher software I have loaded and it did sort of work in that it took all the content and put it in a narrow column. However, it didn't get rid of the sidebar and what I was seeing was the full-catalog looking really tiny and in a narrow column.

Part of this is probably that Simmons is on rel 2009b and thus does not have the advance search toolbar token that we have in the skyline version.

Nonetheless, it may be worth pursuing at some point if we can get a mobile device that can VPN into ACCNet to test with. I will keep all the files (actually, there are only 2 stylesheets and one javascript file) and information in a folder with my backups of the live and staging catalogs.

Update: Changing Style Sheets per ACC Web

See this blog entry for previous information:
http://lswebdesign.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

In order to test LS web pages for potential issues with the 960 styling, I needed a way to identify all the pages that were linked on the site, i.e., pages that were viewable by the public.

I used a freeware site map generator (wonderwebware.com) to generate a list

• I converted the list into an Excel spreadsheet.
  
• I then broke apart the urls into
  
• domain
• folder and/or subfolder
• file

• I sorted by folder/subfolder/file to group things into recognizable units.
• I color-coded to more easily identify potential problem pages to test.

After picking those files I thought might break using a new style sheet, I edited each file to change the linked stylesheet to MetaStyleScript-sub960.php and then saved each files as filename960.php

All files passed the test and I do not see any potential problems with applying the new stylesheets to the LS Web Site as per the process outlined earlier. (http://lswebdesign.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html)

The files tested:

• http://library.austincc.edu/index-libhome-sideExpand.php
  
• http://library.austincc.edu/eresources/ebooks960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/eresources/Findarticles960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/eresources/OtherLibs960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/gen-info/GoGreenLibrary960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/gen-info/lending-2960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/gen-info/Dir/LS-dir-evc960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/gen-info/campuses/EVCLibrary960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/gen-info/community/life-comm960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/help/as960k.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/help/tutorials960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/help/infolit/InfoLit-Overview960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/help/research-help/index-research-help960.php
• http://library.austincc.edu/help/CSE/CSE-cs960.php
  

New Look Library Guides June 2011

===================================
New Look Library Guides June 2011
===================================
---------------
1 Styling (CSS)
---------------
1.1 Styling is applied by

1.1.1 custom coding
1.1.2 guide layout and colors edit option
1.1.3 page tab graphics

---------
2 Color
---------
2.1 Rounded page tabs

2.1.1 tabrightl-xxx.gif
2.1.2 tableftl-xxx.gif
2.1.3 text color (#24618e)
2.1.4 Base color
2.1.4.1 rgb(34, 147, 75)
2.1.4.2 #22934B

2.2 Graphics

2.2.1 Recreate graphics pixel by pixel to different color
2.2.2 tabrightI-greenshadelt4.gif
2.2.3 tableftI-greenshade50.gif

2.3 Content box

2.3.1 Header Color {rgb(98, 193, 115) #62C173}
2.3.2 Text Color (#183E59)

----------------------
3 Content/Layout
---------------------
3.1 Change first page

3.1.1 Nothing invites you
3.1.2 Make content what they are looking for.
3.1.3 Add eye-catching graphic
3.1.4 Add owner profile
3.1.5 Move Guides list to Get Help

3.2 Get Help

3.2.1 Use /genericSG/Get Help as linked page
3.2.2 Add Guides list to page

-------------------------
4 Create Test Group
-------------------------
4.1 Test custom header code

<style type="text/css">
#tabsI a { background:transparent url(http://library.austincc.edu/graphics/tableftI-greenshade50.gif) no-repeat scroll left top; }
#tabsI a span { color:#24618e; background:transparent url(http://library.austincc.edu/graphics/tabrightI-greenshadelt4.gif) no-repeat scroll right top; }
#tabsI a:hover span { color:#ffffff;}
.dropmenudiv a { color:#000000; background-color:#E1F2E4; }
.dropmenudiv a:hover { color:#000080; background-color:#C0E8C7; }
</style>

4.2 Test colors
4.3 Test graphics

-----------------
5 Deployment
-----------------
5.1 Get author permission
5.2 Find suitable graphics
5.3 Create copies to work on initially
5.4 Copy Get Help

5.4.1 from Examples to /genericSG
5.4.2 Make sure the boxes are linked to the Get Help on /createguide

5.5 Apply content changes to guides
5.6 Apply colors and codes to Library Guides group