[OPLINTECH] Menu Bar in Browsers

[Nathan Eady]

David Fausnaugh <dfausnaugh at bexleylibrary.org> writes:

> Our public service staff has asked that we default our public
> computers to display the old menu bar in IE and Firefox.  I think
> people are going to come across the new style elsewhere, and that its
> better to have the default at the library so they can ask questions
> while staff is around to show them how to use it.

I can see several counter-arguments:

 1. Why subject patrons to unnecessary hassles and staff to unnecessary
    support issues?  Why not provide a setup that meets their needs?

 2. They are *eventually* going to run into the "new style" elsewhere,
    but in many cases that will be several years from now (when they
    next buy a new computer).  Forcing it on them now seems like jumping
    the gun at best.
 
 3. When they do run into the "new style" elsewhere, they will very
    likely have the ability in that situation to change the setting if
    they want, which could be problematic in the library setting,
    depending on how you have things locked down.  At the least it could
    be a significant annoyance as they'd have to turn it on again each
    and every time they sit down at a computer in the library, rather
    than just once after the upgrade.  You'd be subjecting them to a
    much worse version of the problem than what they'll see elsewhere.
        
 4. There are whole categories of things that aren't really possible to
    do without turning the menu bar on.  Any computer they see elsewhere
    that was set up by somebody who who knows what they're doing is
    likely to have it turned on, despite the fact that it's not the
    default.  Just because they may see a clearly inferior setup
    elsewhere does not mean they should have to endure a clearly
    inferior setup at the library.
    
 5. In 1995, did all your computers have IE6 as the only web browser
    available, simply because they were going to run into it elsewhere,
    or did you go ahead and install an alternative browser that could
    handle ten-year-old standards more or less correctly?  Taking it a
    step further, some of your patrons will run into computers elsewhere
    that don't have any word processing software except WordPad.  Do you
    specifically avoid installing anything better (OpenOffice.org, for
    example) purely because they're going to run into WordPad elsewhere
    sooner or later?  This "force them to use the lowest common
    denominator here so they can learn how in case they ever encounter
    an inadequately configured system elsewhere" philosophy is, to my
    way of thinking, gratuitously harsh and user-unfriendly, if not
    outright evil.  If there were a legitimate reason to not install
    something (e.g., Plugin XYZ has problematic security issues or is
    simply not worth supporting for the miniscule proportion of websites
    that use it), that's different, but here we're talking about the
    entire rationale being "they might not always have it elsewhere".  I
    don't see that as a good reason.

> Do you use the default settings on your public computers?

We use the settings that make sense in our environment, whether they are
the default or not.  There's no harm in exposing people to the idea that
some computers might be set up a little differently from the default.
They are, after all, going to encounter it elsewhere sooner or later ;-)

For example, all of our computers have Nuke Anything Enhanced.  Sure,
it's a feature they may not have by default on every computer they ever
use.  So what?  It's undeniably useful, and it frequently enables us to
answer patron requests with "Yes, you can do that, here's how" rather
than "Sorry, you have to put up with the way it is by default and pay
for half again as many printed pages as you actually need."

And yes, the browsers on our computers have their menubars turned on
wherever possible.  People who don't want to use them are not obligated
to do so.

-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library