OPAC query screen enhancements in Inmagic Genie

As well as adding canned queries to Inmagic Genie search results elsewhere on your web site, you can also add them right into the heading area on your query screens.

In this example above we have added links to a Journals List and to Recent Acquisitions.

The code to add the View All Journals link is the canned search syntax added to the Heading = parameter in your MyQueries.config file.

You can also move the links between Simple and Advanced searches to this Heading area instead of using the default drop down.

Don't forget to change the section at the bottom of the config file that lists which search screens display. We usually comment this out rather than remove it.

(Thanks to Lisa and Jean at Inmagic for these tips.)

Updated Andornot Utility scripts for Webpublisher 11

As reported in my last post, Inmagic Webpublisher 11 broke some of our utility scripts. This release is compatible with WPP 11, and is still backwards-compatible with earlier versions.

Download them from our demo site at ask.andornot.com:

Andornot Search Utilities 1.9

Andornot Result Utilities 1.10

CSS absolute positioning while using ASK

is NOT recommended.

Usually not added when you first install WPP, check your DBTWPUB.ini file in your WPP installation folder on your web server. Make sure that you do not have the line of code "WebCSSOpt=2" as our ASK web forms will not display properly.

You can edit the DBTWPUB.ini file in Notepad and either change it to WebCSSOpt=0 or delete that line entirely.

Below is the DB/TextWorks Help file article for more information....

WebPublisher PRO: Form layout

By default, WebPublisher version 4.1 and later uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and absolute positioning, so that report, display, and edit forms look as much as possible as they would look in DB/TextWorks.

WebPublisher detects whether the browser supports Cascading Style Sheets. If not, WebPublisher uses simple HTML (boxes will be left-justified, box labels will appear on top rather than to the left, and so forth).

Forms that contain Raw HTML or inline images are incompatible with absolute positioning. Forms containing these elements will have overlapping text unless very carefully designed. Therefore, simple HTML is used for this type of form unless you explicitly set WebCSSOpt=2 in your DBTWPUB.INI file (see below).

Note: DB/TextWorks tabular forms do not use absolute positioning, so this issue does not affect them.

You can use picture boxes in place of inline images to retain CSS formatting. The Image size option specified using Box Properties>Position in the Form Designer is used. In order for the image sizing to work properly, the images must reside either in the textbase folder (for example, C:\CATALOG\) or the folder specified in the Image field in the record (for example, C:\IMAGES\COYOTE.JPG).

To control whether the site uses CSS, set the WebCSSOpt= parameter in the [WebPublisher] section of your DBTWPUB.INI file equal to one of the following:

0 = do not use CSS 1 = the default behavior 2 = use CSS regardless of whether forms contain Raw HTML or inline images

Example

[WebPublisher] WebCSSOpt=0

Note: The WebCSSOpt= parameter affects all forms and all textbases, unless you override it using the CS= parameter in an individual query screen.

Webpublisher 11 breaks some Andornot scripts

Inmagic Webpublisher 11, just released, breaks some Andornot Utility scripts that rely on the dbtw_params variable: Rewind, Next/Previous, and Change Form On Dropdown Value are affected. Possibly others.

A fix will be released as soon as possible, and I will update this post and provide download links to the script files at that time.

UPDATE Jun 13 2008: Fix released.

More Info

dbtw_params is a javascript variable injected into the page by Webpublisher that holds a query string representation of the current result page. As with all query strings, Key/value pairs are separated by the & character, except that in WPP 11, this character is HTML-encoded as &.

Webpublisher 10

Webpublisher 11

Canned searches and Inmagic Genie

We always recommend clients surface content buried deep in their Inmagic databases by adding canned search hyperlinks on their web sites. These can be on the search page as topic searches or on any other relevant page, so for example, you could create a list of materials on a particular subject for a practice group or on a project page. Another obvious example of a canned search would be a link to the latest new acquisitions on the Library home page.

See our WebPublisher Links page for some canned search examples:

Our Search Cannery Wizard is a great help for creating the syntax and testing these searches. It can also be used for quickly setting up canned searches for Inmagic Genie.  These are are not as complex and do not need as many parameters specified as for WebPublisher PRO.

You would need to substitute your own web server name and search strategy. Use the   help hints for assistance in constructing your specific query.

For Genie canned searches you can ignore Step 3 altogether and go straight to Step 4:

Press the Can it button to take the values entered above and create the code, then use the Test it button to ensure that it works as expected.  Copy and paste the HTML code into your web site. The example above would generate the following:

Results:

Whenever a user clicks on a canned search hyperlink they will get all records found by that search strategy, including any new entries as soon as they are entered into the database.

Canned searches are a great way to increase exposure to your resources! 

Firefox 3 (Release Candidate 1) and Hit-a-Hint

Peter let us know this morning that several indispensable Firefox add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 3 RC1:

• Firebug 1.2 beta
• Del.icio.us bookmarks 2.0.48 beta
• Web developer toolbar 1.1.6 already compatible
• AI Roboform already compatible
• YSlow

So off I went as that was the only reason I was holding off. Installed without problems and I love it. In just using it for a very short time (less than an hour):

1. Sites load fast. And memory usage is much improved (right now with a couple tabs open I'm looking at 70MB whereas before it was regularly several hundred megs).
2. Firefox itself loads very fast. Although some of this could be attributed to some add-ons that have been disabled now, it nevertheless is so much faster that even if the slug has not quite become a steed, it’s still awfully studly.
3. The new functionality in the location bar is great.
4. The add-ons dialogue is much improved. It's a small thing, but the reduced number of clicks to get an add-on installed makes a whole lot more sense than before.

And that's just what I've noticed right off the bat.

However, at first I thought Hit-a-Hint (a great add-on that makes it easy to do fast mouseless browsing) would be joining ColorZilla, Personal Menu, and a few others on the "not yet ready for 3" list, but searching the comments, sukhoy-isu mentions you can do a simple xpi installer change to get it going. Now how do you do that you may ask? Well, rather easily:

1. Get the hah_0_9_1.xpi installer from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1341, or rather, because the link is not available from within Firefox 3, go to http://hah.mozdev.org/installation.html.
2. The xpi file is a compressed archive, so use something like 7-zip to open it up and extract the install.rdf file.
3. Open the install.rdf file in your favorite text editor and modify the maxVersion value to 3.0 and save.
4. Plunk the install.rdf file back into the hah_0_9_1.xpi compressed archive.
5. Go to File -> Open File and locate your hah_0_9_1.xpi file and go through the resulting add-on installer process.
6. Voila! Start hitting your hints! 

Or, go the easy way and download the one I put together. Just change the extension from .zip to .xpi before opening it with Firefox.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Anything bad that ensues, don't blame me. It's not my fault. As always, it's Peter's.

When distributed transactions go boing: Get Vista, XP, and SQL Server 2000 talking to each other

From XP SP2 and on, all network communication coming out or getting to DTC (Distributed Transaction Coordinator) is disabled by default. For example, if a COM+ object attempts to update a SQL database on a remote computer using a DTC transaction, the transaction fails. Likewise, if your computer hosts a SQL database that components from remote computers try to access using a DTC transaction, their transactions fail. With Vista, it gets even more tightened down (see "Using MSDTC between Vista clients and Windows 2000 servers" for details).

On my development machine, I'm running Vista. As we still do the bulk of our work hooking into SQL Server 2000, I need to run that in a virtual machine; I haven't bothered making all these part of the same domain. Therefore, attempting to do some transactions (via System.Transaction.TransactionScope) makes everything go bonk if you're dealing with a setup like mine:

System.Transactions.TransactionException: The transaction has already been implicitly or explicitly committed or aborted.

And/Or:

The partner transaction manager has disabled its support for remote/network transactions.

And/Or:

MSDTC on server 'servername' is unavailable.

So here's how to make them all play nicely together so you can get back to getting productive work done:

(Caveat: this is for a development environment not production. Obviously, for production environments, you're going to have machines on the same domain, no sign of XP--or Vista for that matter--and can therefore tighten security up quite a bit...make that should tighten security up quite a lot)

1. Enable MSDTC on Vista
   1. Run dcomcnfg (Component Services)
   2. Expand the "Component Services" node, then the "My Computer" node, then the "Distributed Transaction Coordinator" node
   3. Right-click on the "Local DTC" node and select "Properties"
   4. On the "Local DTC Properties", select the "Security" tab
   5. Select Network DTC Access, Allow Inbound, Allow Outbound, No Authentication Required, and Enable XA Transaction
      Note: reduced authentication security required because the machines are not on the same domain (in a production environment, they will be)
   6. Enable service auto start if you so wish:
      1. Run dcomcnfg again if necessary
      2. Locate Distributed Transaction Coordinator and right-click and select "Properties"
      3. In "General" tab, set startup type to "Automatic"
2. Enable MSDTC on XP virtual machine
   1. Run dcomcnfg (Component Services)
   2. Expand the “Component Services” node, then the "My Computer" node
   3. Right-click on "My Computer" and select "Properties"
   4. Select "MSDTC" tab
   5. Click "Security Configuration"
   6. Check/Select "Network DTC Access", "Allow Remote Clients", "Allow Inbound", "Allow Outbound", "No Authentication Required", and "Enable XA Transactions"
   7. Okay your way out after the MSDTC service automatically restarts
   8. Enable service auto start if you so wish:
      1. Open SQL Server Service Manager (SQL Server 2000)
      2. Select Distributed Transaction Coordinator and check "Auto-start service when OS starts."
3. Firewall
   1. On both machines you must add msdtc.exe to your list of exceptions (C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe)
   2. You might need to also open port 135. I didn't, but I've heard you might.
4. Run your transaction code to ensure that it works. If not, reboot both machines.

I got the above from a bunch of various blogs, forum posts, and KB articles. Two that were the most helpful were:

• Using MSDTC between Vista clients and Windows 2000 servers
• The partner transaction manager has disabled its support for remote/network transactions

One character problem in DB/TextWorks v.11 substitution lists

A problem has been identified in DB/TextWorks v.11, whereby single character substitution lists are being ignored. Inmagic recommends that you implement a workaround by using 2 or more characters instead of one. They have reported that this will be fixed in the next service pack or next release (no date given). Please contact Andornot if you need assistance in modifying your one character substitution lists.