Koha-US SIG - Web Dev Special Interet Group, 13 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Web Development Special Interest Group - 8/13/20

Description

Chat logs:
00:15:18 Heather Hernandez: Info on the Galadriel plugin here: https://bywatersolutions.com/education/monday-minutes-using-the-galadriel-plugin-to-customize-the-opac
00:16:53 Lucas Gass: https://www.diffchecker.com/
00:20:09 Lisette: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=22660
00:22:58 Lisette: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=24387
00:24:16 Owen Leonard: Bug 15326 - Add CMS feature https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=15326
00:30:18 Lisette: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=26205 - Changes to News items aren't logged
00:30:30 Owen Leonard: Thanks Lisette
00:52:07 Lisette: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=25100
00:57:06 Lisette: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=26206

A

It's started good to go.

B

Lucas was going to tell us about some new stuff he's done with galadriel and I'm excited to see it.

A

um I've made some changes I will show, but I've realized that there's nothing especially visually different, that I've done. um I've made it work with 2005, which is for everybody who's using it by water partners um to 2005. It's still going to work yeah, but as for visuals, to show off there's not much.

A

A

Somebody must have something else fun that we could talk about right.

B

Well, um since this does get published to the web and we're chatting a little bit before the recording started owen, do you want to just give your pitch on the chance that some people watch this video out on the world wide web um and we're looking for.

C

Sure um to repeat what I said before, I have been testing some accessibility bugs some patches for accessibility issues in the opec, and a lot of them are related to users of screen readers trying to improve the opac experience for people who are using screen readers, and while I can test them to a certain extent, I'm not a blind user, I'm not site impaired. I can.

C

I can do my best, but I don't think it's the same as you know, an actual screen, reader user testing them, and so it would be great if we had some people who we could pass these these bugs on to for testing.

C

And you know we could set up a sandbox and apply the patch and share the link and a test plan and and get their help. That would be very cool. um It would make me much more confident in the solutions that we were proposing for things that we don't really.

C

C

And it was suggested that we post this question on the cohort mailing list, so I will try to remember to do.

C

B

I'm curious of everyone here. I think we um we at bywater took care of uh instances where our red bar was appearing on the opac um with the latest point. Update and galadriel and lucas can talk a little bit more about that one. Does anyone still have that showing up.

A

To be clear, margaret, that was a galadriel problem.

A

Not a co-op problem.

D

I had thought that it was a problem with a news feed item that I'd put in that had a red bar because it showed up the same day. I did that so I hadn't told anyone at bywater yet because I hadn't got around to it and now it's gone so it must have been that yay.

A

There was a accessibility patch that I think, owen wrote um that allows you to press tab on the opec and skip to main content, which is cool. That is cool.

C

I I helped with it. I didn't it wasn't originally mine, but I I tweaked it because I'm a busybody- and I want to just get my hands into everything that everyone else does.

E

I have a question on um the logs and like sometimes we'll make a change in our css or our jquery and we think it's working and then staff comes along. You know a couple days later and it's like such and such has disappeared, or it's corrupted or whatever, and I'm like yeah. That was me.

E

I made some change and now I have to go back and figure out what that change was, and so I look at the logs, but we've got so much jquery and so much css that when I you know, look at it, I get everything. That's in that section.

E

Is there any way to like? Have the log just report, the changes that were made so that you could pinpoint what you're look you know you could see well on tuesday, here's this small section. So it must be that thing that I did that's now causing the problem.

B

Not off the top of my head, but that would be a slick, enhancement.

D

Yeah with those it would be kind of nice, if you could almost do it like a diff view like you can with patches on.

A

D

Bugzilla, where it would just show you these lines are what was added or removed, and that was it and you.

A

Could see what had.

D

Been removed, I mean, I know, that's probably a lot more stuff going on, but especially when we have people going in to edit the jquery the for for like the first time or who don't do it very often. I always tell them like save a copy in a like a text file before you make changes just in case something breaks, and I mean I do enough tweaking in the jquery that I probably have a fairly updated version.

D

You know probably once a week I end up having to save whatever's in there to do some testing, and so we can usually fix it um pretty easily, but that kind of thing would be really helpful, especially with people who aren't like in there all the time.

E

Well, I can file a bug or look and see if there's anything out there, and then I guess a follow-up question to that would be if these preferences are going to end up moving to the news sections.

E

How do the logs work with that area? Do they work the same way? I've never looked to see. We don't use news all that much so, not sure how that would work.

C

At first glance, it doesn't look like those changes are logged, but I'm not positive.

C

I could certainly see the the log view interface being changed so that you could select two updates to to compare to each other. um So that would be an interesting thing to do, but you're right, if it, if it's not in the preferences anymore, then it won't get picked up by the logs. There might be a bug already for that, but if not we should. We should put that in.

E

So I'm a little worried about stuff going to the news.

E

Section so here's just an off the top of my head thought. So if we're moving things to the news section, because that makes it sort of easier for.

E

Non-Experienced css jquery people.

E

Is there any way that there would could be like a system preference that says you know, pull your stuff from either news or what we have now? The preferences that we have now and then people who are comfortable with the news and only want that they edit it there and people who are comfortable with the way. It is now that the system preference says we'll use it from there.

C

I think what you're asking about is something that lucas has worked on, which is an option to be able to switch between the coding editor and the the visual editor in the news interface.

C

So I I I think, that's what you're referring to, and that is in the most recent version, that's in master right now, so that's coming up.

B

Okay I'll say to clarify to the best of my understanding owen, that html system preferences are on the roadmap to get moved into news. um Were opec, user.js and opac user css also going to get moved to news, because I didn't think so. Oh.

C

Okay, it's entirely it's entirely um connected to creating the ability to to have multiple language versions of the html preferences.

C

If you had a single system, preference with opec, main user block, it had to be in that language, you and then you would have to jump through a bunch of hoops to to try and make it available to other languages.

C

So putting in the new system allows you to create multiple versions of it based on the current language um and that's that's the the reason for the for the switch um opec, user.js and opec. Css are not going to be included in that. Okay.

B

C

C

The issues with using the visual editor are the same, for you know just plain html and that's why um the ability to switch between code mirror and the visual editor are going to be good.

E

C

Thank you for clarifying that mark.

D

And I just looked at bugzilla and it doesn't look like there's a bug yet about adding logging for changes to the news features, um and so that is something we probably want to go ahead and file.

C

B

Or you'd make a new news feature for that block and expire. The previous one and you've kind of got a built-in log right in news, but that's a pretty different workflow than people are used to.

B

Eventually, we'll just paste it back in just like nope turn that off turn that one back on.

C

Eventually, we'll just recreate wordpress within the new system and and it'll have a revision, log and and all sorts of things so.

B

I still think the new system needs to come up with a new name and probably have its own area under administration, because it's now all you know the visual user experience or the opec user experience um and not just here's the news items there's a bug for that.

C

Yeah and meanwhile, there's also the the bug for creating whole new pages. I can't remember what that's called now, um but.

B

C

Yes, cms one, so that's.

B

Gonna, be a little bit more user friendly to hop into would not be remiss.

B

And for people listening at home bug two two: six, six zero and two four three eight seven, I think are the ones we're just talking about was that is that right.

D

Yeah two two: six, six zero is the one um that got pushed to master that we were talking about a few minutes ago. Allow use of code mirror for editing html in the news editor and then this 24387 is uh for renaming the news tool and there's also some discussion about there about maybe having part of it be the having the news. Things actually be under a separate tool, because um some libraries have a lot of news items, and so then it's not getting like as confused, uh and then owen just put one five.

D

Three two six add cms feature into the chat as well.

C

I keep thinking that it would be fairly simple to accomplish the separation of news and non-news just by by adding a flag to the interface, so that you so that it's this it's the same script. It's just you're passing a flag that says: don't only show me news right now or vice versa, but I don't I don't know if that's enough, I haven't even tried it so.

B

Like when you're in your that window, you can click a button or two and filter news, not news everything.

B

I'll just kind of like with reports how you can just start typing keyword or number, and it's just kind of like here's, the things that actually match that and.

D

Expand them yeah. I think that would probably work for our consortium.

B

Yeah, because that could be a lot of news for all the consortial members all having their own.

B

E

um On the uh opac on the results list, um is there a way to display only where you have the publishing place, the publisher and the date? Is there a way to display only the publishing.

C

Date so the I. I think that this is a long-standing issue with the mark format, which is that that's all one big string in the mark record mark wasn't actually designed to be machine readable at all. Otherwise they would have put that date in a separate field.

C

So out of the box, I know like we.

C

I think that the the process of of building the the mysql tables tries to pull the publisher date, the publication date, but I'm not sure how machine readable it gets, um but it's and it's not the that's not where the data is coming from. For this view, it's coming right out of the mark record so well.

F

The date is in a separate subfield.

C

F

Yeah 264 subfield c or 260, subfield c, so I guess.

B

Cataloging sig here so like those were fighting words owen.

C

um Well, I'm I'm still I'm still saying that it's not machine readable because you've got like oh did they put a c in there or did they not put a c in there next to the year? And you know that kind of thing, but um so if it's okay yeah! So if it's in a separate subfield, you could theoretically modify the xslt to break it out or to wrap it in a in a.

C

C

There have been a lot of of tweaks to the to the default xslt for search results in order to add additional classes or ids to things like that, as people have have asked, for you know more um avenues for customization, so that seems like a reasonable change to make.

F

I can see that being handy for public libraries who are interest. You know whose users are typically just interested in having like the latest edition or the newest, or something like that, and not necessarily interested in everything that academic or special libraries are interested in where they'd be seeking certain publishers. Or is this on a university press? Something like that.

B

And lucas correct me if I'm wrong, but galadriel does work to trim down some of the um extensive knowledge that can be displayed, so you can kind of focus on making that display a little bit more succinct. um I know there was a thing with whether or not it was looking at the 260 versus 264 ways back and it's been a while, since I checked on that issue,.

A

um Well, if modifications like owen just talked about where class names have been added in different areas um has been done, um then yeah galadriel has can do a bunch of hiding, essentially is all it does. It just hides um different class names, um and- and it's about the mark record um and not just hiding, you can also change the text. Color font size stuff, like that.

D

I filed a bug for the news changes to these items not being logged two six, two zero.

D

D

um Earlier lucas dropped a link in the chat, diff diff checker.com, when we were talking about being able to see the difference between two textiles and especially, if anyone's just listening and doesn't see, chat log. I wanted to make sure that got mentioned, because I think that will be a very helpful tool.

D

You can kind of do it a little bit in some editing programs too, like sublime text, I think, has a version, but it doesn't always work very well if, like there's an extra space at the top of one of them, sometimes it throws off the whole thing, and I don't I haven't tested this yet. So I'm not sure if that this has the same problem or if it can tell.

D

But there are some programs where, like, if you're looking at the logs for what was before and what's now, there are some tools that you can paste in, like the previous and the current and see the.

D

C

And we do have a plug-in already in the staff client for doing a diff. um I think it's for the cataloging merge. So it's right there. You can use.

C

D

In theory, could that also be used on patron merge.

D

Because right now it only shows you when you're doing patreon merge. It only shows you a few of the fields when you're deciding which one, and so we always open up like all of the details for both patrons to make sure that we're getting like the most updated information for sure and it might be kind of nice if you could look at all of, although that also might be difficult, because you might be merging six patrons because they made you know five self-registered accounts because they weren't following instructions.

D

So that might be more complicated, but I know we've been doing a lot more patron merges since we turned on the self-registration that lets them actually have a card number to use our digital resources.

C

Yep same here and I'm never sure like I'm, never sure what do I need to like tell them hey by the way we merged your accounts, because you you had an extra one like or should I just let them figure it out. Do you have a procedure for that.

D

Well, usually, we find it out when they come in to get their card upgraded from like the self-registered card. That expires pretty fast.

A

D

That's not going to expire, we give them a new card number anyway, because we don't we. We can't like print out their card number on one of our cards, so we just tell them.

D

This is your card number now and um sometimes, if I'm doing it, and I have to merge like five or six accounts I'll, just make very clear that this is how you log in you, do not need to self-register on the website to log in again and if they have any trouble to call us and we'll see, what's going on and troubleshoot with them.

D

So and most of the time we just say this is your card number and and then we don't have problems with the same people over and over again.

B

Doesn't that wreak havoc with their overdrive, account connection or hoopla or one of the ones using their number.

D

We just tell them if they've been using overdrive, we ask them before we change their card number. So if they're, if they don't have anything, checked out and don't have any holds, it doesn't really matter.

D

But- and it doesn't seem to be an issue, canopy will just make you log in again like with the first time you log in on a computer, it'll, say: hey, you need to update your library card because it's saying it's not valid anymore and then they just put in their new card number and it works. um So it's really only a problem for overdrive if they have items checked out or on hold.

D

So we just check with them.

B

B

It does make me wonder about the people who are able to use overdrive very efficiently but self-register three times not logging into the opac.

D

Usually the people who sell first or three times not logging into the opec are just trying to place, holds on items and not so much using overdrive and stuff.

D

They just want to place, holds to come pick them up, um often at our curbside service, which is extra fun, because then we have to we check them out to them before they show up, and so then we have to like merge the accounts then, but still leave them self-registered because they haven't provided any proof that they live here and we're only checking out like a couple items to them and it's a whole weird thing. But luckily the circulation manager deals with all that.

D

I'm not sure how she's been handling if she's been telling, leaving them a note with their accurate card number or what she hasn't talked to me about it at all.

D

I'll check with her today when I'm in she's, probably doing it prepping the curbside stuff for today right now,.

E

In the patron record, there's the section for the patron account flags um the lost card or gone no address. Do you think anybody would find it useful to be able to add? You know, have the ability to add more flags like so that you could add a you know, get id, you know, block them and have it you know automatically be. You know, get their id to update their account as opposed to what our staff generally does.

E

Is they go in and make a you know they spend time to go in and make a note, but that you know it doesn't take a lot of time, but when you do it over and over and over again it you know it takes time. So if you had the ability to you know just check off, you know, update id or.

E

Any other kind of message that you wanted to block them for, but that you didn't want to have to actually type it all out.

B

I feel like that's something: we'd already have an authorized value for, because you can kind of do that with a bunch of other areas. Some manual invoices there's a whole section for debit and credit types now.

C

Maybe you could what, if we added a flag to the extended patron attributes where you could define a patron attribute? That said, if true this blocks checkouts now, that would be pretty complicated.

D

Well, then, also right now you can only use like either open text field or a drop down. You can't do like a check box where you could have it be like the check box flag. So there is a bug for that, and I've also seen a bug that was about like letting you set different options. Instead of just a string or a drop down like dates and um or you could put like a date picker, if you wanted to put like a date of.

C

D

Consent to use the like, if you have them, sign a form before checking out hotspots or something because they're more expensive than you could have just like a date. They signed the form on and could run reports on that like. If you needed to resign it every two years or something, then that could be in a report. You could run where it would force a date and then um so if we we've been doing a lot with patreon attributes, so I've been reading a lot of the patron attribute bugs the last couple of weeks.

D

So it's possible that if we had it set up where you could do more different kinds of things, like a check box that you could say like you were saying, oh and if there's have a flag for that, where you could say, if it's true then block them, I could see how that would be really helpful.

E

Yeah, our staff tends to write long messages on the accounts, and so I'm just looking for you know ways to um make that take less time and be easier because when you open up the patron record, you know if I'm working with a patron, which I don't do as much as they do. You know I have this long message. I'm like okay, I've got to digest what they're telling me about this patron.

E

You know, and maybe there are some easier ways to convey the information. So that's that's what I'd be looking for.

C

Barbara, do you also have those staff members who, when they see one of those messages they just instinctually, read it aloud to the patron, no matter what the contents are, because we have that.

E

D

We've gotten pretty good about training our staff, so if something the patron can be told, it goes in the opac message or and if it's something they can't be told, it goes in a staff, note or staff message, but we also added, I added some jquery to be able to hide each message or note so that if we needed to show them the screen for some reason, we could hide it and they wouldn't see it.

D

This came up when we had a patron who had been trespassed at a different library for inappropriate behavior moved to moscow and one of our staff. Members almost turned the screen around, and I happened to notice because I was walking by and I was like uh go to this other screen instead because it was a message. So if you went to like just the detail screen, it didn't show up at that time and um or maybe we even went into like the edit screen and just did it that way.

D

But then I was like we need some jquery for this. Can you share that listed it is. It should be in the library, okay, jquery library, I'll double check today, um I'm not actually I'm not working until 10, which is why I don't have my video on because I'm still at home in my messy, not office room um but I'll check when I get in today and make sure it's in the jquery library, but I'm pretty sure it's there.

D

And it's just you have to refresh the page to make it show up again, but since usually we're only hiding it if we're like turning the screen around so the patron can see it's not that much of an issue.

B

B

Now I'm just trying to picture the desks where you can just swivel that monitor so easily and my experience, those just get very cluttered.

B

So it's like good working population keeping those desks cleaner. Is it one of the one nice ones where you could just flip it rotate it like? You see it um point of sale stations nowadays that you swear or whatever.

D

No, it's one that rotates, but it's nice, because it has a large base and only part of the base rotates, so we can put like sticky notes and stuff on the base. That's not the rotating part, although right now we're not really rotating it that much because our desk is not deep enough to rotate it and not knock the plexiglass over.

D

So we are um we're figuring out some plans for that we might put up. We have a lot of monitors that aren't getting used right now, so we might put up monitors on the other side that we can um usually just have it be um like extended screens and just put up like our slider from our website or something most of the time. But then we can um like change it to marion if we need to show the patron their account information, but we haven't really got off the ground with that. Yet.

C

That sounds more practical than my idea, which was to turn your plexiglas screens into a futuristic heads-up display.

B

Oh, that would be so cool onto the plexi glass kind of from behind. Oh.

D

Oh now I want to do that, but yeah our we have. We have like 10 monitors that aren't getting used on staff and patron computers that aren't getting used, so we can do social distancing. So I was like why not just set it up and then it's like nice little digital screens at both the both the staff. Computers, for you know just like our website, slider and or we can have it on the opac with the cover flow, go in or change it up.

D

So it's not the same thing every time people come in and have that option, but we haven't got the go-ahead to do that. Yet.

B

I feel like your circulation manager is going to be giving you an earful about training, her stuff on switching between mirroring and non-mirroring yeah. That's.

D

Slideshare running in powerpoint: well, we can just put up the website and have the slideshow run automatically, at least so there's that, but then that's like extra setup in the morning to make sure that the right screens are showing on the right place and that it's extending not mirroring, and especially since I'm only in the building two days a week like it's not like, I can just like if I was in the building every day, I'd be there by the time we opened and could just go set it up first thing every day, but I'm not in the building every day.

D

So it's not that's not so.

E

E

I had a question on self-registration I've seen a couple other libraries that have like an extra um section. That's maybe like sign up for our newsletter or you know they have some extra content in there. How does how do they do that.

D

Those would be extended patron attributes that can be shown on the opac that display on the opaque side, because we played around with that some we don't have that turned on, because our our newsletter, one option is only for layton county patrons and those attributes don't have a set field.

D

They change their their id changes every time you refresh the page, so um we can't say like make patron attribute. One only show up if they've requested, if they've selected these branches in the drop down for branch codes, um which is probably also a bug I should fill because I don't file.

D

I don't think there was a book for that when I was looking at it last week, um because I, unless someone knows why we did it that way or if it just wasn't set for some reason, because like on the page on the staff side, you can do it. Although then, if you add extra attributes, it can mess up your jquery, because sometimes it changes the order of the attributes.

D

When you do that, but yeah you make it something that they can see, and I think there's also an action option for, can they edit it on the opec? Okay,.

C

That issue with the the id sounds really familiar. I don't know, but I don't know if it's something that actually has gotten addressed or if it's just something that I remember.

D

Well- and I think I asked about it in the irc last week when I was looking at it too, so you might have just seen me asking about it, then no okay, I couldn't find a bug when I was looking, but maybe I'll file, one.

D

B

B

Seems like we're out of topics to talk about any other questions very.

B

B

Well, um those very non-committal shrubs probably mean that it's a wrap.

C

I'm gonna run off and play with doing adding a diff to system preference log entries. So that's.

B

Fine gonna have to tell us about it next month at our next meeting.

D

Okay, yes, uh well, I just thought of something actually um lucas. There was a bug that we tested barbara and I had both tested about the opac self registration, and then it got failed qa last week, because it's not working anymore, where we were going to just move forward with it without one of the steps, because we decided it wasn't.

A

D

Yeah I had it open, but now I'm not oh yeah, okay, so two five one zero, zero, the add ability to have the custom text at the top of the patron self registration. I got that same error. Barbara did when I went in oh.

E

Good, it wasn't just me no.

D

In fact, I went to test it and you had already made a sandbox for it and I was like like at the same time you were testing. It was also when I was like. Oh I'm gonna go test that again, and it was funny because it wasn't it wasn't even like right after lucas had made the comment. The most recent comment. It was like a week and a half later we both happened to go test it at the same hour, um but then I tested it again later on a different sandbox.

D

Just in case it was like a fluke with the sandbox and got the same error.

A

Now, uh I think, that's a problem in this bug which I'm not quite sure how to address so. um This is a this would be sort of an html system preference, but instead it's in the news feature and being self applying to the self registration and picking a branch is a bit tricky because, as a authenticated user of the opac um who's signing up for self-reg you're not associated with a branch.

A

So I I don't know exactly what to do to go forward with this one. um Besides, maybe adding some some javascript to the template.

A

That would disable the branch in this case.

B

Or you make people pick a branch and then proceed to self-register.

A

I'll have to go back and look at this. I haven't looked at it since, um since I saw I saw you guys comments, but I haven't revisited the book.

C

So is it, is it specifically a goal to have it customizable per library.

D

It was part of the test plan I mean, I think, even for our consortium, just having we have it added with jquery right now, some text at the top of the self registration screen with some instructions like if you already have a card, please don't self register um but just being able to do it without jquery um both.

D

So we can reduce the amount of jquery we have and also to make it more accessible for people who aren't me and our consortium to edit it because bonnie's really, we have like one other person who will go into the jquery if she needs to. But it's not like confident at going in and editing the jquery so like for us being able to move it out and have it be not linked into the jquery would be helpful and especially for, like other libraries that don't have someone that is proficient at jquery.

E

And then like for us we're a single site, so we actually have the branch selection hidden. I guess because they don't really need to select.

E

A

I'm gonna mark this in my notes, as a bug to make sure and revisit. I will do that.

D

Thanks lucas thanks.

B

And then is that a wrap.

D

I also just submitted a bug for the extended patron attributes: 26206.

D

That they don't have a stable id when, on the opaque.

D

B

I think we can stop the recording. uh That's all the interesting stuff we're going to bring out from this meeting this week.