I wrote this to the library in frustration at the pathetic browsing experienced offered on the public computers. What do y'all think? Is there a way forward to moving our city towards FOSS freedom? Nicholas Chase
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Eugene Library Ask Us <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:44 Subject: RE: your question to Eugene Public Library To: Nicholas Chase <[email protected]> Hello, Thank you for sharing this feedback. Hearing from Library users helps us plan and make decisions for the future. The answer to your questions is: The Library uses a browser that is customized for public PCs at libraries, which receive very heavy use by a wide variety of users. It’s based on Internet Explorer and provides specific tools that allow us to decide which features and functions to enable. Over time, we continue to upgrade the browser, and many factors go into those decisions. We are considering adding tab functionality, which has now become widely used. However, while Firefox and Chrome certainly have benefits, for the City of Eugene and the Library those are outweighed by the benefit of not having to support and configure multiple browsers – especially during a time when we’re tightening budgets. Relatedly, the City has invested heavily in being a Microsoft partner, which offers us substantial discounts on their other business applications used throughout the organization. We hope this information provides some context about our decisions and practices. Thank you again, and best wishes, Eugene Library Ask Us *From:* Nicholas Chase [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Wednesday, August 11, 2010 5:04 PM *To:* Eugene Library Ask Us *Subject:* Feature request for the computers Hello, It's been a while since I've visited the Library to use a computer, and I was astounded to see that the computers are still running internet explorer 7. Have you considered offering Mozilla Firefox, or better yet, Google Chrome Browser? I hesitate to suggest, but if you must use Microsoft software (and I can't imagine why that would be) would you consider upgrading to IE8? IE 7 is over four years old. If not, it appears that tabbed browsing is disabled. I miss it! Would it be difficult to enable? I know IE 7 supports it. Thanks for your time! Nicholas Chase
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