Monthly Archives: May 2018

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Firefox ESR 60

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Mozilla released the next major version of Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), which has some notable implications. I would expect the fleet to be mostly updated to FF60 ESR any time between “now” and a week-ish from now.

For the major changes:

  • NPAPI support has (finally) been removed, in line with every other major browser. This means plugins such as Java, Silverlight, etc cannot be run in Firefox. A message went out to Banner users on Monday of this week informing them that the recommended web browsers are IE (Windows) and Safari (macOS) as of today.
  • If folks are noticing that the browser seems dramatically snappier, they’re right! Firefox ESR now uses the updated multi-threaded rendering engine (Branded as “Quantum” and originally rolled out in Firefox 57).
  • Updated addon system. With the multi-threaded rendering engine, a side effect is existing addons (e.g. uBlock Origin, NoScript, etc) have to be rewritten. For many addons they’ve already been rewritten — FF57 rolled out back in November and changes were communicated to addon authors 6-12+ months prior to that. In some cases addons have not been rewritten due to authors abandoning them, or because the new addon system does not permit what it was trying to do. For those addons there’s not much to be done other than looking for a compatible addon that replicates the functionality if possible.
    • There are “forked” versions from older Firefox builds that still support NPAPI plugins and the legacy addon system – please do not install these for customers as they also tend to be significantly behind on security updates.

If a customer is running the “non-ESR” version of Firefox, this is all old news as these changes happened in November.

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TDx Form Changes – “Computer Location”

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I have made a number of modifications to the forms we use most often in TeamDynamix.

Highlights:

  • “Computer location” and “customer equipment location” fields have been added on relevant forms.
    • If we take possession of a customer’s computer or equipment, set these fields!
    • If you move a customer’s computer or equipment, set these fields!
  • Status is at the top of (almost) every form now to make it easier to update status quickly.
  • The “Walkup” forms have been disabled.
  • The “Source” field is now required on all of Service Desk forms.
  • The field “Extension customer?” has been renamed to “Extension or AES Off-campus customer?”
  • Many disused fields have been removed.

A breakdown of most of our forms with their fields can be found here: https://oregonstate.box.com/s/n9in7lpvxelng6laujtoz5dn1s2xbwym

Lucas and I are working on dismantling the separate reports and desktop for “Walkup” and will create a new report to help us find tickets about personal devices in our possession.

It’s really important that you set the “Computer location” field.

Please set the “Computer Location” field.

I will bake cookies. Really.

Desk Names

Each desk has a name and they will soon be labeled. Maps will be posted soon. For now, here is my quick and dirty map:

https://oregonstate.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/KB/ArticleDet?ID=52344

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Soda Pool

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Team,
If you would like to keep the soda pool going, please note that it is not free. We pay for the sodas with contributions from you all.

Unfortunately, some money recently went missing from the jar in the fridge. It looks like that may have happened again, or perhaps folks are not contributing anymore. I will bring in a small lock box to store funds for the sodas. If we don’t get enough in there to buy more sodas, I won’t be able to keep doing that.

Suggested contributions for the sodas are:
Sodas and juice – 50 cents
Energy drinks – $2

If you didn’t know that the sodas were not free, no worries. I still have some money left over from previous donations and will use that to replenish the fridge one more time.