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Thursday, January 10, 2008

EZProxy Find and Replace: when the vendor says they can't...

Earlier this week we switched to the new interface for OvidSP (an attempt, I believe, at integrating the Silver Platter (SP) platform into Ovid).  It's nice, but the default configuration includes a Basic Search table, an Ovid Syntax tab, and a SilverPlatter Syntax tab.  Ovid Syntax and SilverPlatter Syntax don't mean anything to our users, and in fact we didn't even include the latter in our configuration.  But we wanted Ovid to change the text so the Ovid Syntax tab instead read Advanced Search.  We were told that it was a popular request, but that they couldn't do it right now.

Meh.  That's no good at all for our users.  I remembered that EZProxy has a Find and Replace feature, but hadn't really explored it yet.  Found this page on the Unofficial EZProxy Support Wiki and was off to the races.  Making the tab say what we wanted it to say took all of two lines of code to be added to the EZProxy configuration file for Ovid:

T Ovid (or whatever we're calling it)
U http://www.ovid.com (whatever)
DJ ovid.com  (whatever)
Find Ovid Syntax
Replace Advanced Search

So if you can find the T, U, and DJ lines in your Ovid (now or soon to be OvidSP for you too) you can stick in the two lines of red code and find that all is magically well.  Of course this means you can rename the tab whatever you want, and can rename other parts of the page as well.  Could be fun come April Fool's Day!  The other neat thing about this fix is that should Ovid change the tab themselves, our display will simply revert to their true and native display because EZProxy simply won't find the text string "Ovid Syntax" to replace!

So here are the before and after shots:

Ovid SP Syntax tab

Ovid SP Advanced tab
Have fun!

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference EZProxy Find and Replace: when the vendor says they can't...:

» Ovid responds to customer desires on tab naming from The Distant Librarian
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how to use EZProxy to change the default wording on the tabs in the new OvidSP interface. Seems we weren't alone in desiring a better name for the Ovid Syntax tab, and [Read More]

» EZProxy and OvidSP Round 2 - Removing the Tip Box from The Distant Librarian
Last month I wrote about how to use EZProxy's find and replace feature to change the unhelpful text on a database tab to something more helpful:EZProxy Find and Replace: when the vendor says they can't... Well the Medical Librarians at [Read More]

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