Campus, Firefox and PDFs on OS X
With Campus 2005 you have some new things to take care of to help your
web browser work better. I recommend Firefox for OS X users and PC
users, too. It is fast, handles Java and PDFs and on the PC it is less
prone to spyware and adware.
Here are some of the settings for the Firefox preferences that I use:
Firefox
is now the recommended browser of choice for Campus on OS X (and soon
to be for Urban Planet). You will need to change a few settings for
each user to make things work better in Campus. This means changes you
make for the admin dont change the settings for other users. The first
time you open Firefox it takes a while to launch as it configures
settings and preferences for the first time.
Go the Firefox >> Preferences menu.
At the General tab, set the homepage to http://connect.spps.org
Under
the Privacy Tab, Uncheck the box for Saved Form Information, Uncheck
the box for Saved passwords, Check the box for Cookies for the
originating website only and Under the Cache tab, change the amount to 50 to 500 KB instead of 50000 KB. The other settings can be left alone.
You
will also want to test Firefox with different web elements. Make sure
that quicktime files work, shockwave, flash, mp3s, PDFs, etc. The first
time you open a PDF, you will need to check the button for Educational
use. The first time you open the Campus Gradebook Java Applet, you'll
need to click the "Grant Always" button.
Special Education forms and PDFs
For Special Education teachers that have caseloads and need to fill out
forms in the browser and save the data back to Campus, they need some
help.
- Their Mac must be at OS X 10.3.8 or above.
- Install Firefox
- Install Adobe Acrobat Reader (Version 6 or 7 work fine.)
When you install Reader 7, it will put a PDF plugin into the
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder called "AdobePDFviewer.plugin"
I move this out of the folder or delete it. It only works with
Safari and we don't use Safari with Campus. The Schubert plugin
works in Safari so stick with it. I also tell Adboe not to be the
default browser helper when it asks.
- Install the Schubert plugin into /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
- Open Firefox and go to a page with a standard PDF and open it
once to make sure it opens the PDF in the browser with the
plugin. Check the "Educational Use" box. Save the PDF to
your desktop.
- Quit Firefox and go to the desktop.
- Click on the PDF you downloaded and Choose Get Info from the File menu.
- Under the Open With menu, Choose Adboe Reader instead of Preview
as the defaul application. Click "Change All" so that all PDFs
open with Acrobat. (I like Preview, but this is a sacrafice that
Special Ed has to make.)
- Open up Firefox and Login to Campus
- When the Special Education teacher goes into their Caseload and
opens up a PDF form it should open in the Schubert plugin which can
then be printed.
- When
the teacher opens a form for adding data, such as "Request for team
meeting" It will open in the Schubert plugin. You may get a
warning about not being able to save. Then open it again by
clicking the diamond on the far left of the plugin tool bar. This
will open the form in Acrobat. Enter the data, click the SAVE
button, close the window and it should be saved into Campus.
This has worked for me but I don't use Special Ed forms in campus a lot so it is not an exahustive test.
You may also want to check the documentation from the Technology dept. at http://technology.spps.org under Campus 2005. My setup is a bit different -- doesn't require Internet Explorer settings.
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