Blocking myUMBC Alerts

I suggest AdBlock Plus for disabling myUMBC alerts. I find it distracting to see that I have alerts. What if it's something worth looking at? It's never happened, but there could be a first time. Today I received two "personalized" alerts telling me it's windy outside. How much time is wasted campus-wide by these things?

I realize the country has been quaking in its collective boots since fall 2001, and campuses fall victim to fear mongers, like E2Campus, who have been profiting off the Virginia Tech shootings, but this whole notion that UMBC needs an alert system is silly, and the way it is currently misused is strong evidence of that fact.

Will I get an alert that it's dark outside tonight? Nope, I know how to use Adblock Plus.

Migrating UMBC E-mail to Gmail

Some months ago UMBC began migrating e-mail to the Google cloud. This migration has been voluntary, but everyone will be moved over in January. I like Gmail, and considered moving some months ago, but decided not to because it was unclear whether there would be a solid wall (psychologically as well as logically) between my personal Gmail account and my UMBC Gmail account. This will not be an issue for a number of reasons:

(1) The accounts are separate, one reached via mail.google.com and the other via gmail.umbc.edu. I can reach both via the traditional mail.google.com URL, but with two different user names. I plan to explicitly go via (and link to) the gmail.umbc.edu address.

(2) I usually use Chrome for Gmail, but use Firefox for UMBC (myUMBC) services. Firefox add-ons allow me to selectively turn off undesired scripting within myUMBC and Chrome does not display PeopleSoft slop properly (I suspect it really does, however, and that PeopleSoft is simply not following web standards, but this is something for future investigation). So I will continue to use Chrome for personal Gmail, and will use Firefox for UMBC mail.

(3) I use different themes for the two Gmail services, and so my work and my personal screens look very different.

(4) The UMBC Gmail has "myUMBC" prominently displayed in the upper left.

(5) If all of that is not enough, I can simply return to an IMAP client for UMBC e-mail and continue to use the browser for personal Gmail.

The one drawback I have seen in my initial look is that Google says it may take several days for my old e-mail to migrate to Google. Since I have switched, I can no longer access UMBC Squirrel mail, and so none of my old e-mail folders are currently available via the web. Since grades are due in a couple weeks, this could become sufficient motivation to temporarily configure an IMAP client on my laptop. However, I do not foresee much inconvenience here except possibly delaying my grading of assignments submitted via e-mail.

I do suspect there is still a way into squirrel mail, but do not plan to spend any time finding the way.

Avoiding the Worst of myUMBC

I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago, and the person doing a presentation made an offhand comment about having to click through "the useless myUMBC crap." A man after my own heart. He was talking about the media-heavy, irrelevancy-filled page at my.umbc.edu.

I avoid that page most days. Firefox, Chrome, and Opera begin showing possibly-relevant pages as soon as the user begins typing in the address bar (a much more useful use of auto-completion than one can find in office applications). IE probably does this as well. If I need access to web-based functionality hidden behind the dysfunctionality of myUMBC, I just start typing the word 'faculty' into the address bar. Usually the 'f' is sufficient to get me to the myUMBC faculty center, bypassing most of the garbage. Speaking of garbage, though, PeopleSoft is directly accessible from the faculty center, but that's another issue.

Improving Usability of myUMBC Continued

In February I talked a bit about improving myUMBC usability. I've gone a bit farther, by partially disabling the spotlight "feature." Here's my up-to-date UMBC-specific karma blocker code:

# Block myUMBC 404 not found chipmunk
[group]
score=10
rule=$url$='dramatic_chipmunk.flv'

# Block UMBC Alerts
[group]
score=10
rule=$url=='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/dashboard/images/alert_bubble.png'

# Block myUMBC Rotating Banner
[group]
score=10
rule=$url^='https://my.umbc.edu/shared/modules/spotlight/'

# Block myUMBC Rotating Banner
[group]
score=10
rule=$url^='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/spotlight/'

This is for the Firefox Karma Blocker add-on, which works nicely.

Improving the Usability of myUMBC

myUMBC has become, in the words of one of our students, very media heavy. Even with a broadband connection, it takes a long time for things to load, presumably due to load on the servers and perhaps scripting locally. One of the annoying things is a rotating banner of supposed news items. I've chosen not to do anything about that yet. Two things I have disabled, however, using Firefox add-on Karma Blocker, are: The chipmunk animation that loads whenever a page is not found. This is doubly bad, since it's not only many useless bytes transferred, but it also makes noise. This is triply bad, because the 404 not found chipmunk normally occurs after clicking a bad link in myUMBC. Karma Blocker rule:

# Block myUMBC 404 not found chipmunk
[group]
score=10
rule=$url$='dramatic_chipmunk.flv'

For those who want to see the animation, the full URL is https://my.umbc.edu/shared/images/player/player.swf?vidLoc=/errors/images/dramatic_chipmunk.flv The second thing is the MyUMBC alert "feature." There is good reason to have such features, but when it's used to tell people not to respond to phishing attacks and to tell people after the fact that the University opened late that morning, it's not clear it's useful. But it also takes several clicks to dismiss the alert, and until dismissed there's this huge honking red thing in a prominent position on the screen. The solution is to get rid of the red thing. The alert is presented as a white number on a red background. Get rid of the background, and it bcomes a white number on a white background. Much better. Karma Blocker rule:

# Block UMBC Alerts
#[group]
#score=10
#rule=$url=='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/dashboard/images/alert_bubble.png'

Disabling Alerts in myUMBC

UMBC's OIT has added an Alerts feature to myUMBC, the system everyone uses for everything at UMBC. Being close to people who were in Norris Hall during the Virginia Tech shootings, I understand the motivation and think that, on the face of things, the alerts are a good idea. However, they're being used for mundane matters--Wednesday around 11am I saw the alert that said campus was closed that morning until 10--and very cumbersome to dismiss. You have to click on the alert notification, click on the specific alert, and then click on something indicating that you've seen the alert. They really want to know we've seen every alert. Unfortunately, myUMBC is very media heavy, and, even from on campus, very slow. So each click takes several seconds. So I looked on myUMBC for an option to disable alerts, or some way to dismiss them more quickly. No luck. NoScript (my favorite Firefox add-on) didn't help, since the alerts aren't implemented as a specific script. So I went hunting. The hunt led to Karma Blocker 0.3.2. Essentially I tell this nifty little Firefox add-on that the myUMBC alert has bad karma, and so it keeps the alert from loading. What it really does is get rid of the red alert background, which means my count of alerts awaiting is a white number on a white background. The rule I use is: # Block UMBC Alerts [group] score=10 rule=$url=='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/dashboard/images/alert_bubble.png' OIT could easily break this by renaming or moving the image file. I'm hoping they don't. If they do, I can make the rule more general.