Default "Configured proxy" settings break our discovery system's authentication

Recently, patrons who install the browser plugins for Zotero have run into problems. This morning's example was a researcher who uses a Mac and Chrome.

She was trying to log into her library account through our Primo discovery system, and she was doing so from off campus. Zotero's proxy bypass kicked in when it needn't have, and kept redirecting her to a Primo page from the University of Saskatchewan. I walked her through opening the Chrome extension options, going to Proxies, and removing the default "configured proxy." After that, she was able to use our library systems without a problem.

When I reported this to the other librarians, they confirmed that they have seen the same issue and resolved it in the same way.

Please consider not having a configured proxy entered by default in new installations of the browser plugins. More and more libraries have proxy strings in all relevant URLs anyway, making this feature redundant for many of us, and the current configuration is causing issues with our primary systems on my campus.

Thank you!
Iris Jastram
  • The Zotero Connector does not add any default proxies, in fact, you are shown a notification that you need to press "Accept" on to have those entries added. If you have users who use their computers both on- and off-campus, then they will need to be trained to either turn off the proxy preference in the Zotero Connector settings permanently or at least while they are on campus.

    Note that this functionality has always been a core (and default) part of Zotero extension for Firefox, which is where the software originally started and as we're on the course to deprecating the old Firefox extension we implemented this feature for the Zotero Connectors.
  • edited August 4, 2017
    Also, to clarify, the point of the feature is to redirect direct links via the proxy so that canonical unproxied URLs — including those stored in Zotero — still work. So it's not a question of libraries adding proxied strings — it's that, if someone clicks a jstor.org link in their Zotero library (or on a webpage), they automatically get taken to the proxied version that gives them access to the full materials.
    She was trying to log into her library account through our Primo discovery system, and she was doing so from off campus. Zotero's proxy bypass kicked in when it needn't have, and kept redirecting her to a Primo page from the University of Saskatchewan.
    A site should only be added to the proxy list if the library site sends it through the proxy at some point. So if a Primo site was added to the proxy list, it's possible the university's site at one point proxied it in error.

    (As I understand it, the on- vs. off-campus issue Adomas mentions isn't what you're reporting here, though that's another potential issue — the connector may try to redirect sites on-campus even when you already have access. That's often not a problem — the proxy is unnecessary on-campus, but it should still work. There's some logic in the connector to try to avoid that unnecessary proxying based on the hostname of the computer — the "Disable proxy redirection when my domain name contains" setting in the connector proxy preferences — but that may not currently be working as well as it did in the earlier Firefox version. But again, that doesn't sound like your concern here.)
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