Hi,
My university requires me to use a proxy server in order to access online journals. Whilst I could enable this proxy in the System Preferences, I would rather not have to use their proxy for all my other normal web-traffic. I was therefore wondering whether BE would allow me to bypass the System-wide preferences and let me use a proxy only within BE? Under the BE internet preferences I can add the proxy information, but it doesn't allow me to have this turned on all the time - any way to achieve this?
Thanks. Actually, Bookends always takes the proxy info from System Preferences. This is a feature added over a year ago to make Internet access via proxies easier. The info you can add in Bookends preferences is for authenticating proxy servers (name and password required). There is no place to enter the proxy server info -- that's in System Preferences.
But would it be possible to enable the addition of proxy server info in BE itself in a future version - hereby bypassing the need for entering this in system preferences? The problem is that if I have the proxy turned on 'system wide' all my internet data will go through the proxy - and what I really only want is bookends to use a proxy - not all other programs such as browsers.
Can you tell me why not? The ability of Bookends to pick up the system settings is a feature, not a bug, and I'd hate to reintroduce the complexity of a separate proxy setting unique to Bookends.
I completely agree on the 'keep things as simple as possible' - however adding a tick-mark for 'advanced settings' or similar shouldn't mess up things too badly. Whilst I agree that Bookends should certainly pickup the system settings by default, it would be nice to be able - under certain circumstances - to overrule such settings.
As for the reason not wanting to use the proxy for all other internet traffic, there are many reasons:
1. The university I am proxying through is in the UK, but I now live in the US. Having the proxy on would recognize me as being located in the UK and not the US. This causes problems in relation to watching TV online, listening to radio, visiting country-specific websites (e.g. google).
2. All the network-traffic is monitored and certain sites (e.g. eBay!) has been blocked from access - turning the proxy on would result in me not being able to visit these sites.
3. Some internet traffic may be sensitive and should not be monitored by the proxy....
So overall I would really only need to use the proxy for searching, accessing and downloading online journals - something I do from within Bookends. I could of course keep turning on/off the proxy, but this is slightly tedious, and it would be much more elegant if BE could handle all that for me without any problems (i.e. the proxy would be turned on in bookends, but off system wide).
.