"Create New Item from Current Page" should use translator

wbt

From the Quick Start Guide,

Clicking the Create New Item from Current Page button in the Zotero toolbar creates a Web Page item and saves the page as an attached snapshot. This saves the page itself as an item, not any bibliographic sources on the page.

It is more intuitive to me that if I am looking at a page about a particular article e. g. in JSTOR, Wiley, ACM, PubMed, etc., and there is a translator for that page, clicking Create New Item from Current Page should have the same effect as finding and clicking the button up in the address bar - the newly created item should be of the type displayed on the page, and have that information in it.
As an example, visit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1579653&tag=1
where clicking Create New Item From Current Page should generate a Conference Paper item.

We should at add this as an option, and I think it should be enabled by default, as an improvement to the intuitive usability of Zotero.

Thanks,
WBT

ajlyon

This is a pretty conscious decision, because otherwise there would be no way to save a simple snapshot of the current page for pages that have a translator. This might not be a problem for IEEE Xplore, but there are pages like, say, a list of search results in a database, a table of contents for a journal, or a webpage that happens to contain a DOI for some other item, where it's pretty easy to imagine wanting to save the current page and not whatever the translator would yield.

That said, I see why this is confusing. Is there a way that the distinction could be made more clear?

wbt

Thanks for the reply.
This change in behavior should be an OPTION, and that we shouldn't get rid of the capability to easily create Web Page items from current page, for exactly the use cases you mentioned.
This could be implemented as a little drop-down triangle next to the Create New Item button, with the following options:
"[Create ]Web Page [Item] 'IEEE Xplore - On the Syntax and Semantics of ....' "
"[Create ]Conference Paper [Item] 'On the Syntax and Semantics of ...'"

Words in [brackets] we could do with or without, based on other UI guidance.

The second item would change based on the type of item that the translator detected.

The user could pick which one of these two is default, and I think the "default default" might be to use the item type. The Create New Item from Current Page icon could also change to indicate which item type it would create (and the drop-down menu would modify that).

It's just odd to have the "Create New Item from Current Page" button not do what I think it will, and to be so far away from (different browser element completely; outside Zotero) the place to click to actually accomplish what I want.

wbt

>The user could pick which one of these two is default, and I think the "default default" might be to use the item type. The Create New Item from Current Page icon could also change to indicate which item type it would create (and the drop-down menu would modify that).

That paragraph may be confusing because it was based on a mistaken memory about how buttons with drop-downs on that toolbar worked. I propose something similar to the Notes button which has a two-element dropdown, but the icons should reflect the item type for each option.

adamsmith

I'm not convinced by that. To me that would
a) clutter the interface and
b) turn a one-click into a two-click operation

Personally I'm not excited about doubling the functionality of the URL bar item and if I remember correctly neither are the devs who view the physical distance between the two as a desirable feature.
Suggestions in making that distinction clearer are always appreciated.

wbt

At least change the labeling on the button, if we can't make this easier or more intuitive.

"Add Web Page to Library" is clearer about what it's going to do than "Create New Item from Current Page."

WBT

wbt

Also, I don't think it would clutter the interface very much, since most of the other buttons on that toolbar are already arrow-drop-downs.
Why do the devs view that much physical and conceptual distance as desirable?

WBT

dstillman

since most of the other buttons on that toolbar are already arrow-drop-downs

That's not an argument for making more of them that way. The current drop-downs are slower than the buttons, and I wish we didn't have them (particularly for notes).

dstillman

Changing the label is reasonable, though, particularly since a common source of confusion among new users is why there's no "Web Page" item type in the New Item drop-down—the answer being that that's what the Create New Item from Current Page button is for.

dstillman

I'm not going to rehash the arguments for the conceptual distance, which I'm pretty sure we've spelled out elsewhere, but for the basic positioning, the obvious justification is that the translator-based save is page-dependent, analogous to the feed auto-discovery icon that Firefox used to display in the address bar (before they removed it due to lack of use). The button in the toolbar isn't page-dependent.

adamsmith

What would be a good label?
"Create Web Page item from Current Page"?
wbt suggests
"Add Web Page to Library"
which is shorter (an advantage, obviously) - it doesn't sound quite right to me, but that might just be bc I'm used to the old one.
Other thoughts?

Gracile

What about "Add a snapshot of this Web Page to Library"?

adamsmith

I don't think so - the snapshot is attached to a webpage item, so that doesn't seem right.

Rintze

1) I still don't see the benefit of excluding the "Web Page" item type from the "New Item" drop-down menu. I would just include it, and, like for the other item types, have it create an item without metadata. Say you want to copy web page metadata from an offline source. Currently you either have to create a new item from a different type, and change the type, or create a webpage item from the currently loaded website and change the metadata, or copy an existing web page item and change the metadata. I think those workarounds are worse than possible user confusion between the behavior of "Create New Item from Current Page" and "New Item" > "More" > "Web Page".

2) Another proposal for the label: "Create Web Page Item for Current Page"

Rintze

Dan's rehash: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/8179/differences-between-create-new-item-and-save-to-zotero/?Focus=36865#Comment_36865

dstillman

Thanks, Rintze. That was it.

1) Well, it's clear from past forum posts that some people are confused as to how to use the "Create New Item from Current Page" button, so the absence of that option has resulted in at least some people figuring out that there's a better way. And the workaround, if you really need to create a web page item manually, is pretty trivial, and certainly takes less time than unnecessarily typing in page details. But there's a valid case to be made that we should privilege proper usage of Zotero rather than putting in an artificial roadblock to prevent improper usage.

2) "Create Web Page Item [from|for] Current Page" is good. I think I prefer "from", though that may be mainly because it's what we're using now.

3) I could see us adding a CWPIfCP button to the browser toolbar by default (and having it be removable via Customize and the Zotero prefs). We have to do something similar in the browser plugins for Standalone anyway. (We also need keyboard shortcuts for both types of saving.) My biggest concern there is that, on Windows and Linux, the default toolbar size would mean that button would be twice the size of the address bar icon, which wouldn't do much to emphasize the superiority of translator-based saving. On the other hand, even if there's less magic involved, snapshots are useful on a wider range of pages.

wbt

Any updates on this? It looks like we were at least planning to change the string associated with the presently-confusingly-labeled "Create New Item From Current Page" button (confusing b/c it's ambiguous and one might intuitively expect it to use the translator/be like the magic button, which is not part of the same UI).
A string change should be a relatively easy modification! :-)

adamsmith

pull request here:
https://github.com/zotero/zotero/pull/165
you can follow along to see when/if that's going to get accepted.

Gracile

I think this change has been confined to the English localization. It was never pushed to Transifex because this English string didn't override the previously translated strings in other locales.

As a result, in most locales it is still "Create *new item* from current page" (translated), except the locales which were created after this change (and the German locale!).

It's not a big issue with the new toolbar button, but the string is still used for Right-click --> Zotero--> "Create New Webpage Item". Will this right-click option be removed in the future ?

dstillman

It was certainly pushed to Transifex — when we push to Transifex, we push everything — but at the time Transifex may not have been properly clearing localized strings when source strings changed.

The right-click option will probably remain in some form, but I'm not sure what. Maybe just a mirror of the toolbar drop-down. In any case, that existing string will go away.

Gracile

But sometimes you "merge non-english strings", so I thought it was a necessary manual step before pushing everything to Transifex. [edit: maybe necessary for completely new strings?]

(anyway it's not the first time that it's buggy.)

dstillman

No, that's only to avoid errors in Firefox — it doesn't have an effect on Transifex. When we push to Transifex we only push source (i.e., English) strings.

Gracile

ah yes! – thanks

dstillman

But anyway, since this change was in 2012, and that message was in 2013, it seems pretty clear this was just a case of that old broken behavior.