Unless you are using the field for something else you could edit the URL field of the book itself (in the "Info" tab in the right hand pane). A double click on the book in the middle pane should then open that URL (unless you have added any snapshots, these would open instead due to the precedence rules, in this case you would have to double click on the word "URL" in the right hand pane instead).

N.B. That does limit you to one of these types of link per book, but for your use case I would imagine that would be all that you need?

If you wanted to you could edit the .csl file of the citation style you use to create a new style without URLs for books, if you need a hand post back here and I'm sure someone who knows csl (unlike me) will help you out.

Bionatsci's workaround is a good idea, but it's not really a good solution. The URL field in the parent item really refers to the canonical URL for the item—for example, the web location of a New York Times article or any page that a DOI resolves to. It's less appropriate for a third-party site that just provides a (subscription-based) copy of the content.

Would it be possible to include an option in the Attachments pane to add "Link to URL" with a dialog popping up where I can paste in any URL I want?

This is a possibility, but an alternative would be to add an option when you right-click on a link on a web page to add the link as a child link attachment of the selected item in Zotero. Right now Zotero offers a "Save Link as Zotero Item" option in the context menu, but this could be changed into a submenu with options to add a Zotero item, child snapshot, or child link (with the latter two available only if a top-level item is selected in the Zotero pane). The child attachment options would be analogous to the existing ability to add selected text to a note if one is already selected in Zotero.

We generally try to avoid adding features that can be accomplished by integrating with existing browser functionality.

What do you mean by "same functionality", though? Do you just mean the ability to add a link to an arbitrary URL, as you said above? You couldn't really have the same functionality in the Zotero interface, because it wouldn't be specific to a particular link the way the context menu is. I don't think having the option to link to an arbitrary URL would be a terrible thing, but I'm not sure if it would actually get used (except by people who didn't know you could right-click on links on the page).

I need the manual URL ability. I want to add links to Zotero entries that point to specific OneNote pages that I use to take notes. These URLs are in the form of "onenote://" and cannot be linked by any other means except manually.

I also need this functionality, see the excellent description in
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/12174/attach-link-to-specified-url/#Item_2

What is so difficult about making the link in the property pane of an attached link an editable field???
The title in the property of the pane of a link can be changed as well!

Please think about it again, Dan, I think this is an essential feature for many.

Any news about this? As of Zotero 2.1b6 I'm still missing the possibility to attach a manual URL to a Zotero entry – say something like a fifth option in the paperclip-menu ("Attach manual URL"). It's a small point but it would help along interop and make people's workflow smoother with whatever other tools they may have in use (OneNote, DevonThink, etc.). Thanks, kithairon

Both links to and snapshots of arbitrary URLs are reasonable and fairly important additions, now that Zotero can live in a tab (and Standalone), where these options are not always available.

I've posted a patch for this to the ticket: https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/1563

I don't see why this couldn't be fixed in the next major release (Zotero 3.0), if not earlier. But these things move in mysterious ways, and I can't promise a thing.

Thank you.... However, I'm very much an end-user, not a developer. In layman's terms, does this mean that Zotero will be modified for this issue in the near future?

(Any suggestions about how to proceed in the meantime?)

hgray: This means that this feature will definitely be in Zotero 3.0, and it could conceivably be in a future version of Zotero 2.1 (like 2.1.9 or something).

To make this work, we're going to need to create a whitelist of protocols that Zotero will allow links to. I've started a list at https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/1563#comment:4 , please post additional suggestions here. In particular, what other productivity/research software provides useful links of this sort?

Dan? Can you loosen the regex to include the mentioned protocols?

(I've attached a patch to the ticket that adds support for the protocols.)

I've added those to the ticket. I'm hoping Dan can comment on this and say whether he'd rather go with a whitelist or simply allowing all protocols. There are conceivably security implications that justified limiting the protocols in the first place.

Discussion of a whitelist is ongoing, and will probably be in the next beta.

I notice that in the latest Beta (RC1) the "Attach link to URI" option produces links if I paste a straight URL, but doesn't if I try with a local link to my DevonThink database (x-devonthink-item://...) or to any Notational Velocity files (nv://find...). Is the discussion still ongoing – or have my file types simply not made it onto the whitelist? Would appreciate if these were allowed – the option to link stuff to other apps is very useful. Any news? It all looked so close six months ago...
kithairon

3.0 is out of Beta, the "Attach link to URI" still doesn’t seem to work with local links.
If I understand the status of Trac tricket #1563 and the dev discussions here then ajlyon's patch is implemented and working well (at least with non-local links) and it all hangs on the suitably relaxed URI regex or a whitelist for the respective protocols of other apps. Why is this not happening? A design decision? Or a simple matter of priorities before the 3.0 final – with a view that this may be possible in one of the next small updates? Would a pooling of possible candidates for a whitelist help? Appreciate news on this. kithairon

I just browsed through the forum trying to figure out when the URI links will be able to link to Evernote notes. I'm a little confused to be honest. So is this feature planned/in the making? I'm currently transitioning to Evernote for note taking purposes and would love to see this work with zotero. I'm sure this would be a great feature to have in zotero!