Upgrade StorageZotero as a Selfhosted Web-Based app
Hi everyone,
Can I ask if the Zotero team has any plans to release a self-hosted web-based application of Zotero?
I mean something like web library but self-hosted and with all the pdf reading and annotation and other tools that Zotero has.
For me, the reason I can't use the desktop version is that I'm not allowed to install it on my work laptop, and the web-based version generally offers more freedom.
Best Regards,
Shahram
Can I ask if the Zotero team has any plans to release a self-hosted web-based application of Zotero?
I mean something like web library but self-hosted and with all the pdf reading and annotation and other tools that Zotero has.
For me, the reason I can't use the desktop version is that I'm not allowed to install it on my work laptop, and the web-based version generally offers more freedom.
Best Regards,
Shahram
This discussion has been closed.
You can use the web library itself, of course, though it has fewer features. Annotation creation and editing will be coming to the web library in the future.
This really isn't true anymore with PWAs. A lot of reference managers are exclusively web-apps, or at least have web-apps at near feature parity (Paperpile, Petal, Readcube Papers, Mendeley, EndNote).
The Zotero desktop application currently is more powerful than the current web option.
The current Zotero desktop application is much more powerful and flexible than the web versions of each of the applications you mentioned.
Some of the things on the page could be accomplished by moving functionality to the server, which isn't restricted by the web platform, and we've been gradually doing that to add features to the web library, but that's a completely different model with major trade-offs and not at all a replacement for the desktop app.
(But yes, Zotero also has way more functionality than most of those other tools — even their desktop versions, but certainly their web versions. It's also a bit bizarre to mention Mendeley as an example here, given that they rather infamously replaced their relatively featureful native app with a new version that's a wrapper around their website and has a fraction of the previous functionality.)
And that's fine about Mendeley, but I also find it strange to mention native word processor integration as a feature when even Microsoft has all but abandoned offline Office suite. As far as running local executables, but that's more of a feature than a bug. I don't need a reference manager installing crapware on my machine. That's something I don't miss at all about Windows after switching to Chromebook.
There's a market for Chromebooks, but for some strange reason people seem to vastly prefer WinTel/Macs over chromebooks, and it's not even close. Now, I have aging relatives using chromebooks and I'm happy they do, because indeed, not much to screw up. But the tradeoffs are simply not universally appealing, and it's beyond laughable to assume that people who don't use chromebooks, or who prefer native apps over PWAs, are simply ignorant, pending their enlightenment after hearing the gospel of chrome.
Anyhow, you list a number of apps that are seemingly happy with the PWA tradeoffs, so it would seem more productive to try and convince those to get parity with Zotero. Shouldn't be hard for them to do the way you describe it.
You should know that it is possible to run Zotero without syncing. Is your organization's issue concern about Zotero capturing metadata via the web? There is a great deal of information about security protections available that you can share with your tech support team.
There is a local version of the Zotero server but that comes without support from the Zotero team.
Several of us are trying to help, notwithstanding our perception that it is you who are being hostile [your use of the term crapware]. Perhaps, if you step back and use different words to explain what you want and describe what you need that you believe Zotero doesn't provide. Explain in more detail the nature of the restrictions you are facing from your employer. Especially, please describe what you think that the other bibliography management software you mentioned can do that Zotero cannot.
Until now your question and criticisms of Zotero have had little or nothing to do with GPT or LLM.
Edit: You commented on MS Office 365. You should know that for years that Zotero is largely compatible with Word 365. Zotero is compatible with Google Docs. Zotero is compatible with LibreOffice Writer.
Is the crux of your needs that you want a version of Zotero that will work better with a ChromeBook and online word processor?
don't be puzzled. I have an old mini-pc which I use as my proxmox home-server.
the problem isn't syncing but the AGPL licence :( (I've had the same problem with the Anki and I got warning)
my current workaround is using Zotero inside Kasmvnc webtop Linux desktop. And it works. I think a self-hosted Web based version of zotero could be used by research organisations, universities and schools too.
best regards, Shahram
@ProudChamp, the reason people are responding to you this way is because you came here and confidently asserted that we're wrong about the limitations of a web app without seeming to actually understand the technical issues — you're misunderstanding either the scope of Zotero's desktop functionality or what's possible in a PWA, and don't seem interested in the details. I've taken the time to explain many of the things that wouldn't be possible in a PWA, and you've ignored almost everything I've said and instead suggested that…we're installing "crapware" on people's computers?
I'm not sure why you're even posting to this thread, which is about a self-hosted web version of Zotero, not a PWA of the zotero.org web library.
I don't think engaging with you is really worth more of anyone's time, but since we're here: What are you talking about? Microsoft 365 includes their offline suite, which is updated all the time and used by millions of people — including the millions of Zotero users using Zotero with Word. Do you actually know anything about Zotero? The online version of Word doesn't yet even support the basic API features we need to create an equivalent plugin (though we're working with Microsoft to make that possible).
We also support LibreOffice (which Mendeley dropped support for when they switched to a website wrapper), and even our Google Docs integration can be used with a local Zotero library via a local HTTP server. The Zotero app itself doesn't integrate with git, so that wouldn't have been my example (I would've said, say, launching external PDF readers with command-line parameters, calling 'osascript' to integrate with Word on macOS, calling 'mv' to efficiently migrate large folders on macOS and Linux, etc.), but…git isn't a "service" and doesn't inherently have anything to do with the web? Are you thinking of GitHub? You're just out of your depth here. You're the one talking about PWAs! If you want to brag about your Chromebook actually running Linux, then nothing you're posting here makes any sense. Zotero — the actual app, with all the functionality that's not possible in a PWA — runs on x86_64 Chromebooks and will likely run on ARM Chromebooks in the future.
I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here, but you don't seem to know what you're talking about and don't seem interested in understanding, so I think we can just be done.
@shahram7: Some self-hosted version of the web library that somehow replicated all of the Zotero desktop functionality using local server storage and network access would be a completely different project from anything we create, so no use holding out hope for that. As I say, we'll continue to improve the official web library — we added annotation creation a few days ago — but that's never going to be a full replacement for the desktop app.