focus highlight comment field after highlighting?

Inconsistent behavior when clicking on already-highlighted text in Z7. Sometimes, selecting highlighted text will focus the comment field in the sidebar, and you can begin typing a comment. Sometimes, the comment field is not focused, and you have to manually click again on the comment, this time in the sidebar, to make commenting possible. It would be nice if this were made consistent.

I personally would like to be able to type a comment immediately after highlighting text, instead of needing to click again to do. (Indeed, sometimes you have to click twice, once on the highlighted text in the reader, and once in the sidebar, to be able to type). That means that the comment field would automatically be focused, with the cursor blinking and ready to input text, immediately after the mouse button is released and the highlight is selected. If you don't want to type, just click away. But that might be a minority view.
  • That behavior is intentional. When an annotation is newly created and doesn't yet have a comment, it's likely the user will want to add one. However, if a comment already exists, the likelihood of needing to edit it decreases, so we avoid focusing on the comment field to prevent unnecessary interruptions.

    Could you please explain your workflow so we can better understand it? Specifically, under what circumstances would you prefer the existing comment field to be focused automatically?
  • Ah I see, now I understand that the difference in behavior when clicking on an already-existing highlight comes down to whether there is already a comment or not. I didn't realize that before. Thanks for clearing it up. I understand the rationale.

    My idea, which maybe I would regret wishing for, is that the comment field would automatically be focused after a highlight is created (this is a separate issue, not related to already-existing highlights). That is, the default behavior would be to immediately be able to add text to a highlight. I usually want to comment on highlights, and the extra click is ever-so-slightly annoying.
  • OK, this is still bothering me. I'll be a bit more systematic about describing my experience, because it specifically only happens when the left sidebar is open to Show Annotations (on version 7.0.16 64-bit, W11).

    1. Open a document in the viewer.
    2. Have the left sidebar open to Show Annotations.
    3. Click and drag to select text to highlight/underline; it doesn't matter if you're in "Highlight Text" mode or manually choosing colors and highlight style each time.
    4. On mouse up, the highlight is created and added to the Annotations list in the sidebar.
    5. Click on the highlight -- either directly in the text, or in the Annotations list. The comment field is not focused. What's more, if you have more than a few Annotations, you'll need to scroll down in the sidebar in order for the comment field to be visible and clickable.

    My complaint is that when you get to step 5, the comment field should be focused. It currently is *not* focused, whether or not the annotation is newly created.

    I think that part of my initial confusion about why this wasn't working for me is that this behavior is different and works better when the sidebar is closed, or when it is open but the Outline or Thumbnail views are selected. In those circumstances, when you click on the highlight (directly in the text), the comment field is focused and you can immediately begin typing. I think this behavior should be the default *when the sidebar is open too.* (The annotations panel would also need to scroll down to make the comment field visible). I like to have my previous annotations visible in the sidebar while reading, but I don't like the extra clicking and scrolling it requires for adding new comments.
  • @bennett.smith So clicking a highlight doesn’t focus the comment, even if it’s empty? Can you reproduce this in Zotero 7.0.22 or Zotero 8 beta?
  • 7.0.23, not working.
  • Could you make a video?
  • Here is a link to a video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vJD8iRR77b_ytg_u-PnVQBBMRNwHW3Tp/view?usp=sharing

    You'll see that in the video, the first two times I try it, it works as expected. Then the third time, I turn off and turn back on the underlining highlight mode and the problem recurs.
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