[bug] Dissapearing Item Pane when resizing

alx359

This has been happening for the last 4-5 updates or so of Zotero 7.0.x (Win10).

When attempting to drag and resize vertically the Item Pane beyond a certain height (in Stacked View), it just disappears (list of items mostly consist of pinned attachments). The only way to get it back is from View > Layout > Item Pane.

dstillman

If you're in Stacked mode and you drag the splitter above the item pane downward to shrink the item pane, it will collapse at a certain minimum height. After that you just need to click one of the section buttons at the bottom to reopen it. It's the same as the minimum width in Standard mode.

If you don't think that's what you're seeing, can you provide a screen recording, either here or in an email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

alx359

Indeed, clicking one of the sections buttons below does reopen the Item Pane. Didn't occur to me to do that before.

However, it still feels odd and confusing the said panel just disappearing after a certain height. One would expect the splitter to just resize the panes at any desired height, to show more or less of the corresponding upper and bottom panes, as is the expected behavior with any other Windows multi-pane application I've worked before.

Anyway, I'm sending to your email a link to the recorded interaction, for your consideration.

Thank you for your quick reply and feedback.

dstillman

No, it's a perfectly common pattern to have a minimum width or height below which a pane or window is deemed to no longer provide value, at which point it either stops resizing or collapses. (The main problem with Zotero's current implementation is that it collapses right at the minimum dimension rather than only collapsing after you continue dragging in the same direction for a bit longer, which makes it clearer what happened.)

In this case, I think there's much less justification for a minimum height in Stacked mode than there is for a minimum width in Standard mode, though, so setting a much smaller minimum height makes sense to me. We'll consider that.

alx359

I see. Thank you for your consideration.

00jf

Just to add: this is a change in behaviour from Z6 where the bottom item pane could be resized to be quite small. Now it takes up half the screen. It would be great to be able to resize it to smaller than is possible now. Also small suggestion: the button at the bottom that re-opens the pane should also be able to close it, making the pane easy to quickly open and close (especially if one wants to keep it closed now that it's so big).