Zotero 7.1 is now Zotero 8. The main change is just another major update to the underlying Firefox framework, which provides, among other things, support for Linux on ARM64.
We decided that with all the new features in 7.1 8.0 (with a few still to come), two Firefox ESR upgrades (spanning 25 Firefox versions), and support for a new architecture, calling it Zotero 8 made sense.
No difference in timeline. The next few betas will be a little bumpy as we fix bugs from the framework bump, but we're still expecting to release Zotero 8 soon.
The Zotero 7.1 beta will update automatically to the 8.0 beta later today.
Oh, I was about to ask the same thing, @dstillman. Thanks for the clarification! It might be a bit confusing for all those users already accustomed to plugins breaking and having to be refactored after major releases (maybe that's still a thing with some of them, but for the few that I use, they seem to be working fine under the 7.1 betas and now 8.0 beta 1), but it's great – and, in hindsight, obvious – news, especially considering the added compatibility and the revamped PDF reader themeability (which seems to be working much better lately, you've all been great at addressing those earlier issues with scanned documents and dark themes).
As for… “a little bumpy”, I completely understand that engine/framework changes have that effect, but how bumpy are we talking about? I am, as I said before, using Zotero 7.1 8.0 in a production environment (usually not a great idea, I know, but I have all my stuff on webDAV and backups galore, and really need the improved annotation search functionality at this point), and though I would love to help you through those betas, maybe sticking to 8.0-beta.1+efadc21cd, provided it's stable enough on my machines, would be wiser…? Unless we can mostly expect UI/UX bugs, and those I can live/deal with.
@joaofrgomes: No, subsequent betas will only get more stable. I just mean there are more bugs in 8.0 beta 1 — mostly UI issues — than the last 7.1 beta, and it may take us a couple weeks to address them.
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We decided that with all the new features in
7.18.0 (with a few still to come), two Firefox ESR upgrades (spanning 25 Firefox versions), and support for a new architecture, calling it Zotero 8 made sense.No difference in timeline. The next few betas will be a little bumpy as we fix bugs from the framework bump, but we're still expecting to release Zotero 8 soon.
The Zotero 7.1 beta will update automatically to the 8.0 beta later today.
As for… “a little bumpy”, I completely understand that engine/framework changes have that effect, but how bumpy are we talking about? I am, as I said before, using Zotero 7.1 8.0 in a production environment (usually not a great idea, I know, but I have all my stuff on webDAV and backups galore, and really need the improved annotation search functionality at this point), and though I would love to help you through those betas, maybe sticking to 8.0-beta.1+efadc21cd, provided it's stable enough on my machines, would be wiser…? Unless we can mostly expect UI/UX bugs, and those I can live/deal with.