Safari extensions announced

scribbler
Since Apple has just announced that Safari, its excellent web browser, will accept third-party extensions, I am wondering if there are any plans to create a Safari version of Zotero?

For what it's worth, Macworld has quite a good article about Safari extensions here:

http://www.macworld.com/article/151899/2010/06/safari5_extensions.html

Zotero for Firefox is great--and all for free!--so I ask about Safari extensions in full awareness that I should be grateful for what I already have. Nonetheless, I thought it wold be worth raising. Personally I much prefer Safari as faster, more stable and better integrated into OS X, and it would be nice not to have to juggle browsers in future. Many thanks.
  • adamsmith
    I wouldn't expect this to happen. See here for some reasons:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/browser_compatibility

    As always, there is nothing to keep third party developers from porting Zotero to Safari - that's after all one of the advantages of open source, but the core developers have stated countless time that this is not something on their agenda/within reach of their resources.
  • sean
    The Safari extension architecture is far more limited than what Firefox offers, so at present there's simply no way to duplicate Zotero's functionality inside of Safari. That said, we're always investigating ways to bring Zotero to users who do not or cannot use Firefox.
  • david.clingingsmith
    It would be great to be able to use Zotero on the iPad since that's where I'm currently doing a lot of my reading. That seems out of reach given this discussion as there is no Firefox for iPad because of Apple's restrictions. Could there be a Zotero app?
  • Bionatsci
    Could there be a Zotero app?
    Unlikely at the moment - see this thread for a developer giving reasons. Basically this would require a complete rewrite (which the Zotero project doesn't have the resources for) unless the XULRunner platform was ported, which may or may not happen for iPad, but certainly won't happen soon.
  • adamsmith
    my sense would be that any smartphone app at the moment would/should be much more limited and doesn't really need most of what Zotero does.
    Basically we're talking about adding citations and notes to ones online library and ideally getting pdfs from Zotero storage and getting them back. I'm not saying that Zotero should develop this, but I think that's where third party developers should be looking to.
  • Greg
    I agree with adamsmith - we do not need a full-fledged Zotero on for smartphones. Even accessing the data, opening pdfs, reading notes and adding them would be great. Maybe the easiest way would be a redesigned and more feature rich web platform based on some of the nice html5 features with a more desktop-like experience (drap/drop etc.). That would be a universal cross-platform solution working on different smartphones (as long as they support html5) and in different browsers. Of course, such a web page would not replace zotero but it would greatly expand the possibility to access the data on different platforms...
  • Bionatsci
    I agree entirely (my comment earlier refered to a "full featured" app). As adamsmith says, we only really need the "reading" and "collecting" features of Zotero for a mobile application, since smartphones would rarely if ever be used for writing documents.
  • sean
    We hear you and agree. Stay tuned.
  • Bionatsci
    Excellent news. I look forward to future developments.
  • kfreeman398
    Today Apple announced that they are now allowing extensions for Safari. Does this change any of the above discussion? I am no programmer, just new to Zotero and a mac user. Thanks for your response in advance.
  • adamsmith
    kfreeman - my comment above still applies, the answer is most likely no.
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/13000/safari-extensions-announced/#Item_2
  • Timoslav
    the mendeley project released an iPhone App some days ago...perhaps that's a good way for zotero, too.
  • bdarcus
    A prerequisite for encouraging third-parties to do this sort of things, however, is an open, documented, read/write API on the server.
  • Anthony J. Langlois
    For those of you doing a lot of reading on the ipad, this is what I do:

    Get iAnnotate, the PDF reader - the very best one (I'm not paid to say this!!).
    It has an accompanying server programme that you run from you Mac or PC to wirelessly upload your (if you are like me) 4 gig of PDF files onto the ipad. The best way to do this is to sync the Zotero Storage folder. If you do this, then (among other things) you can also get iAnnotate to re-upload your annotated PDF files (underline, draw, text, etc, multicolour highlight) and re-place the original file. Or, if you want to you can upload it to another location.

    It is not exactly a Zotero app for the iPad, but it is the next best thing. And I understand from their blog that the people at iAnnotate are very aware of and interested in Zotero.

    http://www.ajidev.com/iannotate/

    Zotero + iPad + iAnnotate = iHeaven
  • abbykelso@gmail.com
    Help for a beginnner?

    So, I have Zotero Libraries, I have iannotate installed on my ipad. How do I get them to synchronize? If you could break it down into baby steps, I would really appreciate it.

    By the way I am loving the reading interface on iannotate.

    -Abby
  • fbennett
    I don't have an iPad, but the poster above appears to be suggesting that you sync the Zotero Storage Directory (a regular folder in your other PC) with the iPad, using whatever external tools you would normally use to do that.

    You can find the Zotero Storage Directory from inside Zotero with gear icon -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show Data Directory.
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