Upgrade StorageColumn Search Filters
In general, I am extremely pleased with, reliant upon, and committed to zotero, having migrated all my bibliographic data to it (and instituted a regular backup of it both to an external hard-drive and to remote storage. I don't know what I would do if I lost my data, so I'm very much looking forward to native support in zotero for remote library backup!). So, please take the following as a lover's fault-finding and feature request ;-):
I find zotero's advanced search functionality--with its separate window, multiple dropdown boxes to refine searches, etc.--to be extremely cumbersome for the sort of searches that I do all the time, and which I would like to do more quickly and intuitively: namely, without leaving the zotero interface (so that I can quickly move on to other tasks like adding a set of tags to various of Smith's articles), to see everything written by (say) Smith, and without having to wade through everything with 'Smith' in the title, 'Smith' in the abstract, 'Smith' in the content of indexed pdf's, etc. (which is what happens if I just enter 'Smith' into the Quick Search box). Same time for pulling up everything in my database written in 2006, but without needing to scroll through all the other dates, which is what happens if I just sort by the Date column.
I can see various workarounds for this sort of functionality, e.g., through the liberal (and time-consuming, and forethought-requiring!) use of tags, but a much more elegant and intuitive solution (I think)--and one that is already implemented in X1 (www.x1.com), the program I use for my desktop search--is the ability to refine/accelerate searches by entering text into column filter boxes (CFBs), which sit just below the titles of each column (e.g., in zotero, Date Added, Title, Creator, Date, etc.). So, for example, if I want everything written by Smith in my database, I just enter 'Smith' into the Creator CFB, and up pops everything written by Smith, which results I can then, for example, sort by any other column I like. And, of course, the use of the CFBs can be combined so that, for example, having entered 'Smith' into the Creator CFB, I can add '2006' into the Date CFB, and what remains on the screen is everything written by Smith in 2006. And all of this operates in the real-time, find-as-you-type way that the Quick Search box already does in zotero.
In X1, the CFBs have two further features which, while highly desirable in zotero, are not as essential (at least to me) as having the basic CFB functionality described above: (1) Boolean functionality so that I can, for example, enter 'title word' (using quotes in the usual way if I want to filter for the phrase and not the two words individually) into the Title CFB, and enter 'NOT Smith' into the Creator CFB, and what remains on the screen are all the entries with 'title word' in the title, and which are not written by Smith; (2) the ability to specific date ranges to filter for, and even a drop-down box with pre-specified ranges, e.g., last week, last month, last year, etc.
If what I'm talking about isn't clear, you can perhaps get a better sense by downloading X1, which, though it looks like trialware, is actually free after the 30-day trial period (minus 5 searches which are rarely used by non-business consumers, viz., Lotus Notes Email and Contacts, Uncached Exchange Folders, Exchange Public Folders, Archived PST Files, Network File Servers).
Thanks,
Pete
I find zotero's advanced search functionality--with its separate window, multiple dropdown boxes to refine searches, etc.--to be extremely cumbersome for the sort of searches that I do all the time, and which I would like to do more quickly and intuitively: namely, without leaving the zotero interface (so that I can quickly move on to other tasks like adding a set of tags to various of Smith's articles), to see everything written by (say) Smith, and without having to wade through everything with 'Smith' in the title, 'Smith' in the abstract, 'Smith' in the content of indexed pdf's, etc. (which is what happens if I just enter 'Smith' into the Quick Search box). Same time for pulling up everything in my database written in 2006, but without needing to scroll through all the other dates, which is what happens if I just sort by the Date column.
I can see various workarounds for this sort of functionality, e.g., through the liberal (and time-consuming, and forethought-requiring!) use of tags, but a much more elegant and intuitive solution (I think)--and one that is already implemented in X1 (www.x1.com), the program I use for my desktop search--is the ability to refine/accelerate searches by entering text into column filter boxes (CFBs), which sit just below the titles of each column (e.g., in zotero, Date Added, Title, Creator, Date, etc.). So, for example, if I want everything written by Smith in my database, I just enter 'Smith' into the Creator CFB, and up pops everything written by Smith, which results I can then, for example, sort by any other column I like. And, of course, the use of the CFBs can be combined so that, for example, having entered 'Smith' into the Creator CFB, I can add '2006' into the Date CFB, and what remains on the screen is everything written by Smith in 2006. And all of this operates in the real-time, find-as-you-type way that the Quick Search box already does in zotero.
In X1, the CFBs have two further features which, while highly desirable in zotero, are not as essential (at least to me) as having the basic CFB functionality described above: (1) Boolean functionality so that I can, for example, enter 'title word' (using quotes in the usual way if I want to filter for the phrase and not the two words individually) into the Title CFB, and enter 'NOT Smith' into the Creator CFB, and what remains on the screen are all the entries with 'title word' in the title, and which are not written by Smith; (2) the ability to specific date ranges to filter for, and even a drop-down box with pre-specified ranges, e.g., last week, last month, last year, etc.
If what I'm talking about isn't clear, you can perhaps get a better sense by downloading X1, which, though it looks like trialware, is actually free after the 30-day trial period (minus 5 searches which are rarely used by non-business consumers, viz., Lotus Notes Email and Contacts, Uncached Exchange Folders, Exchange Public Folders, Archived PST Files, Network File Servers).
Thanks,
Pete