Taskbar Icon and Minimise to Notification Area

morisimo

Zotero Standalone is already working well for me. Many thanks to the developers and community for making and improving this excellent tool.

A couple of small requests for the standalone version:

1) Can we have an icon embedded in the executable so that it appears in shortcuts and on the taskbar (see http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/16134/zotero-standalone-icon/#Item_4 for "unofficial" but excellent icons in the meantime)

2) It would great if Zotero minimised to the notification area like Outlook etc, so that it can be left running in the background with very little intrusion.

Regards,

Ben

ajlyon

I think that (1) is being done already; in fact I thought it already was fixed in the most recent release. (2) isn't yet happening. Don't know what it would take to do that -- Standalone uses Mozilla's XULRunner. But you're definitely right that Standalone would be a good candidate for that kind of minimization, since it can passively receive citations from Safari/Chrome (and later IE).

Bionatsci

Don't know what it would take to do that -- Standalone uses Mozilla's XULRunner

This appears to be possible with XULRunner, since Mozilla Prism, which is a XULRunner application, can minimised to the tray (or to the dock in OSX) - Prism is open source, so it might worth having a look at the code to see how they achieve the minimisation.

ajlyon

Operating-system integration: Binary components provided access to OS-specific features like shortcut creation and dock/tray icons. We intend to propose these extensions for inclusion in future versions of XULRunner. (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Prism)

I can't tell if this ever made it into XULRunner proper.

ajlyon

The code is here and here. But as I already found, this is a binary component, and Zotero has so far managed to steer clear of binary components in the core product (except for the pdfinfo binaries and occasionally pythonext).

-...-

I am wondering if minimizing Zotero Standalone to notification area on Windows was ever considered as a useful feature. At least to me it makes a lot of sense.

adamsmith

If I remember correctly, devs have said that they didn't want to spend time on such OS specific behavior/settings.
I would hope that there are Windows tools that allow you to customize this on a per-application basis.

-...-

Thanks. It's a shame then.

omribarak

A couple of options. I haven't tried them yet.

http://www.askvg.com/how-to-minimize-an-application-to-system-tray-in-windows/

http://lifehacker.com/5813244/hideit-minimizes-any-app-to-your-windows-system-tray

orschiro

Any new updates on system tray minimising?

I am using Linux and yet did not find an option to minimise Zotero Standalone to the system tray.

Robert

adamsmith

for linux that would be part of any packaging that is left to third parties anyway - since the system tray/notification area etc. looks different on pretty much every distro, this wouldn't be built into Zotero but into the respective package.
There is e.g. already a ppa that installs standalone and has it appear in the launcher bar on unity on ubuntu:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/25317/install-zotero-standalone-from-ubuntu-linux-mint-ppa/%5D
and I assume in a comparable place for the gnome desktop.

orschiro

I see. Would another solution be to use any Firefox minimize to tray Add-ons?

Are they compatible with Zotero Standalone?

Regards

adamsmith

probably not out of the box - but you can try.
If you get a compatibility warning on install, you could also try just tweaking the install manifest and repacking (remember that .xpis are simply re-named .zip files, so it's very easy to make small changes).

orschiro

I tried to adapt MinimizedToTray revived [1] by adding the following code to install.rdf:

<!-- Or requires Zotero Standalone -->
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>zotero@chnm.gmu.edu</em:id>
<em:minVersion>3.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>3.1</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

However, I only get the message that this Add-On is not compatible. Maybe someone has the time to look at my code [2]?

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/minimizetotray-revived/
[2] https://googledrive.com/host/0B5L61s7LfvFNbUhVRy1aa2tFdGs/Zotero Standalone Linux Tray Support/minimizetotray_revived-1.1.2-tb+sm+fx-linux.xpi_FILES.xpi

afwlehmann

Hi,
I just happened to stumble upon this discussion as I am also looking for a way to minimize Zotero to tray on Linux. It's a pity that the installation of the `MTT revived` extension didn't work out as planned. That's definitely something worth trying.

However, has there been any progress in this matter? I'd be very glad if there were :)

Regards,
Alexander

orschiro

Hi Alex,

I did not have the time to further work on the compatibility. However, I would also love to see a working solution for Zotero Standalone tray support. I restored the Dropbox link above as it was no longer working.

Thus, feel free to explore a possible hack. :)

Robert

afwlehmann

Oh well, thanks for restoring that link. I have to admit I was kind of disappointed when I first tried to download the file and it wasn't available :)

The "solution" I'm working with right now is unfortunately KDE-only. I have assigned Zotero to one particular Activity that I've created solely for the purpose of administering my bibliography. With this setting I can also add Zotero to KDE's autostart items and it won't bother me at all.

I'll have a look into your adapted version of MTT revived, yet I don't see a thing that you haven't tried so far, so...

Thanks for calling back,
Alex

afwlehmann

Ok, so this is one little step further:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y138xu6003pgksd/one_little_step_further.xpi

I've managed to get the extension installed in Zotero. It can be configured and everything seems fine... until... well, you try to minimize to the tray. Because that's exactly what does not work :(

orschiro

Hi Alex,

Instead of modifying MTT revived we could try FireTray [1]. It seems to be more actively developed and maintained.

But thanks anyway for your try. I will test it later.

Robert

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/firetray/

orschiro

@Alex and all who it may concern:

Together with the developers of FireTray we createad a working FireTray release that is capable to minimise Zotero Standalone to the system tray on Linux!

More information on Github: https://github.com/foudfou/FireTray/issues/85
Download: https://googledrive.com/host/0B5L61s7LfvFNbUhVRy1aa2tFdGs/FireTray/firetray-0.4.5.xpi

Please let me know if you encounter any bugs or problems.

Regards

Robert

orschiro

By the way, does someone want to add the plugin to http://www.zotero.org/support/plugins?

Niklas N.

Is there any solution for Windows available now?

adamsmith

nothing built in and I'm not seeing that being anywhere close to a dev priority. See omribarka's post above for some Windows options, I'm sure there are more.

adamsmith

added Firetray to http://www.zotero.org/support/plugins?&#interface_improvements

cyberalex4life

Minimizing Zotero 5 to tray

For those of you who, like me, want to keep Zotero in tray, there are some third party apps that do that:
Windows:
- TrayIt! (https://winaero.com/blog/minimize-apps-to-system-tray-notification-area-with-trayit/)
- RBTray, TrayEverything, Trayconizer (https://lifehacker.com/5061417/trayeverything-stashes-programs-in-the-system-tray)
Linux:
- you can make use of kdocker, because alltray is unsupported and does not work well anymore.
I've made a bash script for using kdocker with zotero here:
https://github.com/cyberalex4life/zotero-tray