Provide "in progresss" and "completed" feedback for export scripts

rosiep

I have over 100 items in a collection, select them all and create a bibliography of them, selecting clipboard as the output format, and click OK. The dialog box goes away, so it looks like the thing is done. I go switch to Word and try to paste it, but the previous contents of the clipboard are still there. Come to find out the script wasn't finished. Sometimes if I try to do something else (like paste to Word) before a script is finished, I get an alert saying "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete."

I suggest there be some sort of visual feedback in the status bar (an in progress bar, or spinning slash character or whatever) to show that something is still happening.

algemmell

I would support what rosiep is saying about some sort of visual feedback on the progress of large operations in Zotero. I too have seen the same alert message, almost every time I start Zotero. I have presumed up until now that it is produced by the fact it is rather a large database, and something times out before it can all be loaded, triggering the message, but I have no way of checking that at present.

Linking with this, I think it would also be useful to have something like a 'Properties' option in the drop down menus associated with the Collections and sub-collections. What I would particularly find useful would be a simple tally of the number of items in each collection. Such a facility may exist, but I have yet to find it in Zotero.

dstillman

I've created a ticket for a progress indicator on export and Quick Copy.

Linking with this, I think it would also be useful to have something like a 'Properties' option in the drop down menus associated with the Collections and sub-collections

That's #738, though it probably will just display in the collections pane rather than in a drop-down.

I would support what rosiep is saying about some sort of visual feedback on the progress of large operations in Zotero.

This is actually more difficult in Firefox than it seems like it should be, because all JavaScript runs in a single thread shared with the UI, and most UI operations (like displaying a progress window) happen asynchronously. So the only way to semi-reliably display a progress window is to put in an explicit delay before the operation, which slows things down for everybody and still risks the window not displaying on particularly slow computers. For example, there's an extra second or so added to save operations from the URL bar to allow for the progress window to display.

I'm not positive, but I think Firefox 3 may let us perform operations like display a progress window on separate threads, in which case we could add progress indicators to many more parts of the interface without introducing delays.

algemmell

Dan,

Many thanks for the response. I am pleased to know that there is already a ticket in place for the facility as I requested. It is one of the great things about Zotero that it is not a monolithic tool unlike many bits of software, but instead is flexibly developing in response to users requests.

I note that you make reference to Firefox 3 - will existing versions of Zotero be compatible with the new version of Firefox when that is released?

dstillman

I note that you make reference to Firefox 3 - will existing versions of Zotero be compatible with the new version of Firefox when that is released?

The changes necessary to make Zotero compatible with Firefox 3 are being made on the development trunk, which will become Zotero 1.5. They probably won't be backported to the 1.0 branch, but we're hoping to release at least a beta of Zotero 1.5 in time for Firefox 3's release.