Standalone or Plugin

kgodfrey

I work between two primary computers - one of those being at my workplace and the other at home. Although I do the bulk of my doctoral research at home, there are times that I work after hours on my office computer.

From the discussion I've seen in the forum and from Zotero documentation, it seems that the plugin version is best for me.

Is there a particular benefit to using the standalone version? What would be reasons for me to use it instead of the plugin version?

Thanks.

Keith

adamsmith

You can use both the FF-plugin and the standalone, sharing the same data directory, I think a lot of power users have both installed for different occasions and there is really no downside. If you find yourself never using ZSA just un-install it.

The advantages of using ZSA are that it works without opening Firefox (and that it doesn't require you to have FF at all), that it opens faster (if you don't have FF already open) and that it can be a little faster in general at times.
The advantage of ZFF is that it sits right in your browser and that import from some databases is more reliable. E.g. I use ZFF for researching and importing and ZSA while writing.