Can't Drag and Drop Items into Collection

ar488

So I have an identical problem to this one here (but the thread is 4 years old..)

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2122/cant-drag-and-drop-items-into-collection/

So I am running Zotero 3.0.8 on Firefox 10.0.6 and I have no ability whatsoever to drag and drop my items into a collection. I've tried fiddling with the quick copy settings in the Preferences but to no avail (the ctrl+alt+C/V commands don't work).

Errors do come up in the errors log and I've reported them, but have helpfully not recorded the error report # as I am an idiot...

Any ideas? It's driving me mental.

adamsmith

we need the error report ID(s) - presumably you can replicate the error reliably.

Quick copy has nothing to do with collections, so don't hold any modifier keys while dragging.

Did this used to work for you?

Try temporarily disabling all other add-ons, themes, and personas you may have installed in Firefox.

ar488

OK so error ID: 1238220165

Yeah, it used to work fine. Will try disabling add-ons now.

ar488

Nope, add-ons gone and still dragging doesn't work. Very odd.

Rintze

Any reason you're not running the latest version of Firefox?

ar488

It's what my department has decided.to go with.... they can be weird about stuff like that.

adamsmith

I assume they're using the Firefox Extended Support branch, which can make sense for a department:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
in that branch 10.0.6 is the most recent version, so it should work with Zotero.

dstillman

Can you provide a Debug ID for a drag that fails?

Also, is this the case for all items, or just some?

ar488

Done: D607215054.

(There appears to be quite a lot facebook-related gumf, sorry)

ar488

And yes, this is all the items, unfiled or otherwise.

dstillman

And you're saying you've tried changing the Quick Copy format to, say, a bibliography format?

dstillman

Do you have the ability to run other software? If so, I'd try in the latest version of Zotero Standalone (which will use your existing data directory by default).

ar488

Yep, it's in the BibTeX format. I will try the standalone one tomorrow, that's a good idea thanks!

adamsmith

try setting it to a citation style - like Chicago Manual or so (I can't see the debug, but Dan seems to see something fishy in that respect).

ar488

OK, Chicago Manual is the setting it's in at home and that works fine. Will let you know if either of those two work tomorrow. Thanks guys!

adamsmith

(just to be clear - this _shouldn't_ make a difference - but if it does that's helpful information and allows you to work normally).

ar488

So:

Chicago Manual: didn't make any difference.
Zotero standalone: works fine. Looks like I'll be working with the standalone one!

Thank you for all your help! Much appreciated.

dstillman

Well, trying Standalone was just for debugging purposes—I wasn't suggesting that you'd need to switch to it permanently.

But if this really happens in Firefox with all other extensions disabled, this may be an issue with Fx10 on Linux. If you have the ability to try with a more recent Firefox version, that'd be good information to have.

ar488

OK, there is clearly something broken in my Firefox as other things aren't behaving... This is probably nothing to do with Zotero at all O_o I will let you know if Firefox-Zotero works once my Firefox stops playing around.

antikorpo

Having had a similar problem (not being able to drag and drop anything) and realizing that i couldn't drag my tabs either a websearch pointed me to [firefox support][1], from which i found out that the problem would be [Torbutton][2].

Uninstalling Torbutton solved the problem. Both tabs dragging and Zotero's draging now work fine.

However i still don't understand why there is no alternative way to sorting ones files than dragging, e.g. a "filed under" tab next to "Info, Notes, Tags, Related".

[1]: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/926969
[2]: https://www.torproject.org/torbutton/

PS: I think the forum should support [Markdown](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown)

adamsmith

Yeah, we've had torbutton listed for ages here: http://www.zotero.org/support/known_issues
too bad it's not supported anymore.

I'd quite like a a "filed under" tab (or something along those lines), personally - I think adding items to collections via keyboard-only is one important advantage - but I believe core devs don't like the idea of adding more to the gui.

(The forum supports simple html which is more lightweight in this case and would allow you to create regular links using html like:
<a href=" https://www.torproject.org/torbutton/>Torbutton</a>;
I think markdown is great, I regularly write in it, I just don't think it's needed for a tech support forum)

dstillman

I'd quite like a a "filed under" tab (or something along those lines), personally - I think adding items to collections via keyboard-only is one important advantage - but I believe core devs don't like the idea of adding more to the gui.

I've said before that there should at least be the ability to add items to collections via the context menu, for accessibility reasons, but I'm actually not sure if that helps with accessibility on OS X, where there's no global shortcut for opening context menus. (Maybe there's a third-party app for that?)

I don't really want to add another tab for this, though it would be a much more visible alternative to collections-containing-an-item key and be accessible.

Anyway, better to discuss this in a new thread.