Zotero for Firefox or for Window

ctt

Dear Forum folks, after a hasty crash of my old computer, I am now about to install Zotero into my new. In my old I used the firefox version and would like to ask whether I have any incentives to shift to the stand-alone version? What are the pros and cons in a summary? Or is it even so, that I have to use the same version to access my old library, or does it not matter?

Kindly // Cecilia

aurimas

You can switch if you want.

The pros of using the Firefox extension is that it currently deals better with downloading PDFs over proxies (and a couple atypical websites). It will also allow you to use automatic proxy redirection.

The pros of using Zotero Standalone is that it does not live in your browser, so you don't have to open the browser to use it, close it if you need to restart the browser, and you can make the Zotero window slightly larger, because it does not have a navigation bar. It also allows you to use multiple browsers to import items into your library (Chrome, Safari, Opera, even Firefox, as well as many other browsers using the Zotero Bookmarklet).

Other than that, the two are nearly identical. And you can use both if you want. I suggest that you just give it a shot.

ctt

Thanks Aurimas. One additional question; if using both I start with installing both I suppose? But how do I then make them communicate, i.e., if I for example add a ref or make changes in the standalone version (either using another browser than Firefox or none at all), will this mean that I will have to deal with two libraries?

/ Cecilia

adamsmith

they will automatically communicate. The second one you run (whichever that is) will ask you whether it should share the existing data directory, which you should OK.