missing URL bar icon across multiple sites

mdbetter

My report ID is 1986418439.

The save to Zotero URL bar icon is missing across all sites that I have tried. An example of a page where it is missing is this article from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/us/politics/obamacare-unlikely-for-undocumented-immigrants.html?_r=0

I am using Zotero standalone 4.0.23 and the connector version 4.0.17.1 with Firefox 33.1.1 on Windows 7. Zotero is present in the Add-ons view in Firefox and the Zotero icon appears in the Firefox address bar. I followed the steps that seem relevant in the "troubleshooting translator issues" help page (https://www.zotero.org/support/troubleshooting_translator_issues), including resetting the translators, updating Zotero, reloading the webpage, checking my system clock, disabling all extensions besides Zotero, and checking that cookies are not blocked. I did not to my knowledge receive an unresponsive script warning.

What should I try next?

dstillman

You skipped Step 3. You're using Zotero 4.0.17.1, which is almost a year out of date.

dstillman

To clarify, there's not really a connector for Firefox — there's just Zotero for Firefox, which runs in a lightweight connector mode if Standalone is open. But it's still the full Zotero, and your version is very old. Make sure you have automatic add-on updates enabled in Firefox and this won't happen.

mdbetter

Aha, thanks.

In the Firefox Add-Ons view, Automatic Updates for Zotero are set to on and the Last Updated date is January 08, 2014. Within this view, I chose "Options" and "Update now", and the button changed to read "Up to date".

How do I update the connector if it thinks it's automatically updating but not actually doing the update?

mdbetter

Is removing the connector from Firefox and re-installing it the next thing to do?

adamsmith

no need to remove, just try re-installing from zotero.org/download -- my suspicion would be, though, that that won't work either. In that case do step 5 (and only step 5 -- the rest is irrelevant) here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/ssl_certificate_error for this page

If it says "Bitdefender" or "Avast! Mail/Web Shield" temporarily disable the respective software and try again.

dstillman

Within this view, I chose "Options" and "Update now", and the button changed to read "Up to date".

That part isn't relevant — that's just for Zotero's own translators and styles.

If you click the gear icon at the top of the Add-ons window and choose Check for Updates, does it not find an update?

If not, you can always just download the latest version from zotero.org. No need to uninstall anything.

If you get then an error that there was an error in the connection to zotero.org (which would also explain the auto-update problem), see Step 5 here: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/ssl_certificate_error

Edit: Too slow...

mdbetter

I followed adamsmith's suggestion and re-installed the connector from zotero.org/download. That worked, and I now have version 4.0.23.1 showing in the Add-ons view in Firefox. The URL button is now visible, so that fixed my problem.

It seems odd that the auto-updating wasn't working, I don't know why that was happening. If I have problems again in the future I'll try manually updating and check the SSL certificate error page.

Thanks for your help.

mdbetter

I followed Dan Stillman's suggestion of checking for updates in the Firefox Add-ons window and found multiple updates for other Firefox extensions that were supposed to be auto-updating. So what I thought was a Zotero problem is actually a Firefox problem.

Thanks again.