Create New Item from Current Page button gone

drnu

Using Zotero 4.0.27.1 in Firefox 38.0.5. The Create New Item from Current Page in the Zotero panel recently disappeared. How can I bring it back?

My workflow is to open the Zotero panel when creating a new item to select the Collection before adding the item. Without the button in the Zotero panel, I have to jump back to the Firefox menu to complete the add.

adamsmith

You can use the keyboard shortcut ( Cmd+Shift+S (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+S (Windows/Linux) by default) if ergonomics are important. It doesn't make a lot of sense to put the same button in two places, so it's not going to come back to the Zotero toolbar.

dstillman

More details: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/50362/report-id-2138979042-create-from-web-page-problem-firefox/

I'm not sure what you mean regarding the "Firefox menu", though. The new save button is in the Firefox toolbar. What's in the Firefox menu?

hide5000

I need the button back. I store pages in particular folders and can't choose which destroys the way this thing has worked for years. Please fix.

aurimas

The functionality has not changed, just the location of the button, so I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "can't choose which destroys the way this thing has worked for years". Please be more specific if you want to convince us that something is now missing.

hide5000

The Create New Item from Current Page in the Zotero panel recently disappeared. How can I bring it back?
It was to the right of the actions button on menu bar.

dstillman

hide5000: Aurimas already responded to you in this thread, and I provided a link above with further details.

drnu

Thank you for the links. That gave some incite as to what the Zotero designers were thinking.

The workflow that I use, and it seems some of the other commenters also use, is to open the Zotero window in Firefox and select the collection first before creating a new web page item. After selecting the collection from the tree list, it was a simple matter to click the "create new item from web page" button in the Zotero window. Now I am forced to remember a hot key, or go farther up the page to find the button in the Firefox toolbar. What is the harm in having the button in both places?

dstillman

drnu: I address that in this thread. (In short: the button that people were ideally using most of the time has always been at the top.)

Saving to Zotero is intended to be a natural part of browsing, and the functions pertaining to that (e.g., bookmarking webpages) are largely in the browser toolbar.

As for adding the new button to the Zotero toolbar, I'd like to avoid cluttering the interface and/or taking up space that we could use for other functions with a redundant button. The button would also be inconsistent (because of the single-click + drop-down combo) with the other Zotero toolbar buttons, and it wouldn't be present in Zotero Standalone.

For the issue of wanting to select a collection closer to the button, that's actually something we need to solve in the Chrome and Safari connectors for Zotero Standalone as well — and even, perhaps, for saving directly to the server from the bookmarklet — so it might make sense to offer a collection chooser in the newly apparent drop-down menu. We'd have to test the usability of this, but I could see a menu item in the new drop-down menu that showed the selected target collection and offered a submenu for choosing another. In any case, we should investigate that first, since we'll likely need to do something like that in the connectors anyway.

drnu

Space in the Firefox address bar and tool bar is really precious to me. To save space, I chose to use the single Zotero open button there rather than the the combo button. From there I open the Zotero window and select the collection. Unfortunately, without the add button in the Zotero toolbar, I have open the Firefox hamburger menu to get to the Save to Zotero function.

How about adding a preference item, or even a user customizable menu bar, to let the user decide if the Save to Zotero is on the address bar?

dstillman

Space in the Firefox address bar and tool bar is really precious to me.

And yet you were using Zotero before, presumably, when the address bar icon appeared on many webpages. Since you needed space for that icon anyway on an ever-increasing number of pages, things aren't really made worse by this change — and in fact now at least you have the option of not showing the button and using either the menu panel or a shortcut key.

Again, there's nothing wrong with a feature request — though the problems with it that I raise above remain — but it's not really logical to make it about this change. And as far as I can recall essentially no one asked for translator saving from the Zotero toolbar before.

dstillman

Unfortunately, without the add button in the Zotero toolbar, I have open the Firefox hamburger menu to get to the Save to Zotero function.

And this still sounds to me like you're confusing what the old "Create Web Page Item from Current Page" button was for. The old CWPIfCP button was never supposed to be the primary means of saving to Zotero. The address bar icon was. The CWPIfCP button was always intended as a fallback option that would become less necessary over time — we just hurried that along by integrating its functionality into the main save button.

The standard mechanism by which extensions extend browsers is by putting buttons in the navigation bar, and that's what we've always done.

DonThorntonJr

I have to agree with the OP and others as to restoring the old "Create Web Page Item from Current Page" button.

It took me few minutes to realize the functionality was relocated to the address bar icon and as for the keyboard shortcut ( Cmd+Shift+S) on the Mac, this does not work as there is another tool already using this shortcut.

There is much more room on the Zotero toolbar for the old button than there is for the 2 Zotero buttons in the Firefox toolbar.

dstillman

for the keyboard shortcut ( Cmd+Shift+S) on the Mac, this does not work as there is another tool already using this shortcut

It works in default configurations. You can change the shortcut key in the Zotero preferences if you have something that conflicts.

There is much more room on the Zotero toolbar for the old button than there is for the 2 Zotero buttons in the Firefox toolbar.

There have been two buttons in the Firefox toolbar for years. We just removed a button in the Zotero toolbar for a function that no longer exists on its own (since it was replaced by something better).

It's not impossible that we could add a full save button to the Zotero toolbar, but again, that has never existed. The button that was there before was a secondary, fallback button for when the main save icon couldn't be used, and that's no longer necessary. And there's other functionality that isn't already duplicated elsewhere that we may want to add to the toolbar, so decisions about what goes there have to be made carefully.

DonThorntonJr

The 2 buttons may have been there for years but I haven't included the Zotero button(s) in my Firefox toolbar config for years due to the limited space.

There is a fundamental problem with making UI changes like this whether or not there exists a legitimate reason and the problem is that users become comfortable with the way the UI works and they loathe having to (re)learn a new process.

You have not convinced me that the current functionality is somehow better and there seems to be little chance that the old button will return so I will seek out alternatives to using Zotero in the future.

aurimas

The 2 buttons may have been there for years but I haven't included the Zotero button(s) in my Firefox toolbar config for years due to the limited space.

You can still choose essentially the same single-button configuration. See https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-4-0-27-streamlined-saving-easier-bibliography-language-selection-and-more/ about half way down.

You're obviously welcome to find an alternative, we're not going to try and convince you otherwise. We understand that altering established workflows will always cause some friction, but this will not stop Zotero from evolving into something better.

dstillman

Right, Don, I think you're misunderstanding. The Z button has been configurable as long as it's been in the Firefox toolbar, but the previous address bar button was not configurable and always appeared on supported sites. So you did in fact have it, and it was taking up essentially the same amount of space as the new single-button, which you can put in essentially the same spot.

If you don't agree that having one single button that saves all webpages in the best way possible, and which can be placed in essentially the same spot, is better than two different buttons in two entirely different places in the UI (and one only appearing unpredictably), then there's probably not much we can do to convince you.

(The only way this would affect your workflow is if you were clicking Create New Item from Current Page in all cases, but if that's the case then you were missing out on one of Zotero's best features. The prime way to save has always been in the Firefox toolbar, and that hasn't changed.)