Better UX for tagging multiple item

gagarine

Now to tag multiple item you have to first create the tag and then select the items and drop them into the tag. This works but you have to look at the documentation to know it.

I think we should keep the right sidebar and be able to modify multiple item at once, at least for adding/removing tag.

dstillman

Similar suggestion here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/63277/tag-items-with-folder-names

We'll add support for this in some form along with other batch editing improvements. I agree that being able to type tags (that may or may not yet exist) to assign them to multiple items would be nice.

gagarine

I read the suggestion in the other thread: "It would be nice if you could right click a collection and get an option to tag all items in the collection with some tag[...]"

The "right click" is from the past. My laptop's touchpad don't even has a real right click. Zotero should move away from the "right click" at least for common action or should provide other way to do it. More generally hiding actions under submenu, hidden panels and the like is not very user-friendly.

Zotero UX is actually what makes it look bad in comparison with other programs. Even the Zotero's website is not really nice.

bwiernik

The context menu (right click) is a core part of most software programs (even on macOS, which pretty much pioneered the single button mouse). Though the convention of two-finger clicking has replaced "right clicking" on many laptops, the need to call up the context menu is still there.

dstillman

Yup. Macs have never had more than one mouse button, but Mac users who don't use right-click (/control-click/two-finger click) miss out on a huge amount of advanced functionality/efficiency, even in Apple's own software. It's obviously important to have common tasks exposed in the UI, since it's true that many people aren't that comfortable with context menus, but there's too much functionality in advanced software, and context menus are too efficient as an interaction mechanism, to do away with them without making the UI vastly more cluttered.

That said, probably not relevant here. This will tie into our general approach to batch editing, and I see that being exposed (one way or another) via the right-hand pane. A Tags tab that applied to selected items would also let you see the common tags for the selected items and remove them with the same "-" buttons.