Sync DB between Firefox and firefox Portable versions

Skibumtx

In my never-ending quest to be able to display timelines on a PC (controlled by my school) that does NOT have Firefox I have been trying to utilize Firefox Portable and Zotero on a thumb drive.

I use Firefox and Zotero on my main HDD and have developed a large DB of citations and support documents. What I would like to do is place Firefox Portable, Zotero, and a copy of my library onto a thumb drive that I could use, mainly, for presentation purposes.

I've loaded Firefox Portable and Zotero onto my thumbdrive and the combination seem to work fine. After perusing these forums I then copied everything from my HDD ...\profiles\randomsequence.default\zotero to the thumbdrive:\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\zotero directory hoping that this would copy my librbary over to the thumbdrive and make it accessible.

Unfortunately, when I then start Firefox Portable from the thumbdrive the Zotero icon is covered by a the little caution icon (exclamation point inside a triangle) and hovering my mouse over the icon results in a pop up bubble that states " Zotero user DB is newer than SQL file"

Anyone know what I can do to make this work?

Thanks,
Ski

dstillman

http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/newer_db_version

Skibumtx

Dan,

Thanks, that was it.

When I tried to load Zotero using the Firefox Portable Find Add-on interface it grabbed 1.0.9.

I had to start Firefox Portable from the Thumbdrive and then navigate to Zotero.org and D/L 1.5b2 and all seems well.

Thanks again,
Ski

Skibumtx

I'll add my latest question here because it is related, one might even say caused by, this series of events.

At this point I cannot use Zotero unless I start the Firefox Portable from the thumb drive. If I kick off Firefox on my computer (instead of the thumb drive) the Zotero icon shows up on the status bar but nothing happens when I click on it. I have tried re-loading Zotero on my HDD but it doesn't seem to re-initialize the necessary interfaces to Firefox. Is there a way that I can use these interchangeably or am I going to have to pick one strategery and stick to it?

When (notice I didn't say If) the web synchronization feature is stable I'm assuming that this effort will become relatively easy, or am making an ASS out of U and ME?

Thanks,
Ski

dstillman

If Zotero doesn't open when you click the status bar icon, try disabling your other Firefox extensions (and/or try Zotero under the Tools menu). See also known incompatible extensions.

This is unrelated to your thumb drive, though. Note that the desktop Firefox won't show data from the thumb drive unless you point the data directory location in the Advanced pane of the Zotero prefs to the location of the data on the thumb drive.

You could use syncing to sync Portable Firefox and your desktop Firefox, but there's not much reason to if it's already connected.

Skibumtx

Dan,
Thanks, it turns out that the latest update of the Vista-Aero theme was the culprit. As soon as I disabled it Z started working again. Re-enabling the theme killed Z right away.

Ski