Install Zotero and Connector in the background

zuphilip

We provide Zotero and the Firefox on all computers in our pc rooms and need to install Zotero and the Connector in the background (by scripting these installations). This works so far, but there are some clicks which will be needed for every new user on a pc, which we would like to avoid:

* In Firefox after the installation of the Connector, one has to first click once on the grey Z to see the first greetings message "You've installed the Zotero Connector! ...". Can this be skipped?

* When a user first starts Zotero, then this will always open Firefox with the Zotero website for installing Connectors (which is already installed at this time). Can this be avoided?

dstillman

For the client, you could add an empty Zotero profile to the home directory template with a prefs.js file that has extensions.zotero.firstRun2 (and maybe some other firstRun prefs) set.

In the next Connector release the prefs will be stored via the chrome.storage API, which I believe (though I haven't confirmed) gets stored within the 'browser-extension-data' subdirectory of the Firefox profile directory, so you could do the same thing for that.

zuphilip

Okay, this sounds good! Let me just check that I understand correctly: I will then once start Zotero, adjust some settings, but do nothing else, and close it again. This will then create an empty Zotero profile and especially the pref.js. Then I take all files and subfolders in C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles as a template which will be copied on every computer and each time the installation is triggered again. Or is this too much to take as a template?

dstillman

Yeah, I would try removing most other stuff in the profile, including possibly all other lines in prefs.js, and let as much be created automatically as possible. Ideally you would have profiles.ini pointing to a directory, a prefs.js in that directory with a couple lines in it, and not much else. (I haven't tested this, so I'm not sure whether it will complain about some things, but generally it should be very good at auto-creating whatever it needs.)

zuphilip

Okay, now we tried this out. However, if I copy the profiles.ini and (reduced) pref.js from one computer to another, then when Zotero is started, a new (nested) Zotero folder inside the already existing Zotero folder is created with a new ini file and subfolder for a new profile, which is then used:

C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles\...\pref.js

The profile which we copied here is just ignored. Here is a debug ID for starting Zotero with these templating files: D2023259297. Any ideas how to solve this?

zuphilip

@dstillman Do you see anything in this Debug ID? Or do you have any other ideas what is going on and how to prevent it?

dstillman

I'm not sure I follow. Where is a new .ini file being created? Zotero should just look at C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles\profiles.ini when it starts up, so if that already exists and has a default profile, it should use that profile.

zuphilip

Uh, the Zotero folder inside the Zotero folder is as it should be. I have to check that we did not forgot one of this folder in the first place...

dstillman

Yeah, Zotero\Zotero is correct. (Weird, but it's the equivalent of Mozilla\Firefox.) I guess the documentation page was wrong here, so I've fixed that.