Should not silently fail to save web page

RonBurk

I switched to the latest standalone Zotero with Firefox to prepare for the upcoming Firefox release. Among the issues with this change, the absolute worst is that clicking on the Zotero button in Firefox may *silently* fail to save anything whatsoever to Zotero.

I get no error message, I see nothing in the Javascript debugging console, nothing in the Zotero log. Quite apart from whatever's going wrong with whatever individual web page, this silent failure is a much worse meta-issue. I can't trust Zotero to do its job. I have to save, then switch to the Zotero application to manually make absolutely certain the save happened.

In addition to making Zotero untrustworthy, this kind of silent failure helps hide how big or small the problems really are.

Again, to be clear, I'm not asking about any particular problem with any particular web page, but about the issue of not notifying the user in any way that the software has failed to perform the requested save of a web page.

dstillman

We'd want a Report ID from the Connector and Zotero to start, and then if you can reproduce the problem we'd want a Debug ID for a save attempt that causes this. Obviously Zotero is supposed to show an error if something goes wrong, so we need to debug the specific problem you're seeing.

RonBurk

Sure. Report ID is: 2141124728
Following the instructions for obtaining a Debug ID left me with a greyed-out "submit" menu item, but rinsing and repeating produced a Debug ID of: D1021940559

dstillman

Sorry, those are from Zotero — we'd want to see these from the Zotero Connector (since it's likely nothing is actually making it to Zotero).

RonBurk

No problem.

Report ID: 767558801
Debug ID: D1504250702

RonBurk

The particular page used in that example was (ironically):
https://martinfowler.com/articles/testing-culture.html

dstillman

If you load the page in a new tab and/or restart Firefox and try again, does it still fail?

If so, have you tried with all other Firefox extensions disabled?

(Also, just on the general point, if nothing happens when you click the button, Zotero's saving code (including its error handling code) likely just isn't being run at all, so it almost certainly didn't save anything to Zotero — no real need to check. So it's just a question of troubleshooting why that's happening for you.)

RonBurk

Opening a new tab, pasting the URL into the address box, and then clicking the Zotero button successfuly adds this page to Zotero. I'll try the disabling/rebooting/restarting/etc. next.

> if nothing happens when you click the button, Zotero's saving code (including its error handling code) likely just isn't being run at all,

I'm not sure what you mean. What is supposed to happen? After a few tries, I see there is a transient pop-up box that I often do not notice (it happens to appear physically about a foot and a half away from where my direction is directed at the button). Is the absence of that what you feel is sufficient warning that nothing was saved?

dstillman

I mean, that's just Zotero's save progress popup — it's appeared there for the last decade. We're planning some upcoming changes to that popup, and it should become a bit more prominent, but that's really a separate issue. That's always been where to look for the status of things you save in Zotero. (Granted, it helped when you could view the pane in Firefox at the same time.)

But no, I was referring to the popup not displaying at all, which it sounded like you were describing. The popup appearing but not showing an entry for the item you're saving is a different issue, and I agree that it's not clear enough, but there are some technical issues that make it difficult to display a better status message when things just aren't working as expected. We have some plans to address those, but they'll take some time. For now, you should know that the item is saved successfully when you see its title in that popup, and an attachment is saved when the text turns from gray to black.

JJSDataDrop

FYI, I have seen this issue on some pages too. I do not see it with the martinfowler page listed above, but the following link is simply not saved by the current Firefox connector:
https://www.activistpost.com/2011/02/us-patent-6506148-nervous-system.html

dstillman

I think you'll find that it has nothing to do with the page being saved, and I'd guess that, like for RonBurk, if you paste the URL into a new tab, it will work. (It works for me.) If it is happening reliably in a new tab or after restart, it's much more likely to be caused by an extension you have installed. (To be clear, this is for webpage saves, which should always work. Errors for translator-based saving can be page-specific.)

@adomasven may have some ideas here, but the Firefox extension architecture still seems a bit buggier than Chrome's (which makes some sense, since it's much newer). We'll keep investigating.

JJSDataDrop

dstillman, I tried that link many times in different tabs with no success - however, following your insights I was successful saving it just now from a private window. So I believe you are correct that the issue lies with other extension conflicts or Firefox bugs.