I agree 100% with Roland Papp's comment about the snapshot and link buttons. They were very simple to use - NOT confusing. Zotero has become more difficult to use as I used these two buttons more than any other zotero feature. The changes intended to reduce confusion have instead increased the confusion and reduced the usefulness of this amazing application.
What is so hard about putting those buttons back???
magi they were confusing - maybe not to you, but to many users who came here to the forum and who we had to educate about what exactly they do and the fact that they'd been using them wrong.
Taking one of them out also provided additional GUI space, which has since been used for the magic wand and the paper clip.
And the fact the 5 people out of a large and growing user community are complaining is, with all due respect, not necessarily a compelling reason to revert software changes.
I have read that exact same argument already - but it just doesn't make any sense.
1 - I assume most of the people using zotero are above average in intelligence. 2 - There is still lots of real estate on the UI for the two buttons. 3 - How can 'Click here to take snapshot' and 'Click here to create a link' be confusing? That is just not enough information to cause confusion even for people with below average IQ! If it does , how did they ever learn how to use a browser or send email? 4 - Were are the all links to these many (more than 5) people that you had to educate. 5 - Did the educational process take two months, two weeks or just the two minutes it would take to explain something so simple in a forum post (that everyone could then access). Wow - what an exhausting burden having to educate about something so SIMPLE! All of a dozen words - no big essay or white paper. Just: 'Click here to take snapshot' and 'Click here to create a link'. 6 - If the solution made zotero simpler to use instead of more cumbersome this would not be an issue.
How can 'Click here to take snapshot' and 'Click here to create a link' be confusing? That is just not enough information to cause confusion even for people with below average IQ! If it does , how did they ever learn how to use a browser or send email?
AFAIK, the confusion came when people tried to cite these links and snapshots as references, which can't be done as standalone links and snapshots cannot have bibliographic metadata associated with them. The principle behind removing these buttons was in part to begin to move towards a data organisation model where everything is, at least in theory, citable.
The fact that it is still possible to create standalone snapshots and links at all is, AFAIK, mainly to ease transition into this new model. For example the fact that "create new item from current page" makes a standalone attachment from a PDF is to allow "retrieve PDF metadata" to function correctly, since the process of retrieving the metadata has not yet been automated.
I agree that this does add an extra couple of button clicks, and some unnecessary clutter, for people who want to use Zotero wholly or partially as a bookmark manager rather than as a bibliographic reference manager. However, IMHO, making Zotero work perfectly as a bookmark manager, in addition to as a reference manager, is mission creep, and perhaps shouldn't be handled in the main Zotero package. In principle I have nothing against Zotero as a bookmark manager*, but the fact remains that the developers are getting their grant money to make a bibliographic reference manager and that is what they are concentrating on making. Any additional features required purely for bookmark management (i.e. the storage and organisation of large numbers of items which don't ever require bibliographic data) should probably be handled via a plugin or similar.
*Edit: I of course mean a bookmark manager in addition to a reference manager.
Thanks for the more detailed explanation. What you say about the changes makes a lot more sense than just saying people were confused - esp. clarifying the purpose of zotero in relation to the funding. Either way it is a great tool and amazing that it is free for everyone to use.
I am an attorney, I use Zotero extensively for online legal research. Zotero isn't exactly designed for this, but it is an incredibly useful tool anyway and I complement the developers, and thank them for making it freely available.
That said, I too am missing the snapshot button. Legal materials, such as statutes, are usually presented online one section per page. If I need to research Chapter 11 bankruptcy, I go to an online U.S.C. and I get copies of all the relevant sections (say, 1101-1174), I then use Zotero's very useful highlight and annotation functions to take notes on each section's page. The next time I have to deal with the same issues, voila, I've got a personal collection of notes and working materials ready to go.
Prior to installing the beta, I would take a snapshot of each section, and then file the snapshots under a single item (following on my example, the Item would be "11 USC Title 11," and the snapshots would be sections 1101, 1102, 1103, etc.). This was really, really easy. Now, as others have noted, I must root out what I want most from the many, many "web page items" that I have to create. Clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky. This takes a lot of time; time is money (even for academics, I think). More importantly, lots of extra clicks are just annoying.
Whatever Zotero's mission, whatever the reason for removing the ability to create a snapshot of a webpage that is not nested, it has clearly inconvenienced a significant subset of users. Given the remarkable diligence with which complaints like this are usually addressed (judging from these forums), I am surprised to see the very well-stated concerns I read here being met with explanations that do not actually address the problem, well intentioned as they may otherwise be.
As this thread started in May and the promised interface changes do not appear to have debuted yet, the request is clear: please bring back the snapshot button (or similar functionality) as an optional feature in the interim. Hide the function as deep down in the preferences as you want so as not to confuse people, kind of like MSWord hides the "Table of Authorities" function deep down inside so most people don't even know it's there, but a very small subset of users (like me) can still use it regularly.
UPDATE: Immediately after writing this, I figured out that once I create an item, there is an option to "add attachment-->add snapshot of current page." This appears to be the well-hidden trick I was calling for. Thanks very much.
it's not that well hidden - it's actually a (usefully) redundant feature as it appears both in the context menu when right-clicking an item and in the attachment menu clicking the paperclip.
... which counterintuitively (if you're used to the old system) is grayed out until you've actually highlighted the Item. Live and learn, at least the solution is up on the thread now. Cheers.
Like others here, the snapshot button was my most frequently used button in Zotero. Since I rarely use these parent-less snapshots in my citations, editing the titles of both the snapshot and the reference item isn't preferable, even if the wait isn't long until a later version of the Zotero interface hides single-child snapshots and unused fields. If you know that the zotero.jar file in extensions/zotero@chnm.gmu.edu/chrome is simply a zip file, then you may be able to use the following patch. Even without it, Zotero is a straightforward and yet wonderful tool, so I thank Dan and the others for all their hard work.
- if (typeof itemID != 'number') { - throw ("itemID must be an integer in ZoteroPane.addAttachmentFromPage()"); + if (itemID) { + if (typeof itemID != 'number') { + throw ("itemID must be an integer in ZoteroPane.addAttachmentFromPage()"); + } + } + else { + if (this.itemsView && this.itemsView._itemGroup.isCollection()) { + var parentCollectionID = this.itemsView._itemGroup.ref.getID(); + } }
var progressWin = new Zotero.ProgressWindow(); progressWin.changeHeadline(Zotero.getString('save.' + (link ? 'link' : 'attachment'))); var type = link ? 'web-link' : 'snapshot'; var icon = 'chrome://zotero/skin/treeitem-attachment-' + type + '.png'; progressWin.addLines(window.content.document.title, icon) progressWin.show(); progressWin.startCloseTimer();
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I agree 100% with Roland Papp's comment about the snapshot and link buttons. They were very simple to use - NOT confusing. Zotero has become more difficult to use as I used these two buttons more than any other zotero feature. The changes intended to reduce confusion have instead increased the confusion and reduced the usefulness of this amazing application.
What is so hard about putting those buttons back???
Taking one of them out also provided additional GUI space, which has since been used for the magic wand and the paper clip.
And the fact the 5 people out of a large and growing user community are complaining is, with all due respect, not necessarily a compelling reason to revert software changes.
I have read that exact same argument already - but it just doesn't make any sense.
1 - I assume most of the people using zotero are above average in intelligence.
2 - There is still lots of real estate on the UI for the two buttons.
3 - How can 'Click here to take snapshot' and 'Click here to create a link' be confusing? That is just not enough information to cause confusion even for people with below average IQ! If it does , how did they ever learn how to use a browser or send email?
4 - Were are the all links to these many (more than 5) people that you had to educate.
5 - Did the educational process take two months, two weeks or just the two minutes it would take to explain something so simple in a forum post (that everyone could then access). Wow - what an exhausting burden having to educate about something so SIMPLE! All of a dozen words - no big essay or white paper. Just: 'Click here to take snapshot' and 'Click here to create a link'.
6 - If the solution made zotero simpler to use instead of more cumbersome this would not be an issue.
The fact that it is still possible to create standalone snapshots and links at all is, AFAIK, mainly to ease transition into this new model. For example the fact that "create new item from current page" makes a standalone attachment from a PDF is to allow "retrieve PDF metadata" to function correctly, since the process of retrieving the metadata has not yet been automated.
I agree that this does add an extra couple of button clicks, and some unnecessary clutter, for people who want to use Zotero wholly or partially as a bookmark manager rather than as a bibliographic reference manager. However, IMHO, making Zotero work perfectly as a bookmark manager, in addition to as a reference manager, is mission creep, and perhaps shouldn't be handled in the main Zotero package. In principle I have nothing against Zotero as a bookmark manager*, but the fact remains that the developers are getting their grant money to make a bibliographic reference manager and that is what they are concentrating on making. Any additional features required purely for bookmark management (i.e. the storage and organisation of large numbers of items which don't ever require bibliographic data) should probably be handled via a plugin or similar.
*Edit: I of course mean a bookmark manager in addition to a reference manager.
Thanks for the more detailed explanation. What you say about the changes makes a lot more sense than just saying people were confused - esp. clarifying the purpose of zotero in relation to the funding. Either way it is a great tool and amazing that it is free for everyone to use.
That said, I too am missing the snapshot button. Legal materials, such as statutes, are usually presented online one section per page. If I need to research Chapter 11 bankruptcy, I go to an online U.S.C. and I get copies of all the relevant sections (say, 1101-1174), I then use Zotero's very useful highlight and annotation functions to take notes on each section's page. The next time I have to deal with the same issues, voila, I've got a personal collection of notes and working materials ready to go.
Prior to installing the beta, I would take a snapshot of each section, and then file the snapshots under a single item (following on my example, the Item would be "11 USC Title 11," and the snapshots would be sections 1101, 1102, 1103, etc.). This was really, really easy. Now, as others have noted, I must root out what I want most from the many, many "web page items" that I have to create. Clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky. This takes a lot of time; time is money (even for academics, I think). More importantly, lots of extra clicks are just annoying.
Whatever Zotero's mission, whatever the reason for removing the ability to create a snapshot of a webpage that is not nested, it has clearly inconvenienced a significant subset of users. Given the remarkable diligence with which complaints like this are usually addressed (judging from these forums), I am surprised to see the very well-stated concerns I read here being met with explanations that do not actually address the problem, well intentioned as they may otherwise be.
As this thread started in May and the promised interface changes do not appear to have debuted yet, the request is clear: please bring back the snapshot button (or similar functionality) as an optional feature in the interim. Hide the function as deep down in the preferences as you want so as not to confuse people, kind of like MSWord hides the "Table of Authorities" function deep down inside so most people don't even know it's there, but a very small subset of users (like me) can still use it regularly.
UPDATE: Immediately after writing this, I figured out that once I create an item, there is an option to "add attachment-->add snapshot of current page." This appears to be the well-hidden trick I was calling for. Thanks very much.