Can't retrieve clipped articles stored in zotero storage

richardparkerdc

I clip and save news articles to Zotero storage in usual way, with no obvious problems, but when I try to retrieve those saved articles from storage, i get an endless pinwheel and no article. What has happened and how do I restore ability to retrieve stored Zotero docs?

dstillman

What's an example URL where this happened? Snapshot saving works in general, but it may have trouble with specific sites that include a lot of advertising code or other interactivity.

richardparkerdc

Thanks for your prompt reply. Here are a few examples of problematic URLS (that clip normally but then prove unretrievable from storage):

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/story/campaigns/?id=51709

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/biden-urges-2016-democrats-continue-obamas-legacy

https://politi.co/2MX1uZQ

However, this one works fine:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/weekinreview/26biden.html

This one, also from NYTimes, loads, but extremely slowly, with article appearing only after about 20 seconds, and pinwheeling continuing for another 30 seconds thereafter.

Aren't articles clipped in Zotero stored on my computer, as well as in Zotero server, and if so shouldn't retrieval of such articles be automatic and instantaneous?

richardparkerdc

Sorry, forgot to include the last URL (to the slow-loading NYT site). Here it is:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/trump-republican-party-conservative.html

richardparkerdc

Dear dstillman,

Could I ask/beg you to please respond to question I raised a while back about Zotero not opening saved snapshots (or taking very, very long time)? It is basically a problem of being unable to retrieve stored snapshots clipped from web on Zotero.

Here's an example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-lockdown-quarantine-president-powers/

I saved that webpage to Zotero, but when I went back to click on Snapshot I got a message from Zotero saying "Can't open this page."

Here's the URL of the Zotero error message:

file:///C:/Users/Richard/Zotero/storage/4E8QGZYC/national-lockdown-quarantine-president-powers.html.

How is this problem possible? I thought taking a snapshot locked in the content, with it stored forever both on Zotero server and on my laptop! Is there some sort of copyright protection that is blocking Zotero from downloading snapshots of CBS web pages to begin with?

This happens a lot, and I've invested heavily in Zotero time-wise, uploading a ton of documents there, and the prospect of not being able to retrieve them is very concerning. I do have the original link, but I thought a main benefit of Zotero is that you preserve content even if the original link disappears!

Please tell me what to do about this. Thanks for your assistance!

Best,
Richard Parker
Law Professor

dstillman

It's really just what I say above — sites that are built in certain ways, with a lot of advertising content or interactivity, can break snapshots. You'll generally get the same behavior with Save Page As… in browsers (since Zotero is just built on the web-page-saving code from Firefox). NYT snapshots are currently disabled for this reason.

We're currently working on a completely new snapshot-saving method that should be much better at handling dynamic sites and saving exactly what you see, with all interactivity removed. That should be available in the Zotero beta soon.

Here's an example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-lockdown-quarantine-president-powers/

I saved that webpage to Zotero, but when I went back to click on Snapshot I got a message from Zotero saying "Can't open this page."

I can view the snapshot for this page (without the video) in Firefox, but it crashes Chrome for some reason. And, indeed, I get the same result if I use Save Page As… in Chrome and then load the saved HTML page in Chrome, so this is reproducible completely outside of Zotero. I haven't investigated, but that's fundamentally a Chrome bug — an HTML page shouldn't be able to crash Chrome. In any case, I'm afraid there's nothing to do about that other than wait for the upcoming overhaul to snapshot saving, or hope that a Chrome update fixes the crashing when viewing the snapshot.

richardparkerdc

Thanks so much for the reply. If there's a beta I would be glad to participate. Status quo is a problem for me.