Highlight text within web clipping archive

dghumphrey

I can see this was possible and would be very helpful to have, ideally it would work like the pdf annotation function and then allow extract of your highlights. Is there a third party option to replace this. Or does zotero allow crowd funding of features similar the QGIS model. I'd happily pay for this feature

https://www.zotero.org/blog/annotate-and-highlight-your-archived-pages/

adamsmith

I would recommend annotating the actual webpage with hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is) there's some experimental work that will draw in annotations made by a specific user on a URL listed in Zotero to the corresponding Zotero item. You can also use hypothes.is to to annotate local snapshots, but in most cases the annotations won't sync, unfortunately.

dghumphrey

Would that not run the risk that the actual page is out of your control, so if it's removed your work is gone?

scotto

I would also very much like some method of saving and editing web page highlights in the local html file stored by Zotero. But for me, hypothes.is doesn't cut it.

True, you can highlight a webpage with the hypothes.is chrome extension and then save the web page with Zotero; the highlights will be saved in Zotero's local html file.

But after that, it's frozen. Hypothes.is can't edit or add highlights on the local local file. If you try (click on the hypothes.is browser icon), you'll get the message:

We’re sorry, Hypothesis couldn’t open that file…
This extension can’t be used on local HTML documents at the moment.

There seems to be no way to do this in Chrome.

adamsmith

Using the bookmarklet allows you to work on local files (this used to work with the Chrome extension when enabling access to File URLs, but for some reason they broke that [or an update to Chromes security did])

scotto

Huh, the bookmarklet doesn't work for me either.

I can use it to highlight a live web page, and then let Zotero save it.

But when I load that saved file into chrome, the bookmarklet doesn't do anything. I can click it and the select text, but there is no highlighting; I can select text and then click it, but there is still no highlighting.

oceanrams

I have found some luck using Print Friendly & PDF:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/print-friendly-pdf/ohlencieiipommannpdfcmfdpjjmeolj?hl=en

I use this in combination with ZotFile to take notes on webpages. My process is:
1. Clip the page with the Chrome Zotero plug-in to add the page to my library.
2. Generate the PDF and clean it up with the extension linked above.
3. Drag and drop the PDF onto the Zotero object, so Zotfile process the file.
4. Highlight the attached PDF.
5. Extract the annotations with Zotfile for quick reference later.

If anyone knows a good way to automate step 3 (like if the PDF is put in a special folder it is attached to the Zotero item created most recently) I'd be very interested to hear about it.

dghumphrey

I have used that workflow in the past, currently I'm copy and pasting into the item note and marking that content as quote. Which isn't very efficient in terms of storage used as i'm duplicating content but it's quicker and works on mobile with the experimental iOS app.

cheflo

I opened a new thread here to track discussions around the development of webpage annotations and potential current workarounds https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/89301/feature-request-add-annotations-for-web-pages

aandy

oceanrams, i think zotfile can do #3 automatically using the below feature. i haven't used it in awhile but my memory is that you can click on an item, tell zotfile to attach latest file (from whatever folder you designate in the preferences) and it imports and then deletes the downloaded version so the next-oldest file rises to the top of the queue.

i've just described my web text workaround in cheflo's new thread linked above.
---
"★ Attach New Files to Zotero Items

ZotFile can rename and add the most recently modified file from the Firefox download or a user specified folder as a new attachment to the currently selected Zotero item. It renames the file using metadata from the selected Zotero item (user configurable), and stores the file as a Zotero attachment to this item (or alternatively, moves it to a custom location)."