Upgrade StorageBeta PDF Reader issues + feature requests
I'd like to share some further issues I noticed with the PDF reader beta on MacOS and additional feature requests:
1. When clicking on highlighted text in a pdf and pressing del, this does not delete the highlight. Instead, a text field in the side bar is being activated. The highlight needs to be clicked a second time for the del shortcut to work. This seems quite unintuitive to me. The workflow "click on highlighted text" -> "press del" is absolutely common with pdf readers such as Acrobat and PDF Expert.
2. When updating Microsoft Word (I am in the beta channel though), the Zotero.dotm add in needs to be manually re-activated each time, and a warning sign appears that it includes macros.
3. The beta does not work perfectly with external monitors yet. A few times, I've had the experience that Zotero was not appropriately resized, or that the window froze completely. I cannot reproduce the issues reliably, though, and maybe this has already been fixed in the meantime.
4. I know that this is planned, but I'm still missing the functionality to double click on single words to mark/highlight them very much. This is really a central feature of a pdf reader.
5. Also, I'd like to be able to mark text with shift. For example, sometimes I mark a whole paragraph with the mouse and miss a single letter/word. In other pdf readers such as Acrobat, I then press Shift + Right Arrow to catch the missing parts as well - without having to mark the whole paragraph again.
6. When right-clicking on an item in the library, I'd like to see an option "Open pdf in new tab". I'd like to be able to decide first which papers I want to read, open multiple of them, and then browse through the opened tabs to read them.
But all in all, I'm very happy with the PDF reader. Thanks for the great work!
1. When clicking on highlighted text in a pdf and pressing del, this does not delete the highlight. Instead, a text field in the side bar is being activated. The highlight needs to be clicked a second time for the del shortcut to work. This seems quite unintuitive to me. The workflow "click on highlighted text" -> "press del" is absolutely common with pdf readers such as Acrobat and PDF Expert.
2. When updating Microsoft Word (I am in the beta channel though), the Zotero.dotm add in needs to be manually re-activated each time, and a warning sign appears that it includes macros.
3. The beta does not work perfectly with external monitors yet. A few times, I've had the experience that Zotero was not appropriately resized, or that the window froze completely. I cannot reproduce the issues reliably, though, and maybe this has already been fixed in the meantime.
4. I know that this is planned, but I'm still missing the functionality to double click on single words to mark/highlight them very much. This is really a central feature of a pdf reader.
5. Also, I'd like to be able to mark text with shift. For example, sometimes I mark a whole paragraph with the mouse and miss a single letter/word. In other pdf readers such as Acrobat, I then press Shift + Right Arrow to catch the missing parts as well - without having to mark the whole paragraph again.
6. When right-clicking on an item in the library, I'd like to see an option "Open pdf in new tab". I'd like to be able to decide first which papers I want to read, open multiple of them, and then browse through the opened tabs to read them.
But all in all, I'm very happy with the PDF reader. Thanks for the great work!
3. What operating system are you using?
4-5. This is planned.
6. Yes, this would be useful. We will think about that.
Ad 3.: Currently the Monterey beta, but the issue appeared under Big Sur already. If it reappears, I'll post back here and try to be more specific about the corresponding circumstances.
@dstillman Thanks for your reply. I was about to start a new thread for this and then realised that the problem was due to the security setting "disable all macros with notification" being activated (and the Zotero.dotm file was missing from the start up folder, too). Now that I've ticked "Enable all macros" it works again. I'm quite sure that I haven't touched this setting, so it might be an automatic change within one of the latest Word updates.
Upon noticing the visual freezing, I started debug logging and clicked around a bit. The ID is D247553447.
Hope this helps. The issue isn't too annoying now anyway, as we can just close and reopen Zotero with the tabs being restored.