Notes Tab and Usability

mikez
While the HTML editing of notes is a good 2.x feature, some usability has been lost.

1. It's not as easy as in V1.x to see when an item is selected whether there are any notes attached. (Could the Notes tab have some indicator to indicate the presence of a note?) The same consideration applies to the Tags and Related tabs.

(I know I can expand the view in the central pane to see the attached notes listed - but this isn't where I expect to look and I'm not sure what else the [+] expansion is used for.)

2. The embedded HTML editor with its two rows of toolbar takes up a lot of real estate and is overkill for many purposes. I have a 900px vertical resolution, and like to be able to see what I am commenting on at the same time as I write the notes. With a comfortable ratio of web page to zotero area, this currently gives me 2 lines in which to edit my comments. And I'm running in 900px vertical resolution, not 768px.

A single row of toolbar which omitted paragraph formatting buttons would be more usable. (You could also omit the button with the icon which could possibly be an eraser, just to the left of the "HTML" button, as I can't work out what it is supposed to do and clicking it doesn't seem to do anything!) The more complete HTML editing functionality could be left to the "Edit in a separate window" feature.

The "Edit in a separate window" button could also be replaced with a toolbar icon.

This would give four or five lines of notes editing capability with a reasonable browser:zotero split.

3. The toolbar icons would all benefit from Tool Tip help. That way I can figure out what that button second from the right on the lower toolbar is supposed to do!
  • dstillman
    It's not as easy as in V1.x to see when an item is selected whether there are any notes attached.
    How so?
  • mikez
    "How so?"

    (All these use cases are for Item Type = Web Page)

    The notes in V1.x were visible / readable in the right hand panel whenever the item was selected in the center panel. In V2.x I have to either click on the Notes tab or expand the [+] icon to see the notes. This makes clicking on a number of items and skimming any notes very slow.

    Incidentally when V1.x notes are displayed on V2.x, (when there is no Notes tab) the notes are now displayed as just half a toolbar on my preferred Browser:Zotero 70:30 split setting. The "Accessed:/Modified:/Indexed:" information uses/wastes a lot of screen real estate here.

    (Personally in V2.x I'd like to see the URL higher on the list of information for a Web Page - I tend to be looking at that quite often, but I don't use the the Website Title and Website Type at all. I therefore do too much scrolling. All these fields would also benefit too from a right-click Copy functionality so I can (e.g.) paste a URL or Title into an email. But I'm straying off the discussion topic here...)
  • adamsmith
    edited October 31, 2009
    I do believe you remember this incorrectly from 1.0 I wouldn't know where you would have seen if an item had a note. Also you can use the + on your keyboard to expand all items and the - to collapse them again.

    also, if you have the note tab selected once, it stays selected as you move to other tiems, so you can see if there is a note.

    as for right-click copy: is click+ctrl-c really that much different?
  • mikez
    edited October 31, 2009
    I may have misremembered V1.x slightly, but I could definitely read/edit the notes I'd written about a web page I'd saved the URL of without ever selecting any Notes tab.

    "as for right-click copy: is click+ctrl-c really that much different?"

    Actually its "click" (mouse), "CTRL-C" (keyboard), and with no indication as whether the program you are using implements any CTRL-C functionality (many don't) so it's not as usable, no. (And if you click on the URL of a converted 1.0 Web Page link you will navigate to that page, not select the link!)

    Thanks for the tip on the "+"/"-" keyboard shortcuts. No doubt if I had been able to find the help button I'd have been able to read out about them :-)

    Keyboard shortcuts are ok for experienced / frequent users, but for new or infrequent users (such as myself) a menu always wins.
  • dstillman
    The notes in V1.x were visible / readable in the right hand panel whenever the item was selected in the center panel.
    You're talking about standalone snapshots and links, which are not the same as web page items and can no longer be created. See this thread for far more than you could possibly want to read on the subject, but the fact that you were confused by the distinction is part of the point.
  • dstillman
    The more complete HTML editing functionality could be left to the "Edit in a separate window" feature.
    This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure we'd really be able to get it down to a single line in the inline mode.
    the button with the icon which could possibly be an eraser, just to the left of the "HTML" button
    It removes all formatting on the selected text.
    The toolbar icons would all benefit from Tool Tip help.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/2.0_beta_known_issues
  • mikez
    For a real challenge, try Zotero on a netbook with 600 lines vertical resolution and write some comments about a web page you are reading... (Just tried it!)

    I think it can be done:

    My candidates for removal from the inline editor are:
    strikethrough, superscript, subscript, quote,
    format, paragraph justification, indent, outdent
    bullet, number, show HTML...

    Edit in external editor becomes a standard toolbar button
  • anthill
    I second this bug request. Zotero on netbooks is great, but the bit of screen space still wasted from the two-line toolbars in TinyMCE needs to be reclaimed.

    Other netbook needs are: full keyboard navigation (arrow keys to choose/scroll/exit from notes), and proper bullet list tab/shift-tab indentation.
  • t.n.a.
    Anthill: "proper bullet list tab/shift-tab indentation"

    I couldn't agree more. First of all, in text, <Tab> should be a <Tab>, not 4 spaces: there's a spacebar for spaces. Secondly, when the cursor is at the beginning of a bullet point, <Tab> should indent the bullet and <Shift>-<Tab> should do the opposite: this is fairly common in rich text editing. Finally, and most importantly, I consider it *very* bad that the editor eats up key combinations it can't handle so <Ctrl>-F doesn't trigger the built in browser search, <Ctrl>-+ doesn't zoom the page in (try working on a netbook with the default font!), <Ctrl>-t doesn't open a new tab... Finally, and most importantly (again!), it's a really crippling feature to have the editor eat up whitespace indentation of text pasted from another editor.

    I'm just starting to use it, but Zotero looks like it might be a good knowledge organization tool and there aren't many good ones. I understand Zotero seeing the WYSIWYG editor a step towards the future, but as it is, a plain text editor would be of *much* more value (to me). I would be quite happy with a setting for users to choose which type of editor they want by default.
  • adamsmith
    the possibility to switch (back) to plaintext notes seems like a good idea to me.
    For the other issues I don't think Zotero should/can claim ownership - they need to be solved/addressed as far as possible over at TinyMCE.
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