Not enough space to grab window on Mac
Now that Zotero is also a PDF reader, the tabs of the PDFs fill up the entire vertical space of the window on macOS. This becomes an issue when you have enough PDFs that it fills horizontally the full width of the window as well, because it severely limits the area of the window which can be grabbed in order to move the application around on the screen.
Here is what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/RcefkMF There are only tiny bits of space to grab the window to move it around, in the top left (dodging the stoplight buttons), and top right (dodging the arrow).
If the concern is that there would be too much wasted space for the top of the window otherwise, perhaps a compromise could be made just by reducing the vertical heights of the tabs, because they have a lot of padding on both the top and bottom sides of the text. Having that space be part of the Zotero window instead would make it a lot easier to use.
Sorry if this is a duplicate issue, but I couldn't find anything.
Here is what I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/RcefkMF There are only tiny bits of space to grab the window to move it around, in the top left (dodging the stoplight buttons), and top right (dodging the arrow).
If the concern is that there would be too much wasted space for the top of the window otherwise, perhaps a compromise could be made just by reducing the vertical heights of the tabs, because they have a lot of padding on both the top and bottom sides of the text. Having that space be part of the Zotero window instead would make it a lot easier to use.
Sorry if this is a duplicate issue, but I couldn't find anything.
In addition to those areas, you can drag the window around from any edge — including the top edge above the tabs — if you start the drag in the opposite direction of the resizing. (This works in any Mac app.)
(And, as you note, this is only an issue if you have enough tabs to cover the whole tab bar.)
I didn't know about grabbing the toolbar, but as you note that only helps if you're in the library tab. Grabbing the edges is pretty impractical, as you have to hone in on a space a few pixels long and then carefully drag in one of two directions.
If you're against the suggestion of making the tabs themselves shorter, then I think the only practical change you can make is allowing users to grab from the toolbar in PDF tabs as well.
I'd have to imagine it's pretty common for people to have ~11 tabs open at once, so the current solutions aren't super user friendly IMO. I'm sure there are other priorities, but it certainly be a quality of life improvement when it's practical for the developers to address.
Thanks again--
In any case, we'll see what we can do about the PDF reader toolbar.
Thanks for seeing what you can do about it :).
As you note, you can click around the stoplight buttons or in the top-right corner. Firefox works the same way with the title bar disabled (which I think it is by default), and they have much less open toolbar space. The main difference is that they give a bit more room before the first tab and after the last, and we should probably do that regardless of the toolbar fix.
Chrome does what you suggest — adds some space above the tabs — and in my view it barely makes a difference. It gives you about the same amount of space as the top edge area itself — possibly even slightly less — so you're likely to grab the edge even if you're not trying to, and you don't get the benefit of the resize cursor to quickly see when you're in the right place. I find it much faster to move a Chrome window using the top edge.
Firefox has a similar tab arrangement, but it does leave two small drag areas free, one on the left (between window controls and tabs) and one on the right. I never had this frustration with Firefox. In comparison, Zotero has zero space between the window controls and tabs (on the left on a Mac), and the only space on the right is taken up by the sync button.
> The main difference is that they give a bit more room before the first tab and after the last, and we should probably do that regardless of the toolbar fix.
Copying Firefox's solution would be a great improvement, and very much appreciated.