Zotero on my Android tablet with firefox mobile
Hi,
I've been using Zotero for some time now, and it's brilliant.
But the reason i'm posting here is the following: I recently bought an Archos 101 internet tablet (with android 2.2) and I managed to install zotero on it, as a firefox mobile plugin.
It took some tricks, i'll write down below what i've done so far.
The library part seems to be working, however i haven't added any items to it yet.
The current problem i have is the following: firefox mobile doesn't like opening popup windows, so it's difficult to use things like the preferences window. the real problem is getting to the sync page of the settings, which is also the only page i really need to be (I want to be able to setup the sync to download my library to the device).
If anybody has a fresh idea to get there, please let me know.
Ok, what i've done so far:
1. install firefox mobile on my android tablet
2. download the zotero plugin to your computer (use the right mouse button on the big download button on zotero.org and pick save target as)
3. use your favourite archive tool to open the downloaded plugin (winrar might work, i'm a linux user so the build-in archive manager did the trick)
4. inside the archive, open the following file: install.rdf
5. add the following below the Firefox target:
<em:targetApplication>
<!-- Fennec -->
<Description>
<em:id>{a23983c0-fd0e-11dc-95ff-0800200c9a66}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>4.0b1</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>4.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>
6. upload the thing to a webpage and build an install trigger for it (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Installing_Extensions_and_Themes_From_Web_Pages)
7. visit the website with your android device using firefox mobile
(for those of you who want to skip these first steps, this is my page with the install triger on it: http://www.vcsvu.nl/hans/index6.html )
8. click the link to install, restart your firefox mobile
9. open your firefox mobile, and visit: chrome://zotero/content/tab.xul
Tadaa, zotero on your android device :-) all we have to do now is get it functional :-)
10. to get to the settings page, visit: chrome://zotero/content/preferences/preferences.xul
I've been using Zotero for some time now, and it's brilliant.
But the reason i'm posting here is the following: I recently bought an Archos 101 internet tablet (with android 2.2) and I managed to install zotero on it, as a firefox mobile plugin.
It took some tricks, i'll write down below what i've done so far.
The library part seems to be working, however i haven't added any items to it yet.
The current problem i have is the following: firefox mobile doesn't like opening popup windows, so it's difficult to use things like the preferences window. the real problem is getting to the sync page of the settings, which is also the only page i really need to be (I want to be able to setup the sync to download my library to the device).
If anybody has a fresh idea to get there, please let me know.
Ok, what i've done so far:
1. install firefox mobile on my android tablet
2. download the zotero plugin to your computer (use the right mouse button on the big download button on zotero.org and pick save target as)
3. use your favourite archive tool to open the downloaded plugin (winrar might work, i'm a linux user so the build-in archive manager did the trick)
4. inside the archive, open the following file: install.rdf
5. add the following below the Firefox target:
<em:targetApplication>
<!-- Fennec -->
<Description>
<em:id>{a23983c0-fd0e-11dc-95ff-0800200c9a66}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>4.0b1</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>4.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>
6. upload the thing to a webpage and build an install trigger for it (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Installing_Extensions_and_Themes_From_Web_Pages)
7. visit the website with your android device using firefox mobile
(for those of you who want to skip these first steps, this is my page with the install triger on it: http://www.vcsvu.nl/hans/index6.html )
8. click the link to install, restart your firefox mobile
9. open your firefox mobile, and visit: chrome://zotero/content/tab.xul
Tadaa, zotero on your android device :-) all we have to do now is get it functional :-)
10. to get to the settings page, visit: chrome://zotero/content/preferences/preferences.xul
Please post screenshots, video-- this is news!
problems:
menu's work, but not all items in them can be opened, like the settings page
settings page is accessable, but not in the proper way. you also can't switch tabs, so most settings can't yet be reached
if i manage to get more things working, i'll post it
Do not seem to be able to zoom ... but then again, why would I need Zotero on my phone?
chrome://zotero/content/preferences/preferences.xul#cite
I guess if we can replace the #cite for the proper tag (#sync doesn't work). Anyone know which one can be the word?
chrome://zotero/content/standalone.xul
and it allows to add any entry manually. Still I cannot load my library :( Preferences goes directly to the first tab. I need the second to sync!! I tried to import the library but it brings only the folder; inside it's empty.
You should be able to add a similar clause for #sync or other preference panes and rebuild the XPI. Perhaps hansvschoot would be interested in tweaking the XPI up for download?
However, I'm noticing that some of the pull-down menus are not showing up with the normal options. It seems like there might be more missing pieces than just sync...
http://bit.ly/e3I2gy
I can't really contribute much until I get a Firefox-running phone to work with, but it looks like we might be able to get Zotero running natively on these phones.
chrome://zotero/content/standalone.xul
and post what you got. I'm using the emulator, so I 'don't know how does it work in the real world.
Here is the screen print, yet, it's in the emulator:
http://tinyurl.com/3hruatm
I'm trying to get this working on an Asus Transformer (Android 3.0 - Honeycomb). Not much success so far.
I have firefox installed. And I can use the modified zotero plugin install hook (from above). But the rest isn't working very well:
1) I can bring up the first page of preferences, but trying to save any settings causes FF to crash (No message).
2) I can go to the 'standalone' zotero screen, but after drawing the UI, it immediately crashes (with generic 'There's a problem' message).
Any thoughts?
I installed zotero on an Archos 101 (android 2.2.1) using the indications in the first post of this thread (thanks hansvschoot !). I used the latest available zotero to date (zotero-2.1.8.xpi) which I edited.
Yet it is not working. I am experiencing the same problems described by several users above.
1) I am able to access zotero with chrome://zotero/content/tab.xul, but menus are not responding (some scroll down but don't react, some don't scroll)
2) I cannot access using chrome://zotero/content/standalone.xul
3) I can access the preferences using
chrome://zotero/content/preferences/preferences.xul (it works with and without the tag #cite)
4) I only have the first page of the preferences, I can select options but when I try to save it, firefox crashes (as described by john.p.enright above).
5) I was unable to import any library. Gusv2007, can you please describe how you have imported your library ? Where do you put the folders ? Thanks in advance.
I will keep on trying. Regards and many thanks for all the hints above.
ltdm
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5301/
Does the new version of Firefox Mobile for Android launched recently help solve any of the problems?
http://ianbarlow.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/firefox-for-tablets/
Just last week, I released Zandy, an Android client for Zotero. It's on the Android market, and the source code is available under the AGPL. Notably, it doesn't yet handle notes and attachments, but the other basic browsing and editing functionality is already there.
There is also another Android app that came out last week, Scanner for Zotero, which I haven't tried, but it seems to focus on adding items to your library by bar code / ISBN.
After restarting the tablet and loging again, it worked...
A few first suggestions for improvements : research options and a way to accelarate the browsing in the item lists (with 1600+ items, it is very long otherwise). Good work (in progress)!
The 1.1 release, in a few days, will improve some of the loading issues, and I have plans to improve overall load time and add more browsing capabilities in 1.2, within a couple of weeks.
Tablet-specific support is also in the offing, although it's a little bit longer off. I had been planning on targeting the tablet interface at Android 3.1+, but now I may have to rethink that, as even the new Kindle Fire appears to be using Android 2.x, so the 3.x world is pretty limited. What version are you using?
For more information on the goals for each of the coming versions, see the tracker: https://github.com/ajlyon/zandy/issues/milestones
Hope this works great! I'll keep an eye on it.