Hide Details Panel and Setting Button

Hello,

If there is an obvious answer to this please forgive me, I've been searching thoroughly for the past two days.

Is it possible to toggle the right most pane to hide/show it? Though the details panel is obviously very useful sometimes I need to maximize the space my middle pane has when browsing and organizing my files. It is a little aggravating to not have control over this panel beyond resizing, which itself is very restricted (you can't make it smaller than 1/3 or a 1/4 of the screen).

Also, when hiding the Library panel the settings button disappears! I'd like to still have access to the settings of Zotero without havign to unhide, click the button, and rehide the panel. Is this possible? Is there some hidden shortcut key for accessing the settings that would obviate the need for the button?

Thanks
  • The Info pane cannot currently be hidden.
    Also, when hiding the Library panel the settings button disappears! I'd like to still have access to the settings of Zotero without havign to unhide, click the button, and rehide the panel.
    Well, there's Tools -> Add-ons -> Extension -> Zotero -> Options/Preferences, but that's likely not any quicker than briefly unhiding the pane.

    A shortcut key for the Zotero prefs would probably be a good idea, but what are the functions in the Preferences that you find yourself needing to access frequently enough that this is an issue?
  • edited February 2, 2010
    Since some articles' titles are too long, i would like to see as much as i can of it so i can drag and drop it directly into the the corresponding category. Having the right panel occupying almost 1/3 of the screen is a problem in this case. It would be very nice if i could hide or show this panel like the left panel.
    Thank you.
  • I would also like to see an option to hide the Info panel, especially since it cannot be squeezed much. Maybe this could be integrated by removing the minimal width settings, so we could drag the vertical separator to the right to hide the info panel.
  • edited February 28, 2010
    hi,

    you can hide the details panel by modifying the overlay.xul.

    ======================================
    --- overlay.xul 2010-02-04 19:18:38.000000000 +0800
    +++ overlay.xul 2010-02-28 23:13:10.000000000 +0800
    @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@
    </popup>
    </popupset>

    - <vbox id="zotero-collections-pane" persist="width" flex="1">
    + <vbox id="zotero-collections-pane" persist="width">
    <!-- This extra vbox prevents the toolbar from getting compressed when resizing
    the tag selector to max height -->
    <vbox flex="1">
    @@ -348,7 +348,9 @@
    </deck>
    </vbox>

    - <splitter id="zotero-view-splitter" resizebefore="closest" resizeafter="closest"/>
    + <splitter id="zotero-view-splitter" resizebefore="closest" resizeafter="closest" collapse="after">
    + <grippy/>
    + </splitter>

    <vbox id="zotero-item-pane" persist="width">
    <hbox class="toolbar" align="center" pack="end">
    ======================================
  • zwhuang:
    Thanks! That's a nice, clean fix.
  • edited March 22, 2011
    How can I apply zwhuang's code to the current version (2.1.1)? I found and opened overlay.xul, but I cannot see which part of its content corresponds to the above code.
  • edited March 22, 2011
    Most of overlay.xul was moved to zoteroPane.xul in 2.1. No guarantee that the patch will still work, of course.
  • edited March 22, 2011
    Wow, thanks Dan! I succeeded in hiding it!

    This is the first time I modified Zotero for myself. Below are the steps for newcomers like me:

    1. Find out zotero.jar.
    Described in http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/modifying_zotero_files

    2. Copy it into another place (in my case, Download folder), make a backup, and unzip it.
    Perhaps not needed in every case. However, without this step, my Windows 7 broke into blue screen, perhaps due to the vaccine program.

    3. Find out zoteroPane.xul (in zotero.jar/content/zotero) and open with a text editor.
    In windows, the default program is notepad.exe, which does not show the content well. So I used NotePad++ instead (available at http://notepad-plus-plus.org/).

    4. Referring to zwhuang's code above, replace lines starting with '-' with lines starting with '+' (note that '-' or '+' should not be included in the actual code). The corresponding lines can be found by searching for the 'id's (e.g. zotero-collections-pane, and zotero-view-splitter).

    The context where those lines appear, as well as the content of the lines to replace, has been changed since zwhuang's post. However, this does not seem to make problem in my case.

    Hiding and showing the right pane is one-click now, and it is very convenient to view both the folders and the list while I Aerosnap the Firefox window to the left or right side of the screen.

    I noticed that some of the buttons are not visible when I hide the right pane, but this is not a big deal, since I can make them reappear just by clicking the separator again. I personally hope that this modification become integrated by default in the future version of Zotero!
  • Thanks for both the code and the instructions. Unfortunately, the ends of the lines of code posted by zwhuang seem not to be readable (they are truncated). Could someone please re-post that code?

    Thanks!
  • @bentle: If you select the zwhuang's code from the first to the last line, then copy&paste, you'll get all.
  • Thanks very much! I should have tried that.
  • Works great! For anyone else using this, you should note that the second change is slightly different from what is listed above. So, now, the correct change is:

    - <splitter id="zotero-items-splitter" resizebefore="closest" resizeafter="closest"
    - onmousemove="ZoteroPane_Local.updateToolbarPosition()"
    - oncommand="ZoteroPane_Local.updateToolbarPosition()"/>

    + <splitter id="zotero-items-splitter" resizebefore="closest" resizeafter="closest" collapse="after">
    + <grippy/>
    + </splitter>

    I agree with ohthere that it would be great to have this incorporated into a future version of Zotero. I don't usually want the right hand pane showing except when I am adding new items.

    Thanks.
  • Additional note for a newcomer for a Mac like me: You can substitute the 2. in my comment with below.

    1) launch Terminal
    2) go to the folder where zotero.jar is in with

    cd folderName

    3) extract zotero.jar with

    jar xf zotero.jar
  • p.s. 2

    After editing, you should also rezip it with

    jar cf zotero.jar content locale skin
  • ohthere: The Modifying Zotero Files page gives the recommended commands.
  • edited August 13, 2014
    Deleted because I posted it elsewhere. Sorry!
  • edited November 10, 2014
    [Edit] Just realized this thread is for v2.0 so I've moved my post here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/41971/cant-resize-standalone-horizontally/
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