Advanced Search nitpick & bugs
Nitpick: the left dropdown menu in the Advanced Search window is rather cluttered. Wouldn't it improve things if the fields (Title, Abstract, Creator, etc.) were separated from other types of searchable metadata (Annotation, Attachment Content, Attachment File Type, Child Note, Collection, Item Type, and Saved Search), with a divider in the dropdown menu between the two categories?
Bug 1: With Zotero Standalone 3.0.3 and Windows XP, selecting "Attachment Content" increases the vertical size of the text box a lot because of the size of the Phrase/Regexp dropdown menu button that appears in the text box on the right. Reducing the size of the button should fix this. For some unclear reason the vertical size also increases with "Date", "Extra", and "Note", although not as much.
Bug 2: When a library doesn't contain any Saved Searches, the box on the right doesn't update properly for "Saved Search". E.g., selecting "Item Type" and then "Saved Search" results in:
"Saved Search" "is" "Artwork"
Obviously the right box should be empty. (even better would be a message like "no saved searches in library")
Bug 1: With Zotero Standalone 3.0.3 and Windows XP, selecting "Attachment Content" increases the vertical size of the text box a lot because of the size of the Phrase/Regexp dropdown menu button that appears in the text box on the right. Reducing the size of the button should fix this. For some unclear reason the vertical size also increases with "Date", "Extra", and "Note", although not as much.
Bug 2: When a library doesn't contain any Saved Searches, the box on the right doesn't update properly for "Saved Search". E.g., selecting "Item Type" and then "Saved Search" results in:
"Saved Search" "is" "Artwork"
Obviously the right box should be empty. (even better would be a message like "no saved searches in library")
E.g., if a user is looking for the field "Genre" (which is missing from the Advanced Search options but can be searched by selecting "Type"), the asterisks would give a hint that some menu options don't just represent a single field.
See also the old thread http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2051/reports-without-the-notes/?Focus=8716#Comment_8716 in which Dan recommends renaming the option and disabling it when the "Collection" property isn't searched. As for the new name, maybe "Include items in subcollections" would be better?
Not sure implementing such a complicated UI is worth the trouble though, although it would allow for more flexibility in advanced searches (e.g., you could make it possible for users to search by "Type", or by any of the Zotero fields mapped to "Type", such as "Letter Type"). My vote is to start with asterisks.
As much as like Zotero, the Advanced search interfaced is the weakest point.
thanks
Jacek
Also: There's no "Journal Title" field in Zotero. The field in the Journal Article item type is "Publication", which is also the base field that shows in the search drop-down (mapped to various other type-specific fields that you can see by hovering over it).
In any case, Rintze's suggestion of a hierarchical menulist would probably be an improvement. That would still increase the length, but it'd make it clear which fields belonged to which base and let you search by either the base or the mapped field: The downside to this is that you probably never actually want to search for "Website Title" without also searching "Blog Title". It wouldn't force you to ever select that, of course, and you could easily find that and then select the parent "Publication" field, but having the individual fields be selectable would make things a bit more complicated.
Alternatively, it could just show those mapped fields in gray below the base field (not counting the creator types, which would be individually selectable). The downside to that is that you wouldn't be able to navigate to a particular mapped field by typing the beginning of its name, but most people don't know you can do that anyway. I think I'm generally in favor of this approach.
I've created an issue for this. If someone wants to work on this, they're quite welcome to.