There's a ticket for this dating back to December 2006, and we've actually planned to implement it since the very beginning of the UI design, but obviously it hasn't happened yet.

We had originally discussed this being configurable via an interface in the preferences, but your implementation suggestions are good ones. I'd want to find a fairly unobtrusive place for a "Display hidden fields" checkbox, though. If we do go the context menu route, the checkbox could probably just be a persistent option in the drop-down.

I don't think we ever came to a conclusion as to whether the field visibility settings should be tied to record types. At the very least, I think you'd want to offer a way to hide or show a field across all item types, since there will be plenty of people who, for example, never want to see a DOI, and they shouldn't have to go through every item type to configure that. So with that in mind, I'm not sure item-type-specific settings are worth the extra UI complexity, especially if it's easy to toggle the display of hidden fields.

BTW, 1.5 will probably also see a major reordering of the fields.

I agree with Mark's comments: Zotero should have differents display. And it makes me thing about the Zotero's display in general wich is not very flexible now. We have one general template (design in 3 columns) to make all the things we can do with Zotero: collecting items from the web or enter our own items, add notes and tags, create library, make relations between items, etc. Personnaly, I feel squeezed in this model to do all I can do with Zotero.
Is it not to much for one template to give a userfriendly display for all these different tasks? Zotero community spend hours to create biblio styles, why not create different template for differents tasks?
For me, the actual display is oriented to collect datas and items from the web, and is quite well to do it, but we can improve it too.... (Remarks that this question about Zotero's display is always about display AFTER we have collect items.).
But, I use Zotero for 3 others very important tasks, for which I'd like to have a display-template adapted to it.

1) "Display to add items by hand":
I work in history and literature and I need to enter hundreds items by myself, wich are very often in any library or database right now and it won't be if I don't do it: manuscript, postcards, photos, illustrations, index of articles or papers in small and rares periodicals, books and publications, etc. With some colleagues, we can spend weeks do to it.
So, I really appreciate to have a display just to do that task, very clear, friendly, where I can:
1) choose only the fields I need to add my new items;
2) duplicate some data (type of items, journal's title, date,) in each new item I add
3) easy access to all tags I already have

2) "Display for add notes and tags"
Suppose I have finish to collect items I need, and I plan to spend days and weeks to read items I collected to add notes and tags. First, I dont need all empty fields to do it. Why not a very simple display with just the minimum fields to identifie the items I annote and tag? As well, I even don't need fields like ISBN, DOI, Repository too. The window to write Notes could be larger, list of tags associated clearly display, etc.

3) "Display for searching and consulting"
Suppose I just want to search items and read some notes associated to it, why not create a display just to do that? In the future Zotero online, I probably make accessible my collections to all public, without the possibly to anybody to add, delete, add notes any kind of notes, etc. This public Zotero will need to have some display adapated to "visitors" interested just to read and consult collections online. We'll need specific display for them.

It's just some ideas and I don't know if they are the good solutions, but I think Zotero should develop different template-display adapted to these tasks. Personaly, I see 4:
- collecting data and items from web
- add items by "hand"
- ads notes and tags and organise it (like in a thesaurus for exemple)
- search and consulting database

Finally, when we are not collecting items from the web, Zotero could open on a general display where we could choose between some tasks or others. On this opening display, we could find some stats about our Zotero's collections, infos about last items add or annoted, and, using tags like "must read" or "done/undone", we can go directly to some specific tasks... If Zotero goes online with the possibly of sharing collections and works in groups, I think we will need a "panel" like this with specific templates for specific users and task.

Thanks,

Luc

Thanks Mark for your comments. Like you, I don't know if is it "realizable within the current framework... or if not, that it will be relatively easy for people to come up with their own extension interfacing with the Zotero database."
As you know, create interface is not just a question of design, graphism or color. It's find new ways to organise knowledge, search, write, share and publish works with a new tool like Zotero. Even the tool is new, I think we still often use it as a traditionnal bibliographic software. Each interface create by a "advenced user " of Zotero could propose a new way to explore all is potential. More the problem of translators and bibliographic styles will be resolved for always (?!), I think more and more these challenge of building new interfaces will become more important.
So... I'll add a essential task to the 4 "tasks-interface" I already proposed: writing papers, essays... Now, the Word's plug-in, for exemple, is quite usefull and easy to use, but is it the ultimate and final "interface" for writing with Zotero? I don't think so.
There is my idea about my ideal interface for writing.
A kind of split window for a) writing my paper with a word processor (OpenOffice probably more friendly than Word for my proposition); 2) list of items content in the bibliography I plan to use it, where I can see all notes, quotations and tags that I add before to prepare my writing. So, I can write and see all my references and "drag and drop" directly in my paper what I need.
How do to it in my ideal open panel of Zotero?
1) Clicking on "Write paper" open the interface and ask "Would you like to ad this paper to Zotero?" Yes, open Zotero and add my name as "default creator", add title and others infos if I know it (publisher, etc.).
2) make "related" between My_new_Paper with all the items I plan to use to write (I'll be always able to add or delete some items if I like). In a future Zotero, we should tag-name "related between items". The tag "Bibliography" will indicate that item_1
is in the bibliography of My_new_Paper, for exemple.

In that way, I can attach My_new_paper with the bibliography before I begin to write it. It's this relation between My_new_paper and all items in the bibliography that I will see in the split window of the "writing interface". After that, there is probably many ways to display and "copy and paste" or "drag and drop" my notes and quotations that I plan to use to write it.
It's just a proposition, but I still think that a part of the future of Zotero is in the development of this kind of interface specific to some tasks. That could be develop in "extension interfacing with the Zotero database", as you said.