highlight text on webpages before saving to zotero

Hello,

If I am reading webpages and I want to highlight some text, I need to save it first to zotero, then open zotero and the saved webpage, and then highlight the text.

It would be easier if we can directly highlight the texts we want on the website, and save the page when done.

Can that be implemented?

Thanks!!
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  • Highlighting itself in Zotero is no longer supported, and we don't recommend using highlighting or annotations. (Neither have ever synced with the server, for example.)

    I believe it's possible to use a third-party tool to highlight a viewed webpage and save that, with modifications, to Zotero.
  • Hi Dan,

    Why is highlighting/annotations not supported? That's a very essential function in my regard, and the tools provided by Zotero are good but can be improved.

    Why are they are not synced?
    Will the changes done by a third party highlighting tool, synced by zotero?

    Will Zotero still support this functionalit (highlichting/annotations) in the future?


    Thanks for all your answers.
  • They're not supported because, among other things, the way they work prevents them from syncing - there are also some other issues wrt. functionality and stability.
    Zotero uses third party (open source) code for things like that and the current code is mostly deprecated. They'd likely need a better annotation tool that can be readily integrated into Zotero before this is taken up again. Finding and implementing that will determine future support.

    Whether annotations by a third party sync depends on how they are stored - if they are stored as part of the website, yes, they'll sync.
  • Third party highlighting applications
    http://www.labnol.org/software/annotate-and-highlight-web-pages/14001/
    The first one works well with Zotero and has a bookmarklet for firefox
    http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/
  • I have tested several highlighting applications for websites.
    So far I can say that in their functionality every single one of them is virtually identical to zotero's built-in highlighting function.

    They simply modify the website's html code inside the browser to change the background colour of the text.

    I also noticed that in every single case it is possible to sync the highlightings to the zotero server, but you have to create a new snapshot of the page and replace the older snapshot in your library. This works with the built-in highlighting function as well!

    The problem is not the functionality of the highlighting function itself. The problem is simply that zotero does not allow to comfortably save and overwrite website-snapshots in its harddisk database.

    If it did, the highlightings in the html-code would be synchronized like every other document.

    I think this save-function deserves a separate feature request.
  • I have tested several highlighting applications for websites.
    Which applications? (I'm interested)
  • The problem is simply that zotero does not allow to comfortably save and overwrite website-snapshots in its harddisk database.
    Not sure what you mean by that. Snapshots are just files on disk, not in the database. If the highlighting program saves the highlights to the original HTML file and updates its modification time on disk, Zotero will sync the changes.
  • edited October 17, 2012
    Gracile:
    Which applications? (I'm interested)
    Other than the ones mentioned by timtak further up I tried the firefox addons "Wired-Marker" and "Text Marker Go".
    There was a third one, but I don't remember.

    Dan Stillman:
    Not sure what you mean by that. Snapshots are just files on disk, not in the database. If the highlighting program saves the highlights to the original HTML file and updates its modification time on disk, Zotero will sync the changes.
    Sorry if I didn't phrase it clearly.
    The point is, none of the marker softwares save the highlightings into the html file. As far as I can tell all the changes in the code are ONLY in the RAM.
    For zotero to be able to sync the changes, the file needs to be saved first. This never happens unless you make a new snapshot of the highlited snapshop opened in the browser and replace the old one.

    This is entirely possible but a bit too much work, involving too many clicks imho.
  • Soo... no comment? From no one?

    Bottom line is: We need a save-button that overwrites the existing file.
    The concept itself seems simple, how about implementation?
  • I don't know—it would be somewhat strange to have a feature that had no practical use given Zotero's own functionality and that relied on third-party tools to even make sense as a feature. I don't particularly want to integrate a third-party annotation/highlighting tool, but if we do it by resaving the page—rather than saving annotations and highlights directly to the database and adding specific syncing support—then we have a lot of flexibility in choosing a tool and the integration becomes much easier.
  • The function itself isn't particularly unusual. All it does is save the the displayed html file, just like with any other document type. The nature of the changes isn't important either. If I felt like changing the contents of the site via Firebug those changes would be saved too.

    Since Zotero's own highlighting function does nothing else than editing html code in-browser, using external tools won't even be necessary.
  • Would it be possible to add an autosave feature? Each time the user highlights or annotates the snapshot, the html file would be re-saved.
  • It would be great if the highlighting function would be supported again
  • I completely agree. I find annotation tool extremely useful, as highlighting and commenting on papers/documents read is an essential part of the research process. Annotations do save on my local computer somehow, but don't sync. I think modifying html code and resaving snapshot as others pointed out here is a simple/straightforward solution which would need about 8 hours of developer time and would benefit most users.
  • edited December 26, 2012
    Would it be possible to add an autosave feature? Each time the user highlights or annotates the snapshot, the html file would be re-saved.
    This should probably be part of the annotation plugin and not Zotero. If it were part of Zotero it would also introduce more inconsistencies between Firefox and Chrome/Safari. IMO Zotero should take a similar stance on HTML annotation as it does on PDF annotation/viewing. Allow the end-user to decide what he wants to use. Zotero can make recommendations, but since there is minimal (if any) integration between HTML annotation and Zotero (besides, perhaps, pulling out annotated text), pretty much any annotation plugin that saves annotations in the same HTML file, or even folder, should work.

    The way the current integrated annotation plugin works right now is a bit weird. As RaVik points out, the highlighting works by modifying the HTML directly, so saving the HTML file in the same directory and overwriting the old file would be a very simple solution. However, the actual annotations (i.e. the notes you attach) are not saved inside the HTML file, nor are they saved as additional files in that directory. They are saved internally by Zotero as they get inserted, which is why the annotations are persistent but do not sync.

    Anyway, as I said, I think the annotation plugin should not be integrated with Zotero. Annotator plugin looks like a promising open source annotation solution that could be tweaked to fit Zotero's needs. It could be offered as a simple bookmarklet (if it isn't already) after decoupling it from the storage backend. The only issue then becomes saving the pages.

    I'm not sure saving pages automatically is a great idea anyway, since I don't see any "undo" functionality in these plugins. Saving manually should not be a big deal, except that (at least for me) saving a page defaults to my Downloads directory instead of the location where the page was served from (would make sense for a local file, IMO). That's somewhat a big problem, which I'm not sure that it will be solvable, but I'll investigate further.
  • Just to follow up on this (and another recent thread), if we were to offer a save button for snapshots, we'd have to save the updated snapshot to a new temporary directory and then replace the existing one. This is different from PDF annotation tools—since those are made to operate on files directly, we don't need to do anything, whereas browser-based HTML annotation tools operate only on the in-memory document. (Obviously you could edit the HTML externally yourself with a program that edited HTML as a document (Dreamweaver, an HTML-supporting word processor, a text editor, etc.), which would be equivalent to PDF annotations, but any HTML annotation tool that worked within the browser wouldn't work that way.)

    Of course, this would mean that the snapshot would be modified in unknown ways from its original version, but it'd be up to the annotation tool to properly mark its changes and allow them to be reverted together if desired. And if people wanted to run some sort of readability-enhancing tool on the snapshots, that'd be up to them.

    I still do think it'd be a little strange for Zotero to offer saving functionality that relies entirely on the use of third-party software it doesn't provide itself, but I'm willing to drop my objection based on the technical issues here and the lack of good alternatives. Simon, who wrote the existing annotation code, may have further thoughts on this.

    (Also, as I note above, this isn't mutually exclusive. If we add the ability to resave annotations, we could also integrate a third-party tool much more easily, without requiring database or syncing support.)
  • edited May 7, 2013
    As a non-technical user, but one who has been using Zotero religiously for about 3 years, i just want to add my voice to the mix of those calling for some kind of annotation tool for webpages.

    I have used it super-extensively and have tons of saved webpage snapshots.

    I think it could also be helpful to think about the er, philosophical side of this :

    Given the realities of the information age, where more and more info comes at us in the form of webpages (ie, not simply books, PDF articles, etc.), i think there's a huge case to be made for being able to mark up and save "information" from webpages. Zotero has been a way to better digest information, as opposed to always feeling like all past webpages i've visited i've got to re-digest (ie, re-read) each time i return.

    Some ex's of how i've used the annotation tool might be worth noting (and i'd humbly suggest these could be new selling points for Zotero--eg, "Digest the information age w/Zotero by tracking anything you see, download or read on the internet"):

    -As someone who has been involved in analyzing public policy to various degrees, i mark up online articles and save them often (a purpose that extends to the many kinds of online articles i read)

    -When investigating PhD programs previously, i marked up many a detailed set of admissions criteria, professors' specialties, etc.

    -As a part of an NIH-funded grant now, i've marked up health-related webpages to better understand symptoms and other characteristics of the type 1 diabetes disease we're focusing on

    I highly-value Zotero and am considering paying for extended storage, but this may be a deal-breaker for going paid vs. not honestly.

    Thanks for the consideration and all the great work you all do--i do appreciate that Zotero is engaging w/users like this regardless of what happens
  • It there were more/easier web page annotation within Zotero, then I would want more powerful ways of collating and exporting such annotations, pdf annotations, and/to Notes, so that Zotero can be used for for the whole process of research.

    (Zotero 4.0 is super fast. Thank you.)
  • Annotation tool (text marker) was extremly helpfull and the main reason for using Zotero for me. To bad that it is gone away.
  • Hans - no reason to post this multiple times. Devs read all threads.
  • edited July 17, 2013
    I second Hans' point, as the annotation tool was a highly-unique way to remember and note what i've seen online, without having to re-read whole websites the next time i visit them--and was one of the main reasons i used Zotero as well
  • Also, any updates on whether Zotero may bring annotations back? I understand it seems technically challenging, but could someone at Zotero at least respond to my previous comment on May 7th (above)? Basically, how do you all feel about this comment i posted there:

    "Given the realities of the information age, where more and more info comes at us in the form of webpages (ie, not simply books, PDF articles, etc.), i think there's a huge case to be made for being able to mark up and save "information" from webpages. Zotero has been a way to better digest information, as opposed to always feeling like all past webpages i've visited i've got to re-digest (ie, re-read) each time i return."
  • my understanding is that Zotero would definitely like to bring annotations back - they were there in the first place because people thought they were a good idea - but there is currently no one working on it and it won't happen any time soon unless someone else submits a patch, which would of course be very welcome (remember that any 3rd party tool to be included in Zotero needs to come with a GPL3 compatible license).
  • What tool is recommended to annotate before saving to Zotero? It should be possible to save the annotations directly into the HTML to be able to see the annotations offline.
  • Hi, I'd like to add my voice to those asking for this feature to be restored.

    I've created a bug report about it here: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/435

    Cheers.
  • This seems like the best solution i can come up with, though i'm really disappointed i lost so many saved highlighted webpages with Zotero, that seems a bit reckless:

    http://www.scrible.com/#news
  • Zotero didn't delete any annotations. You just cannot add new ones and they have never synced.
  • With regard to annotating PDFs, I hope one day to try and write a MS Word macro that converts PDF-XChange comment files into Zotero RIS files which would allow us Zotero users to import the PDF-Xchange comments and highlights en masse and then drag them to the required item.


    This is the Zotero RIS format.
    TY - BOOK
    N1 - ! This is a note about the whole book
    N1 - 061: This is a note about page 61.
    N1 - 099: This is a note about page 99.
    ER -

    Here below is the PDF Exchange "Summarize Comments" format (To get highlighted text you must turn on Edit>Preferences>Commenting>(Making Comments Options) Copy Selected text (two check boxes).

    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // Summary of Comments on On_Cosmopolitanism_and_forgiveness
    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    Page: 18
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Page: 18
    Author: TT Subject: Highlight Date: 2014/01/30, 15:57:33
    Where have we received the image of cosmopolitanism
    from?


    Page: 31
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Page: 31
    Author: TT Subject: Highlight Date: 2014/01/30, 15:54:37
    Hospitality is culture itself and not simply one
    ethic amongst others. Insofar as it has to do with the ethos, that
    is, the residence, one’s home, the familiar place of dwelling,
  • I don't understand - that's what ZotFile does already.
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