Right column looks awful

Perhaps borrowing a bit from Mendeley regarding the design of the right column would be appropriate.

It looks pretty bad compared to Mendeley's design: http://postimg.org/image/3nkg6zstv/

Even worst, actually trying to read what's in those fields is nearly impossible. Take the Abstract field, or the authors, or the name of the article; the fields are all trimmed.

This is the only part of Zotero that I wish could be improved. I have no Java coding skills but I could perhaps help with the mockup? Cheers.
  • Frankly, I do not see how Zotero's display is worse. If anything, IMO, it's better.

    I find having labels for each field less confusing. You also have to keep in mind that Zotero, apparently, supports a lot more metadata, so there's a lot more to display.
    Take the Abstract field, or the authors, or the name of the article; the fields are all trimmed.
    The abstract field can be expanded by clicking on the "Abstract" label

    The author is trimmed, but (A) Zotero is displaying the full name there and (B) it's the first name that is trimmed, so you are still seeing more information there than you are in Mendeley. It doesn't help in your case that some of the field labels are very large. They are quite shorter in English. If you can think of how to make these labels shorter and still maintain their meaning, it would save a good amount of screen real estate. We could perhaps wrap some of the labels?

    The name of the article is trimmed in Mendeley but not Zotero, so that's a +1 for Zotero.

    As I said, I personally find the well-structured and aligned display to be more convenient, but I'm sure that's just my personal preference.
  • Also, for abstract, I hope that we can get a preview window implemented some time soon(-ish) https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/238

    Reading abstracts in the side pane is a bit inconvenient.
  • I'm not the biggest fan of Zotero's right hand panel, either, to be honest, my main concern being that it's too packed.

    And it's going to get worse as we add more fields with the 4.2 release, at which point we should really rethink this.

    One options would be two separate tabs: One is a very clean, minimal version, e.g. just the citation and abstract, the other one with all fields.
    Another option would be to allow users to select which fields are shown.

    The other thing I think Mendeley (and Papers, which IMHO is still better in terms of looks) is the priorization of information. I really like the bold title at the top of Paper's right hand panel, see e.g.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Papers.jpg
  • aurimas: I know the 'Abstract' field can be expanded by clicking on it, but it would be better not having to do that.

    I like adamsmith's idea of a minimal version visible by default. Perhaps not in separated tabs but a switch 'Minimal/Full' to toggle between them?

    Bold title at the top would definitely be an improvement. Both Mendeley and Papers (http://eddiesblack.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/22.png) display it like this and it improves readability quite a lot.

    Zotero's right column looks cluttered. It should look clean and display more important information more clearly (a Volume number is hardly as important as a Title for example, yet Zotero displays them in equal terms)

    As soon as I have some time I'll make a mockup to show you what I think the right column should look like.

    Cheers.
  • One options would be two separate tabs: One is a very clean, minimal version, e.g. just the citation and abstract, the other one with all fields.
    I'm not sure we can spare the room for an extra tab. But certain fields could potentially show up top, with other fields below.
    Another option would be to allow users to select which fields are shown.
    We actually planned from the very beginning to offer a way to customize which fields showed up, but it never happened, and I'm not sure it's a great solution. (Most users aren't going to customize fields, but hiding available fields by default doesn't seem like a great idea, so most users just wouldn't benefit at all. Seems better to just find a solution that helps everyone.)

    Alternatively, with the current layout, empty fields could potentially sort at the bottom. They'd then move as you edited them, but it would make reading easier.

    Empty fields could be hidden unless you turned on an edit mode (which I assume it what other software does), but the whole point of Zotero's interface is that it avoids a separate editing mode that you have to turn on and off.

    I have no objection to removing the label for Title and making it bold and larger. (Technically "Title" doesn't always say "Title"—it says, for example, "Subject" for emails—but we can probably live without that distinction.) We actually do this already for attachments, though with the same size font.
  • I have no objection to removing the label for Title and making it bold and larger. (Technically "Title" doesn't always say "Title"—it says, for example, "Subject" for emails—but we can probably live without that distinction.) We actually do this already for attachments, though with the same size font.
    great - I think that'd be a big improvement already.
    One options would be two separate tabs: One is a very clean, minimal version, e.g. just the citation and abstract, the other one with all fields.


    I'm not sure we can spare the room for an extra tab. But certain fields could potentially show up top, with other fields below.
    hmm, too bad - it's netbook-type screens you're worried about here? Even in the narrowest setting allowed I have easily space for one, maybe two more tabs.

    I'm not sure I agree about not having a separate edit mode - it could also be done in a way that the toggle stays as last set by users - i.e. if e.g. aurimas always wants the edit mode visible that's no problem.
    I really like the idea of just displaying citation&abstract or so. People have asked for a citation preview quite a bit and that would help with that, too.

    Another idea (I'm brainstorming here, so feel free to toss stuff out) might be to list the authors as one single semicolon separate text block and only switch to edit mode when you click on them - in a way that'd be similar to the abstract behavior - and you already have to click on authors to edit them. Authors take up a fair amount of the space, so if we could reduce that it'd be great.

    Finally, I'm liking the idea of sorting better. Pushing all empty fields to the bottom seems like a good start.
  • edited April 17, 2013
    Hidden empty fields and listing authors separated by semi-colon are both ideas I was about to share so I've implemented them in my mockup: http://postimg.org/image/7w9nl91hr/

    Some fields can be misaligned (specially vertically) since I drafted it in in Kolourpaint in about 10 min but the general idea of what I'm talking about is there.

    Please tell me what you think. Cheers.
  • I like this, yes - I think it's both more aesthetically pleasing and quicker to view.

    (Sidenote - there is somewhere in the depth of the issue tracker a mock-up by Gracile on distinguishing between chapter and book information for chapters/conference papers. Someone remember where this is - would be useful to add while we're at it).
  • edited April 17, 2013
    I played around a little more with Gabriel's mockup:

    http://i.imgur.com/ltPSJlP.png
    (my version on the left)

    I find the current Info tab visually rather unappealing. My mockup adds a summary tab. This gives us the freedom to omit labels and certain fields (e.g. stuff like "Date Accessed"). This frees up room to display things like item statistics, such as the number of notes, attachments, tags (which can be shown themselves), etc.
  • Also, if the idea is considered to separate the Info tab into two categories, used and empty fields, it might make more sense to assign each field to one or the other category on a library-wide basis, instead of a per-item basis.

    I never use fields like "Series", "Series Text", and "Series Title", and I wouldn't miss them if they would appear below all the other fields. If, on the other hand, some of my items miss a publication date, I rather not have to look in two places for the field.
  • I like Rintze's mockup, specially the 'stats' part at the end.

    With the addition of an extra 'Summary' tab like the one proposed by Rintze I'd say that no re-factoring of the 'Info' tab would even be necessary.
  • @Dan,
    I'm not sure we can spare the room for an extra tab.
    Is the solution proposed here out of the question? I can see how this may be a bit inconvenient, but it simplifies things in terms of translations and adding additional tabs. Furthermore, if users wish to see all tabs, they can expand the right pane to fit all of them.
  • This looks great for viewing existing records. I'm concerned about what would be involved in editing incomplete imported records (such as adding the issue number in Gabriel_p's or Rintze's examples). How would this be implemented for records that are totally hand entered or that are completed through copy-paste?
  • It's actually different for Rintze's and Gabriel's example:
    In Rintze's example, you wouldn't just switch to the "Info" tab that looks just like it does now.
    In Gabriel's example the issue number would be under "empty fields" at the bottom. I'd imagine empty fields would be sorted by relevance, so issue would be pretty high up.
  • A redesign along these lines would be awesome!! There is just too much information that a lot of people never use. It would also be great if I could assign tags right from the summary/info tab and possibly click "add note" (which changes to the note tab and starts a new note).
  • (Greg - you know you can add a note using right-click --> add note on an item and that you can assign six colored tags that you can add to one or multiple selected items simply by pressing a numbers key?)
  • So what is the next step? Should I or one of us open a ticket in Github? Or should we discuss it here until a consensus is reached regarding the re-design?
  • (Also the right column/panel should be fully retractable like the tags panel at the bottom left. Right now one can only reduce its width up to a certain point and then no more)
  • We need more of a consensus - and in particular we need to know what Dan will accept as a patch and what he won't - before a github ticket makes sense.
  • Got it.

    Here's Rintze's 'Summary' tab with some more contrast which I also think wouldn't hurt. Cheers.

    http://postimg.org/image/dfgbl6b99/
  • I came here looking for a way to know if I've added a "related" citation to an item without having to click the related button. I believe the summary tab as mocked up above, with it's statistics about the item at the bottom, might help solve this problem, but it wouldn't be as useful as being able to look at an item and see at a glance which features have been used. There might already be a way to do this that I'm not aware of.

    You might say that there's already a solution to my particular issue: click the related tab and see if there's anything there or not. But the problem is I rarely use this feature, so I usually don't think to click there and look. And because I rarely use it, I use it even less even when it might be useful, because I think to myself, "what's the use of adding a related item -- I'll never remember I did so, and since I rarely use it, I won't think to check by clicking the related tab."

    If you've followed me this far, I have a few interface ideas that could be useful:
    1) color the tab differently if there is at least one item in it
    2) Put a little subscript number in the tab indicating how many (tags, related items, etc.) are enclosed, but only if the number was >0.
    3) Use the middle pane rather than the right pane, e.g. add an optional column in the middle pane that would list how many notes, tags, and related items there were for any given item.
  • edited April 27, 2013
    https://github.com/zotero/zotero/pull/175

    We never settled on what this should look like. http://imgur.com/379zW http://imgur.com/TqqFg http://imgur.com/UFMmP http://imgur.com/M0lIe http://imgur.com/a/JImHw were all proposed

    For any further comments on this, start a new thread. For non-technical discussion, please don't post to github

    Edit: nvm the previous edit
  • Hello,
    I still like the ideas I put forward above about giving us an indication in the right pane how many notes, tags, and related links there are for an item (so that we'll know if it's necessary/useful to see what we recorded there).
    In the meantime, I just thought of a workaround I wish I had thought of earlier. If I add a related item, I'll also add a tag, saying "related." If I add a note, I'll add a tag, saying, "noted." If it's an item I tweeted about, I'll add a tag saying, "tweeted" (and "noted" because I copy the tweet into a note).
  • Hi,
    has there been progress on the issue?
    We are (in a corporate setting) looking for a way to have a cleaner right-hand-side.
    - Hiding most fields would work for us.
    - Allowing company-specific entry-types with all field being mandatory would be another.
    Thanks
    Philipp
  • Sadly no Phillipp, Zotero looks exactly the same as it did when this post was opened almost three years ago :(
  • I think that's at least in part due to the fact that the platform that Zotero will run on in the medium term is unclear. mozilla has basically abandoned XULrunner and announced that they will deprecate the extension framework that Zotero runs on in favor of a different add-on integration, more similar to Chrome. At this point, it's still not clear what that means exactly, but there's a very good chance that Zotero will be ported to a different platform, and in that case engaging in the (very tedious in XUL) redesign of GUI elements is a waste of time.

    Custom item types are on the medium-term agenda, btw.
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