Highlighting problems

Halazoon
I've just started trying Zotero today, and I'm having problems using the highlighter. I've watched the screencast and followed it (I think) exactly, but with no joy. I save a page as a snapshot and then open the snapshot. On the Washington Post's pages I can highlight without any problems, but the changes aren't saved. On the Washington Independent's page it's all very sketchy- sometimes it highlights, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it highlights part of my selection only. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong- as far as I can tell it's pretty simple, and I'm doing what the screencast said to do. Can anyone help?

For reference, here are a couple of the articles I've been trying to highlight:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/22/AR2008062201228_3.html?sid=ST2008062302295&pos=
http://washingtonindependent.com/view/the-militarys2

I should add that I'm using Firefox 3 on OS 10.4.11, with the latest version of Zotero.
  • Tjowens
    I ran into issues on the Washington Indpendent's page that seem to reflect a known issue. See this ticket https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/999

    I could not replicate your problems with saving highlighting. Every few seconds your highlights should save. Does this happen with any other pages?
  • Halazoon
    Thanks- the second part of that ticket does sound familiar, however I don't the first part isn't the same problem as I'm having.
    I'm trying it again on this page, and only certain parts of certain paragraphs will highlight for me:
    http://washingtonindependent.com/view/the-militarys14

    Still having the same problems with the Washington Post as well- I can highlight, but even if I leave it for a while the highlighting doesn't save- it's all gone the next time I open the snapshot.
  • Pileser
    I've been using Zotero for a week or so -- what a joy it is. My problem with highlighting is that I can't do it at all. I can add annotations, move them around, re-size, etc. but when it comes to highlighting -- nothing. I can block the text, but that just disappears on the next click of the mouse. Am I missing something crucial?
  • Halazoon
    "I can block the text, but that just disappears on the next click of the mouse."

    This happens to me sometimes, though sometimes highlighting works as expected.
  • rmoberly
    My highlighter also is inconsistent. It will work at times, but I am not able to get it to work when I take a snapshot of a page from Westlaw (a subscription service that has full text of court opinions). Any thoughts?
  • dawn
    I love Zotero but the highlighting inconsistencies are driving me nuts. So today I upgraded and now it doesn't work at ALL. It's as if the highlighting tool is "dead" - no response whatsoever. Does anyone know where there is troubleshooting information on this?
  • Tjowens
    Could you explain what you mean about highlighting not working at all? Do you see icons? Also, which version are you running. Zotero 1.0.7, released today, included some fixes for issues with annotations.
  • jonocko
    I'm using 1.0.7 and have also had highlighting problems, all of which seem related in some way both to the source of the snapshot and how it was taken. With documents from multiple journals in JStor, the appropriate bar with comment and cursor icons appears when I ask to view the snapshot. Comments can be added, but when I click on the highlighter cursor and try to select text, a ghost view of the entire text appears to be grabbed, and I can move it with the cursor. I thought that this problem was a function of Google Notes and/or Clipmarks but uninstalling them made no difference. Snapshots of the NY Times that I created not with "create new item from current page" (when the NYT wasn't working with Zotero) and of other websites without translators appear to have no problems. Highlighting and comments both work. Same with all references I created from history cooperative. However, with some snapshots, neither comments nor highlighting seem to work, and in these instances, the sites created the most other problems as well in trying to get the sources into Zotero.

    In any case, does anyone have any thoughts on what the problem is and when it might be solved?
  • Tjowens
    To clarify, are you trying to highlight and comment on a PDF? Zotero's highlighting features only work on HTML pages.
  • jonocko
    Tjowens: Thanks for the clarification. I'll keep an out for the source's file format. This point needs to be made clear in the instructions for note taking, viewing snapshots, and highlighting.
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