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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

@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.

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).

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?

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.

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.

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).

Sadly no Phillipp, Zotero looks exactly the same as it did when this post was opened almost three years ago :(