Compatibility With Newest Browsers?

davedo2
Has Zotero fallen behind in interfacing with the newer browsers? I've used Zotero for years and never before had so many problems with it and it required removing the Chrome connector to be able to add books to my library without consistently getting the dreaded translator message.

Now, running just the Firefox browser version, I am able to add books from Amazon's pages to my library, but with greatly reduced usability.

Specifically, Library Lookup, a feature that I made great use of in the past, no longer works. It opens WorldCat, but always returns this message: "The page you tried was not found. You may have used an outdated link or may have typed the address (URL) incorrectly."

I am using 64-bit Xubuntu Linux version 13.04, Firefox version 22,
Chrome version 28.0.1.1500.68 and Zotero 4.0.8 and it claims to be "up to date."

Any help in getting the Lookup feature working again would be much appreciated. Thank you...Dave
  • adamsmith
    Zotero works fine with all current browsers, including Firefox 22.x and Chrome 28.x Any issues you have are unrelated to browser versions (there was a period of a couple of hours last week where Zotero had a broken connector for Chrome on Google Play).

    The Chrome & Amazon issue is now fixed. Check the Amazon thread pinned at the top of the forum for details. In general you'll be better of to report issues when they occur rather than uninstall software (that you'd presumably like to use).

    As for the Library Lookup - you're using the standard Worldcat resolver? Can you post a sample URL that you see when you try this?
  • davedo2
    I tried a variety of responses to the strange translator issue & it was only after removing the Chrome connector that I was able to add a book from Amazon to my Zotero library via Firefox.

    As to the Lookup problem, this is what I see on the address bar when I try to do a Lookup for The Drop by Michael Connelly:
    http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/isbn/9780446556699+0446556696. So the function is invoking WorldCat, it simply doesn't seem to be sending it an understandable request.

    I have no clue what the "standard Worldcat resolver" is or how it should be added to the resolver list. For the past several years Lookup "just worked" - I didn't do a thing to enable it beyond installing Zotero...Dave
  • dstillman
    Re: lookup, you can see from looking at the URL what's happening. That item has both a 13-digit and a 10-digit ISBN in its ISBN field. If you edit either the item or the URL to include just one of them it will work. Zotero should be able to just pick one and send that, but I doubt this is new behavior. (It's possible WorldCat was previously parsing out a single ISBN when multiple were passed, but it's more likely you just happened to try an item with two ISBNs.)
  • dstillman
    In other words, these both work:

    http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/isbn/9780446556699
    http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/isbn/0446556696

    Depending on where you downloaded these items from, it's also possible that a recent site translator change caused Zotero to start saving both ISBNs. But in any case, the fix here is for the lookup mechanism to just parse out a single ISBN and send that.
  • davedo2
    Hi Dan,

    You seem to dismiss the central point of my question which is: why has Lookup stopped working on my system? I'm unaware of any changes other than the recent upgrades to both Firefox & Chrome.

    I have used Lookup successfully for several years and never experienced this problem before. The book was added to my Zotero library directly from Amazon today & I chose it simply because I know all of the local libraries hold copies. Amazon is invariably the source from which I add books, so perhaps they've changed something.
    I do see that all of the books currently in the DB show two isbn's.

    I have no idea why Lookup started sending both versions of the isbn to WorldCat, or more to the point, why Amazon is send both versions to the DB - this is a new problem and going through the effort of amending the URL by hand, although it seems to work, is hardly desirable.

    This isn't a problem unique to that book, it now obtains for every book in my Zotero DB (all of which were added via Amazon recently - I made a report from the old DB & moved it off Zotero.)

    In any event, thank you for taking a look at it, but I guess I'm stuck with Zotero lacking what had been for me a very useful feature.
    Perhaps in time it will start to work again...Dave
  • dstillman
    You seem to dismiss the central point of my question which is: why has Lookup stopped working on my system?
    As I said:
    Depending on where you downloaded these items from, it's also possible that a recent site translator change caused Zotero to start saving both ISBNs.
    You're now saying that these are all from Amazon and all added recently, so obviously that's the problem. We recently had to change the way the Amazon translator works due to an unfortunate change on Amazon's end, and it's possible the previous version of the translator didn't save both ISBNs. If you still had your old items, those would all still work.

    Anyway, I explained the fix we'll put in place, which will likely be in Zotero 4.0.9. I wasn't suggesting that you modify the URL each time, just explaining that as a temporary workaround you could edit the ISBN field in Zotero to have just a single ISBN and the lookup would work.
  • davedo2
    Dan,

    I went back to a report that I had saved and only one ISBN number was in the DB for each book so I guess that coupled with the fact that you recently had to make changes to the Amazon translator nails down the problem's source.

    Thanks for your detective work - I look forward to release 4.0.9...Dave
  • DWL-SDCA
    I'm not sure if this is relevant but when I enter an ISBN into the magic wand and the import seems to come from Open WorldCat, I get at least the 10 and 13 ISBNs and often get ISBN pairs for hard and paper versions. This isn't new behavior. For example, earlier today I used the magic wand with the first of the following ISSNs but the downloaded record contained these:

    ISBN 1550411896 9781550411898 1550411985 9781550411980
    Library Catalog Open WorldCat
  • dstillman
    It's relevant to the extent that those probably don't work with the Library Lookup feature either, at least through WorldCat. I don't think many people use Library Lookup, which I'm guessing is why we haven't heard about this before.
  • dstillman
    …by which I mean since it was first mentioned in 2008.
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