Real REAL idiot's guide to bookmarklet for iPad please

hcaelacceber
Not like the IT guy talking to someone who knows a little bit version. But the imagine your grandma has walked in off the street and never used one version.

I am not new to Zotero. I am new to my iPad and now officially lost in what the difference is between standalones, connectors, translators, plug ins, versions and all that malarkey. And I have RTFM/forums but it still doesn't help. I've downloaded a whole heap of stuff but you can't download to an iPad can you cos it just wants to stick it in Dropbox. So I clicked the safari button on the right, and some monkey magic seemed to happen inside the machine. I followed prof hackers guide to creating a zoetrope bookmarklet, and I duly tried to download something on Web of Knowledge and EBSCO.

Nothing happened. Some error message came up. I tried on amazon. A different error message came up. Ok, I can go back and force my low attention span brain to cut and paste if you like but y'all probably know what I'm doing wrong already.

Can you just please walk me through, VERY SLOWLY and in words of one syllable, from pressing the little 'on' button on top of my iPad, right up to checking my lovely new updated collections when I get back to lovely safe Firefox on my pc.
  • hcaelacceber
    Quite like that iPad autocorrects to zoetrope. Zotero, obv.
  • aurimas
    edited October 16, 2013
    I am new to my iPad and now officially lost in what the difference is between standalones, connectors, translators, plug ins, versions and all that malarkey.
    http://www.zotero.org/support/installation
    I followed prof hackers guide to creating a zoetrope bookmarklet,
    Link to guide?
    and I duly tried to download something on Web of Knowledge and EBSCO. Nothing happened. Some error message came up. I tried on amazon. A different error message came up.
    What did the error messages say?
  • hcaelacceber
    Web of Knowledge: no items could be saved because this website is not supported by any zoetrope translator. If zotero standalone is not open, try opening it to increase the range of available sites.

    I have just tried again on EBSCO and managed to make it work.

    The prof hackers guide is essentially the same instruction for creating a bookmarklet as in the zotero guide but here it is anyway... http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-zotero-bookmarklet-for-the-ipad-and-iphone

    I have looked at the guide you linked to above but will try again...

    Thanks.
  • hcaelacceber
    Yep, looked again and still none the wiser, although since I've made some progress I don't know if I need to know.

    See that installation guide says for safari, install the standalone with the connector. When I try to do that, I just get a file that wants to save in my Evernote or Dropbox account on the iPad, with which I do not know what to do. As I said, I am an iPad dummy. As I understood it, I cannot open random programme files on an iPad anyway, so I kinda assumed that this version was for the Mac desktop version ...? Have I done enough then? If it is saving one thing then presumably some widget is in the right place, it is just that I can't connect to web of knowledge for some reason? That seems VERY odd, given it is a major international research database?
  • adamsmith
    If you have this working on EBSCO, you're doing everything right.
    You can indeed not use the safari connector on an ipad, that's regular macs.

    I can't tell you why WoK isn't working, don't have an ipad to test - it works in regular Zotero - might be because they have a special mobile site. What's a URL as you see it for WoK?
  • jamesrmoore
    Trying to use zotero on ipad.....downloaded and changed bookmarklet per zotero instructions, but when i go to save an amazom page via the bookmark...when my web page zotero is open, i get the following:

    Saving Failed…
    No items could be saved because this website is not supported by any Zotero translator. If Zotero Standalone is not open, try opening it to increase the number of supported sites.

    Not sure what to do and i dont understand translators
  • adamsmith
    which amazon page are you trying? Generally, receiving that message means you're doing things right, so try a couple of other pages, e.g. JSTOR, or the NY Times, or the Atlantic or pubmed.
  • MaverickNH
    So do I understand correctly that the Bookmarklet will only function for sites for which there is a translator?

    Where the Bookmarklet fails, my default on iPad IOS7 is to email myself the sites of interest and open on a PC, but that seems a bit primordial.
  • adamsmith
    So do I understand correctly that the Bookmarklet will only function for sites for which there is a translator?
    at this time that's correct, yes. Some version of e-mailing or syncing bookmarks are probably the only way. Maybe combining a bookmarking app like diigo and ifttt with Zotero could be turned into a more elegant workaround than e-mail.
  • liberto
    Dear adamsmith,

    You mention that the bookmarklet should work with "The Atlantic". However, I have tried on numerous ocasions and it is one of the few publications where my bookmarklet does not work.

    By the way, thanks SO MUCH for your fwork and that of your colleagues at Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    The Atlantic was broken more generally. Should be fixed now.
  • liberto
    Dear adamsmith,

    Indeed, The Atlantic works now. BIG, BIG thanks !!!


    Liberto
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