Library Settings (online) and display

morgain13
I have set 6 fields to display on the Library Settings list and this is fine as long as I am logged in.
But when I log out i.e. look at my Library as a visitor, soryy to say it, but it looks awful. All a visitor can see is Title Creator and Date Modified.

I'm so sorry this sounds rude, but this looks amateurish, not like an academic bibliography at all. More like high school level. If I came across this browsing the web I wouldn't stay to check it out and get involved because it looks so poor.

This is a great shame as Zotero is actually not like that at all. If the default display showed Title, Creator, Date, Publication and Publisher, it would at least indicate that there is a density of data here to stimulate interest.
I don't feel confident about showing this to my Department yet.
Please consider?


Also the general look is a pretty variation on blue, but being all the same colour does not help to display the variety of information. Many scholars are not young with weaker eyes needing contrast. Making the key fields Title, Creator and Date black would sharpen the display a lot. Plus the borders of the Tags also in black.

These don't seem like big changes on the site - a little CSS tweaking only - pretty please?

I'm so enjoying Zotero otherwise - MY view of Zotero is great - but would love to proudly invite my colleagues to view.
  • adamsmith
    Those lists correspond to e.g. the search results that you see when searching an academic library. Just as there, when you click on an item you get the full bibliographic data. I think you should give your readers some credit - they'll be able to figure that out...

    Since people increasingly use small-screen devices to surf the web, 6 columns as default just won't work.
  • morgain13
    Adam I agree that outside the academic world people access using mobile devices. But the academic world is way behind the times on that.

    Certainly here in the UK as a nation we are sophisticated and numerous net users (smaller population yet still 75% of American numbers). But our academics - horrors - stull trying to get alot of them to use a computer at all. Those that do are all too often very basic, and only use a desk pc for email and website visits full stop.

    I suspect you are based in a rather more sophisticated IT environment.
  • adamsmith
    I give workshops on Zotero for academic librarians in the US - I hear over and over again that mobile access is a major concern for their users. More at the graduate student level but certainly also among faculty.
  • morgain13
    edited December 3, 2013
    I guess America is way ahead of us among academics. UK acadmia is very er ... traditional.
    I run online colloqia and I train online teachers. Also in general work I'm constantly amazed at things like having to explain how to do an email attachment!!!!

    No chance of options? The online forums I use for all my communities have a one click viewer option for bigger screen or mobiles - the gap between 17" or larger, and mobile is huge. I know that such options are very popular.

    Could you also consider some css for contrast - title, name of creator in black? outline of tabs in black? Contrast is such a help in scanning a page to find what you wanr.
    I guess this should await more feedback unless you as dev are simply dead against it.

    By the way I like this forum design here - very focused, integrated and sleek.
  • adamsmith
    There is a mobile display and it is single column by default (and only option) - but people on tablets will probably not use that.

    fcheslack would have to say about contrast in the library display - I think all black may look too drastic, but at a minimum a darker blue would probably make sense.
  • morgain13
    Oh I never said all black .. just the text of the Title, and Creator, to make it stand out. All blue makes it hard to see distinctions.

    Then the Tags are so powerful I think they deserve a bit og priority and contrast always works well in 3 items - so a thin 1px black border on Tags - or maybe just bottom edge?
  • stafvos
    Nevertheless, morgain13 has a point... 'Date modified' is no relevant field for those who are looking for scholarly literature about a topic.

    I would like to replace it with 'Year' (of creation) in the default view, so that visitors don't need to change this with every visit.
    (so Title, Creator, Year - or even better Title, Creator, Item Type, Year, as I don't see a way to make a query based on item type in the website view, or am I wrong?)

    Is that possible?

    My organisation wants to provide the users of our website with an online bibliography, so I'm trying to make the website view of our group library more user friendly.
    Thanks!
  • adamsmith
    no, you cannot customize the appearance of your library on zotero.org
  • browne.ucnrs
    I agree with stafvos Apr 9th 2014
    Please replace date modified with Year
    Also please sort by year as default. (descending)

    If there were a way to pass parameters with the URL then users could specify the library settings. A web admin could then use that url to link to their zotero library and the public user that clicks that link would see the library displayed in the way the user hoped to instead of relying on the user to reset the interface with the library settings popup.

    thanks for considering these suggestions.
  • m_durand
    First, I would like to thank the Zotero team for making it possible to set the sorting parameters through the URL.

    However, it doesn't completely solve the problem, because the URL parameters do not seem to affect which columns are displayed :
    When "order/date/sort/desc" is specified in the URL, the entries are correctly sorted as required - which is very nice and useful - but the date column is not displayed while date modified still is.
    This is quite confusing for visitors.

    Is there a solution to have the date column displayed by default ? Through URL settings would be ok for me.

    Many thanks in advance
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