more UI customization: zebra striping and item warp txt

KEY1
Zotero provides many options for customization.
They are similar to my old fellowes; Firefox and Thunderbird.

I would like to suggest that adding two UI customization options to Zotero.

1. Zebra striping for panels

2. Word Warp for items

Zebra striping helps to read table easily. It has been also used in older versions of Thunderbird.

For long article titles or for narrow monitors, Word warp can help us to gett infomation from table without adjusting column width.

To see the example screenshots of two UI options above, you can visit Scopus and try to get a search result. Default interface of Mendeley also provides zebra striping and Word wrap for items.

Thanks you for reading.
  • dstillman
    Zotero already uses zebra striping in the middle pane. If you're not seeing it, what OS and versions?

    I'm not sure what part of the UI you're referring to for word wrap. We can't do it in the middle pane (though you can hover over a long field to see the full value in a tooltip). We already wrap fields in the info pane.
  • aurimas
    Zotero already uses zebra striping in the middle pane. If you're not seeing it, what OS and versions?
    I actually didn't know that it intended to do this explicitly. It doesn't work on Windows (XP or 7), though I believe I did notice the striping on either Mac OSX or Ubuntu.
  • dstillman
    Oh, well, we actually rely on the defaults. Windows itself seems not to use it, so Firefox doesn't either, whereas OS X does and Firefox follows.
  • bwiernik
    Is there any chance of forcing Windows to use zebra striping?
  • dstillman
    It would likely be a trivial change code-wise — but it'd be inconsistent with what Windows does itself, which is a consideration.
  • aurimas
    I think this may be a positive deviation from the (Windows) norm though. If done right (i.e. the background should not be too bold) I don't see much downside.
  • bwiernik
    The lack of zebra striping is one of few the Windows user interface decisions I don't prefer over the Mac interface. I think it would be a positive deviation. For comparison, I've come across other programs (iTunes is the one that comes to mind, though that hardly counts) that also institute zebra striping in defiance of Windows norms.
  • KEY1
    In thunderbird, fixing CSS file can recover Zebra striping. I found the tip on web after googlging without much effort.
  • KEY1
    Word wrap items: If a column width is narrower than total length of characters in item (example: Article Title) with one line, remains of title would be displayed as two lines.
  • bwiernik
    KEY1, if you mean in the center pane where you select items, the formatting options made available by Mozilla are very limited. Zotero can't (unless Mozilla makes massive changes) display info on two rows or display any sort of rich text formatting.
  • KEY1
    Thank you for reaction, bwiernik.

    My OS is Windows 7.
    According to others, present zebra striping in Mozila seems to be totally dependent to OS.
    I am upset becaues I love that interface.

    I have to wait until someday.
    Someday Mozilla will be more refined and customizable.
  • aurimas
    edited May 25, 2014
    It's customizable. Zotero _could_ implement this. The only issue is that it would be inconsistent with the rest of the OS. Though, as I said above, I think if it's not too intrusive, this could be ok.

    Edit: I mean all of this for alternating row shading

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