Clicking outside field to end editing is very particular

It seems that the only way to get out of editing mode with the mouse still in the Info section is to click immediately to the left of the field, in line with the field area.

Clicking anywhere else in the info pane doesn't work, unless it's in another field, which then goes into edit mode. Seems to me that a click anywhere else should end the editing. Why are all the "dead" areas in the info section "eating" the clicks?

Note that this clicking to the left of the field won't work for the Author, because that area is really a drop-down menu for the field title. And it also won't work for URL, because that area serves as a link.

You can click on the item over in the main list section and that will end the editing.

If you don't want to use the mouse, hitting return will exit edit mode in most fields, but not Abstract, because it can hold returns. Oddly (to me, anyway), Abstract can also hold an enter (fn-return on my MacBook Pro) or else enter is being interpreted as return, which is also odd to me. I'd expect enter (not return) to have ended the editing.

This inability to click somewhere else in the Info section is a bug, no?
  • I'm not sure that I understand your issue. For what it's worth-- Each field has its own edit mode. To get out of a field you can tab. Within a field you can interact two ways. 1) click to highlight/select the text and over-write and 2) click again to insert the cursor and enter text.

    In general, what you enter in a field is automatically and immediately saved when you leave the field. I try to tab out of each field where I have edited or added anything. It seems that for most fields you can simply click to another field and what was entered into the previous field will remain. However, in the past I sometimes didn't tab out of a field but only clicked in a new field and what was changed in the first field was not saved. I think that this happens, for example, if I move from the ISSN field to the abstract field. I don't remember exactly because I long ago trained myself to always tab out of a field to avoid that problem. Maybe that issue was fixed because I can't reproduce it now.
  • Yes, there are ways around this issue, but I still think it's a bug. Anytime you click outside an edit field, focus should leave that field. Instead there seem to be designated places to click to remove focus, at least within the Info pane.

    Running Mavericks, by the way.
  • yeah, I never noticed that, but I do get the same on linux and it does seem odd to me.
  • Zotero has a number of weird editing features that I've always just attributed to the tools used to build it and the fact that it's cross-platform. Still...
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