New save button in Chrome

joosthi
Hi Zotero,

something changed a few weeks back, and I thought it had to do with my move to chrome 64-bit, but the problem also appears on my tablet and that is still in the old version of chrome.
It is not critical but annoying, the zotero button which used to appear inside my address bar in chrome now stands outside it and when it is not a document he only links to the connector, which I have already installed. I will try to include a screenshot (no did not work).

Any suggestions?

Thanks
  • Arterial
    Thank you Zotero I have just wasted an hour trying to resolve this issue. Why can't such dramatic changes to the way Zotero works be notified. What is the point of having a subscription. Get professional...
  • dstillman
    Sorry for the confusion. This was a change in Chrome that we weren't aware of — as of the latest version, Chrome now creates a persistent button for all extensions, instead of allowing extensions like Zotero to create icons that only show on specific pages.

    Note, though, that there's no functionality change here. When Zotero detects data on the page, you can click the button as before to get high-quality data. When Zotero can't identify any data, you simply get a Z icon that doesn't do anything useful. To save a webpage item, you can right-click on the page and choose "Save Page to Zotero" as you could before.

    We'll be updating the extension as soon as possible to allow generic webpage saving (i.e., "Save Page to Zotero") via the button when metadata isn't available, as is the case in recent versions of Zotero for Firefox. So after that change, the new button will do something useful at all times.
  • joosthi
    Great, thanks,

    That does explain it indeed but because the change took place around the same time as my upgrade to Chrome 64-bit it got me baffles for a week or two, untill I used my tablet ;-)

    Joost
  • ragarner
    Very interesting. I had this problem (Chrome 49.0, OSX 10.11.4), and just thought it was one of those periodic things where the connectors do not load. To help others:

    If you have a lot of your extension icons hidden to the right of the search bar, slide the bar over to uncover the Zotero icon.

    I can confirm that it did allow me to save a webpage by clicking (this one), just as the Firefox extension has for awhile now.

    I also find it interesting that the Chrome coding automatically updated that functionality in such a way, but that is neither here nor there.
  • adamsmith
    FYI, Chrome only auto-updated the position of the button. The functionality -- i.e. adding webpages from that button -- was added by Zotero shortly afterwards.
  • kkw2122
    Since the Chrome button switch over, I have had trouble saving to my web library. It now tells me I can't save because it can't connect to Zotero standalone. However, I have never used standalone. I have consistently (and successfully) been using the login web browser version of Zotero. What can I do to get this working again? My master's thesis is due soon!
  • dstillman
    kkw2122: What you're seeing isn't actually a new issue. You're just seeing that message on pages where Zotero doesn't detect metadata — i.e., pages where in the previous version you wouldn't have seen the Zotero address bar icon at all and would've had to right-click on the page and select "Save Page to Zotero" to save. It's not currently possible to save regular webpages directly to the server, and you previously would've gotten the same message if you had tried to save via the right-click menu. The difference is just that Zotero now shows a webpage icon on all pages, so the limitation is more noticeable.

    We should be able to add support for saving webpage item directly to the server (though not the snapshot that you'd get in Standalone), but if you're using Zotero for real work, we strongly recommend using Standalone, for this and all sorts of other reasons.
  • dstillman
    edited March 18, 2016
    (Though I should add, you do have to wait for pages to finish loading before you get the metadata icon. Again, there's no functional difference — previously the address bar icon just wouldn't appear until the page was fully loaded — but since you now see the webpage icon up until that point, it's possible to mistakenly think that a page can only be saved as a generic webpage, which if you're not using Standalone won't currently work but isn't what you want to do anyway.)
  • dstillman
    A blog post is up about the changes to the save button:

    https://www.zotero.org/blog/a-better-save-to-zotero-button-in-chrome/
This discussion has been closed.