Upgrade StorageOvercoming the Limitations of Using Zotero to Store Information about Zotero
I just installed Zotero on FireFox and so far I have been using it for general web browsing not scholarly research. In particular, the first thing I did was use Zotero to store information about Zotero.
I didn't want to have lots of unrelated top-level items in My Library, so I made an item just for the main page of the Zotero website and another for the Developer section.
I selected the main page item, selected the Attachments tab, and then clicked the Add button and chose "Take Snapshot of Current Page" for all the pages I was interested in. I thought this would nicely organize my snapshots by web site.
FEATURE REQUEST: Add a "add snapshot of current page" to current item to right-click popup menu of the web page.
FEATURE REQUEST: Actually I would like to see the most common commands added to the right-click popup menu of the page. Then the Zotero pane wouldn't have to always be displayed.
Unfortunately, later on I discovered a number of drawbacks to this method:
1) You can't easily copy the url of snapshots? You have to actually click on the URL and let FireFox revisit the page to be able to copy the url.
FEATURE REQUEST: You ought to be able to right click the Snapshot and see its properties. One of which would be its copyable URL.
2) You can't add child items to Collections? Why was this design decision made?
I guess you are really supposed to create a new item for every web page you are interested in storing in Zotero. But the problem with that approach is the items are sorted by page title and there doesn't seem to be any way to sort by URL?
FEATURE REQUEST: I'd like to be able to be able to display the middle column by domain and then items from that domain.
I gather that My Library is not designed to organize your items and that you are expected to use Collections instead.
The problem with the current implemention is the number of steps you need to do:
1) Create a new item for the current page (and make sure you have "Automatically take snapshots when creating items from web pages" turned on).
2) Drag the current item to the appropriate category.
FEATURE REQUEST: Add "Create new item in current Category" command to right-click popup menu of the web page.
This use of Zotero is not what it was originally designed for and perhaps I should really be using the ScrapBook FireFox extension. But Zotero has lots of nice features and with these additions would also be useful for general web research.
I didn't want to have lots of unrelated top-level items in My Library, so I made an item just for the main page of the Zotero website and another for the Developer section.
I selected the main page item, selected the Attachments tab, and then clicked the Add button and chose "Take Snapshot of Current Page" for all the pages I was interested in. I thought this would nicely organize my snapshots by web site.
FEATURE REQUEST: Add a "add snapshot of current page" to current item to right-click popup menu of the web page.
FEATURE REQUEST: Actually I would like to see the most common commands added to the right-click popup menu of the page. Then the Zotero pane wouldn't have to always be displayed.
Unfortunately, later on I discovered a number of drawbacks to this method:
1) You can't easily copy the url of snapshots? You have to actually click on the URL and let FireFox revisit the page to be able to copy the url.
FEATURE REQUEST: You ought to be able to right click the Snapshot and see its properties. One of which would be its copyable URL.
2) You can't add child items to Collections? Why was this design decision made?
I guess you are really supposed to create a new item for every web page you are interested in storing in Zotero. But the problem with that approach is the items are sorted by page title and there doesn't seem to be any way to sort by URL?
FEATURE REQUEST: I'd like to be able to be able to display the middle column by domain and then items from that domain.
I gather that My Library is not designed to organize your items and that you are expected to use Collections instead.
The problem with the current implemention is the number of steps you need to do:
1) Create a new item for the current page (and make sure you have "Automatically take snapshots when creating items from web pages" turned on).
2) Drag the current item to the appropriate category.
FEATURE REQUEST: Add "Create new item in current Category" command to right-click popup menu of the web page.
This use of Zotero is not what it was originally designed for and perhaps I should really be using the ScrapBook FireFox extension. But Zotero has lots of nice features and with these additions would also be useful for general web research.
You can select an item and choose 'Attach snapshot of current webpage'.
You can also select a collection and then create a new item to have that item automatically added to that collection.
<- that presupposes that the Zotero pane is open. I was suggesting that you add it to the popup menu for the web page.
When I select a collection, I don't see any way of adding a new item and having it automatically added to that collection. But maybe that is a feature of the 1.5beta?
I'll try that out and see how it compares with using ScrapBook.