New Plugin: Night for Zotero

Hi!

Inspired by some other editors that do this (most notably Emacs), I made a plugin which allows you to read pdfs in dark mode! Of course, since just having the pdfs dark would be a bit silly, it also does dark mode for everything else if you're into that.

It's not completely done (small tweaks mostly) and I'd like to develop this plugin a bit further to allow people to define their own themes and share them, but for now it works pretty well!

Check it out and let me know what you think!

https://github.com/ThomasFKJorna/zotero-night/
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  • Excellent!
    I have installed it and it works very well. I had Rosmaninho's theme, with some adaptations of my own, but I find this one better, especially because it works with the PDF reader. Thank you!
  • edited April 27, 2022
    Excellent +1. Rosmaninho's userChrome.css never worked for me for some reason. This does (under Windows 10). A few minor issues already mentioned by others in github Issues.
  • @ThomasJorna should updates be found automatically by Zotero ? I have 0.2.2 installed but I see on github it has been updated to 0.2.5. But in Zotero when when I click on Check For Updates under Tools/Add-ons it says 'No updates found". Same result over several days.
  • edited May 2, 2022
    @ThomasJorna you're not running 'npm/yarn run release' after release. The usual setup for plugins built on my infra is to have the tagged build call 'npm run release' so that an 'npm version [bump]' sets everything off. I don't mind people going their own way of course, but 'npm run release' does more than create a new release, it also creates a pseudo-release called 'release' and places update.rdf there under a stable URL. No update.rdf, no plugin updates. If you want to do your own thang on this :) it's probably easiest to host the update.rdf in the gh-site of the repo. If so, you must update the 'install.rdf' to point to the correct location before zipup runs, and create/update update.rdf of course.

    'npm run release' will also drop test builds on issues BTW if your branches are named 'gh-[issue number]' and you push to that branch.
  • edited May 9, 2022
    Latest update 0.4.8 now detected by Zotero, downloaded, and updated nicely. Thanks @ThomasJorna
  • Super nice!
    I note that some menu doesn't' seem to be "darked", mainly the preferences panes.
    Also, but is a very small detail, maybe I would re-work the moon/sun icon, that made me tick a little : maybe a smaller sun and another moon? But again I can totally live with it. Great job!
  • In windows 10, scrollbars aren't dark. But it is a very nice add-on, thank you.
  • @emilianoeheyns You're right, I was trying to roll my own custom thing for some reason, mostly because I'm really bad at versioning things and for some reason missed the main "zotero-plugin" repo/readme and thought that the only documentation was the "zotero-plugin-generator" repo/readme, so I did not manage to get your implementation working the first time around. After actually RTFM things made much more sense, maybe you could include a link to that in the generator README for clueless people like me.

    Anyway I set it up "properly" now, thank you so much for making the Zotero scaffold! Makes it possible to actually do things, I remember losing my mind a year or two ago trying to set everything up myself hahaha.

  • @ppraet You're right, i've been looking into custom scrollbars as Firefox 60 does not allow styling of the scrollbars, but have not had much success yet.
  • @alflamingo I would totally appreciate different icons! I just put in the funny moon emoji because I couldn't be bothered creating something myself, but am totally open to contributions on that front! :)
  • I like this plugin. One thing I have noticed however is that the dark mode disables the function of selecting an entry and pressing alt on a Mac to see what subfolders it is in. In light mode, the subfolder(s) containing the entry light up; in dark mode, nothing seems to happen. Is this something that could be re-enabled?
  • Nice anyway! I regret I have no skill to make icon. If I found anything I'll share it.
  • I LOVE Zotero-Night! Thank you AGAIN !!
  • @ThomasJorna - thank you for creating such a great plugin. It is fantastic and makes such a difference to usability! Thanks!!!
  • Great work!!
  • Hi, does anyone know if there's a way to keep the interface dark while reading attachments with no filters by default? The adjustments on the "Night Preferences" menu seem to not be working at all
  • does anyone know if there's a way to keep the interface dark while reading attachments with no filters by default?
    I think there is not.
    Because of this and some other bugs, I have disabled this plugin, and went back to Rosmaninho's css file approach.
  • This is a very excellent addon!

    But if you want to use the traditional CSS style and customize your themes, another addon, ZoteroTheme, enables users to modify and apply the CSS easily. You can create different themes and modify the color for each theme, based on Rosmaninho's CSS file.

    It also provides a green-background PDF reader style.

    https://github.com/iShareStuff/ZoteroTheme
  • @ThomasJorna I fork your plugin and use it's framework to buid a new plugin. Now this zotero plugin can set pdf background green.
    https://github.com/q77190858/zotero-pdf-background
  • Thank you so much for saving my eyes.
  • Just to note, this plugin currently messes up text selection in the built-in PDF reader and, as noted above, breaks the collections-containing-an-item feature. We've asked @ThomasJorna to fix.
  • Text selection problem appears fixed in the latest release.
  • Worked for about a week, then stopped working. I tried reinstalling. Any suggestions?
  • @SZ99 are you referring to the text-selection issue in Zotero-night?
  • @ThomasJorna Much appreciated! Donated via PayPal.
  • this is awesome, thanks so much for the plugin!
  • edited January 1, 2023
    Just a few questions:

    1) Since installing this plugin, the general search feature seems to be behaving differently - before, when searching on a keyword, only the actual items containing that keyword would show - but now, I think the entire collection containing that item shows? Is this behavior by design?

    Maybe this item is related to the issue mentioned above about items in a collection not working because now that I uninstalled Zotero night, I think the search feature was working the same way with/without the night addon. It's just that with the night addon, the distinction of which items were direct hits was not pronounced in night mode. So this is still a bug?

    2) Is there a way to default the pdf reader to be dark mode? I tried setting the night preference in my top menu, but that doesn't seem to stick

    3) The search feature within a note seems to show the search text as a very light gray/hard to see against a white search box - is this result by design also?

    Aside from the above overall, this plugin is great - I echo the others' comments!
  • This doesn't do anything for me (Zotero 6.0.19 and Zotero Night 0.4.20).

    I tried to install "zotero-night-0.4.20.xpi" but it did nothing. The installation was completed successfully and I restarted Zotero, but it's still the white theme. In the add-on settings, I tried switching it from "default" to "on" but nothing chnaged.

    I also tried the file "night.xpi" but it too didn't do anything.

    These are the latest files from here: https://github.com/tefkah/zotero-night/releases/tag/v0.4.20

    I installed via Tools > Add-ons > Install file from file. I also tried dragging the .xpi file into the window. In both cases, I get a prompt saying the installation was completed successfully.

    I tried uninstalling Zotero, making sure to manually wipe any residual files inside:

    C:\Users\Name
    C:\Users\Name\AppData\Roaming
    C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local

    I can't think of anything else to try. Is this version of Zotero just incompatible with the add-on?
  • Works fine for me. Zotero 6.0.19, Night 0.4.20. Windows 11. Do you get the 'sun' icon in the top right next to Zotero's green sync icon ? If so, does that switch to dark mode when you click on it ? IME the settings under Tools\Night Preferences have been hit and miss since its early days. So I just use the top taskbar icons in the library and PDF panes. I assume under Tools\Add-ons it shows Night for zotero as enabled ?
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