[New Plugin] PDF Preview in Right Sidebar
Hi everyone! I just spent an afternoon developing this new plugin Zotero PDF Preview, which I think is an excellent solution to this discussion. Thanks to Zotero 6 's integrated pdf.js, it is effortless to do a preview.
You can select items in the library view and the PDF preview(first 10 pages) will appear inside the right bar! Fast & easy.
See https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-pdf-preview for download and more information.
I've added some new features to the Zotero PDF Preview. Go to Edit->Preferences->Preview to enable/disable them:
- Preview with annotations/inks. It's disabled by default to speed up the preview.
- Dark mode of the preview
- Number of pages to preview. It's 10 by default to speed up the preview.
You can select items in the library view and the PDF preview(first 10 pages) will appear inside the right bar! Fast & easy.
See https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-pdf-preview for download and more information.
I've added some new features to the Zotero PDF Preview. Go to Edit->Preferences->Preview to enable/disable them:
- Preview with annotations/inks. It's disabled by default to speed up the preview.
- Dark mode of the preview
- Number of pages to preview. It's 10 by default to speed up the preview.
Overview?
Alternatively, maybe I could provide a setting to allow users to define the tab name. For most users 'preview' may be clear enough.
(I think a cover view is an interesting idea, though.)
Can it deal with more than one PDF attachment for a parent item ? It does not seem possible to click on the specific PDF (of two or more) you want to view and have it Previewed. PDF loading into Preview only seems to be triggered by clicking on the parent item. And if you click on the attachment PDF (which instead shows the usual Zotero PDF file pane), clicking back on the parent no longer triggers Preview. You have to click on another (parent) item and then come back to the item you want Previewed.
Thanks! I'll try to figure it out and fix it soon!
@timwr820
You can now set the number of pages to preview in the Edit->Prefs->Preview
@burgarth
The memory usage bug is fixed.
The v0.0.4 allows users to customize the tab name
This is because the auto preview is enabled by default. Go to Edit->Prefs->Preview and uncheck the 'Auto Preview PDF' to disable this behavior.
PS. If you also want previewing in Windows Explorer using Adobe Reader, it can be done too, see https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/enable-pdf-thumbnail-preview-windows-explorer.html
Aah, so that's what that setting means. ;)
But that setting is not really necessary. You can just go with the way Zotero handles all the other tabs. eg if you select the Tags tab on one item, that becomes the default display tag for the next item you select. Your Preview tab already works that way when Auto Preview is OFF (ie it achieves basically the same 'auto' functionality). Maybe there's another use case for Auto Preview ON but I can't think of it.
Thanks. I'll make this setting disabled by default in the next update.
I’ll try. This may cause the preview to be slower though.
Thank you very much for this great add-on as the covers image was one feature I was missing compared to citavi but now this is much more better with more options and control. Having the cover images may seem trivial but it gives better familiarity with the references. Your add-on is much better as it provides preview of first pages with ToC.
Thanks again for all your efforts as well as Zotero's Main team great efforts.
A quick feedback after downloading the plugin today :
- it's super nice! Thank you and congrats for all the work!
- I would upvote the cover suggestion for books when possible
- I would also love to see a preview for html snapshots ; and images (png etc.)
Thanks again
Edit after hsiangyu_wong answered below :
Amazing! I didn't see the advanced config. Thanks!
@alflamingo
Supports python-style slice commands to control the previewed pages. For the first 10 and last 10 pages, please use:
:10,-10:
See the link blow for more information:
https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-pdf-preview/blob/master/README.md#advanced-usage-of-preview-page-index
Thank you for the latest Release 0.2.8 fixing the page index bug.
I have noticed a few issues:
1) The default setting seems to be to fit the width of the PDF file to the width of the Preview pane. However, when you resize the width of the pane, the width of the preview is not adjusted accordingly. I think that it would be good to refresh the preview to adjust to the pane width when it is changed.
2) The preview for a PDF file with 2 pages merged into a wide page crops a fraction of the page instead of fitting the width. Here is an example: "Perturbation Methods in Fluid Mechanics" from https://sites.google.com/site/parabolicpress/home
3) If I collapse the "Item Pane" by drag and drop, and then expand it again by clicking on the arrows bar, I have noticed a range of strange behaviours after expanding. Sometimes I see two horizontal scrolling bars on top of each other. Sometimes the information in the Info pane also moves horizontally when moving the horizontal scroll bar.
Could you please describe why pressing space to preview is a must? Selecting to preview is more convenient than selecting and pressing space to preview.
1) it makes better use of column space, because instead of previewing the pdf in a skinny column you instead see the pdf preview in a larger "whole screen" view that is more readable in size, thus saving column space for normal uses and not forcing the user to resize their right-hand-column into an unnecessarily large column width.
2) it eliminates unnecessary previews of files the user doesn't actually want to preview. As the user clicks/arrow-ups-downs through many papers they usually don't want to preview each one of them. Only sporadically do they want to preview a paper, and with spacebar they can sporadically instigate a preview -- only when needed.
3) it's faster/easier keyboard work to press spacebar than it is to scroll the mouse over to the preview tab and click, then sometimes resize the column to make it readable.