But what if you add another shortcut which would expand notes only? As in the expanded view the beginning of every note is shown, you already know what it's about. And if you click onto it - you immediately see the full note text in the right pane.

That would be a good solution for me, and it still leaves the room for additional features in the right hand pane. I think this would in fact be better for me than bringing back the notes tab - as with this suggestion I can scan a (neat) list with just my eyes, without even having to touch the keyboard.

I agree with Mark that this would be confusing, though a similar—yet potentially clearer—alternative would be a filter mechanism.

Very early versions of Zotero displayed search results independent of hierarchy, so matching child notes displayed as top-level items. This was simultaneously alarming and, for some use cases, helpful. One way to restore such functionality in a more explicit, user-controlled manner, as well as to provide a view like what Ben describes, would be a control (plus associated shortcut keys) to filter the type of items (item/note/attachment) that displayed in the middle pane. Turning off items and attachments would cause all notes in the library/collection/search to be displayed without hierarchy. Turning off just attachments would provide the view that Ben describes (but double-clicking on an item would still open the best-available attachment).

@ Ben 58
"But then realized there are also people who attach a lot of tags/keywords to references."

This is why I suggested to display tags separated by commas or semicolons and not by breaks, to have them displayed one after another, not below each other. This would save scarce screen space. In my experience, tags are important for input, not for viewing. Once I wrote down the tags, I do not need to see them again.

This is why I suggested to display tags separated by commas or semicolons and not by breaks, to have them displayed one after another, not below each other.

Or even as a tag cloud?
[He says naively, knowing nothing at all about how easy or difficult it would be to get them to behave in a resizing pane.]

Tags and related items seem quite cognate concepts to me, and if we need to drop a tab for space amalgamating them seems to make sense. They're both about the item's place in a network of ideas. Links to related could be put beneath a tag cloud in the right pane.

Sorry, silly suggestion.

I suppose in theory you could size the tags on the current item according to the number of items in the current collection or sub-collection it belongs to, but it probably doesn't make much sense. I was just trying to think of ways to reduce the amount of space numerous tags could take up in the pane, to allow the possibility of combining 'tags' and 'related'. Migugg's suggestion of just separating them with commas is much simpler.

Your notes don't have a date, but they do have a 'date added' (which is their creation date).

Are you referring to the column in the middle pane? It is for references that do have dates.

rvd, on the status of Notes, there is this thread, which I think raises the same issue and a possible solution. I wonder what the devs think about making (standalone) notes more like grown-up references.

As for the plus in the middle pane helping, it seems to only help if you actually mentally class items by how many attachments/notes they have as the plus sign moves the list from alphabetical by title or author to listing by number of attachments/notes, and I don't know about others, but I certainly don't find things by how many notes/attachments they have.

pswak - for what you want, toggling to fullscreen and then expanding all items by pressing the plus key on your keyboard (as noksagt suggests) would actually seem like a quicker way of achieving what you want.

Also the tabs allowed me to easily maneuver when adding new items to collection by just moving down the tabs, now I have to click between multiple panes with no obvious path and no obvious marker showing what has and has been done when I get interrupted by life, which makes data entry harder and data harder to use and track.

This I don't understand - what is the workflow you used to have and don't have anymore?
Maybe there is another way of doing this?

As for redundancy - redundancy in computer programs has nothing to do with redundancy in learning - they refer to entirely different issues. I do believe that some degree of redundancy in computer programs (i.e. several ways of doing the same thing) is a good idea - and Zotero does provide this (cf. for example all the different ways to get a pdf into Zotero). But there is also a trade-off in keeping all the different ways in which the same thing can be done working in a program and having a smoothly running, non-cluttered software and interface. So I think the idea that redundancy is something that should be kept within limits (especially where it takes up lot of resources - space in this case) is very reasonable.

Great thanks to the developers of zotero. I really appreciate your work. And it is great to see that user-imput is also appreciated. The disappearance of the Notes tab really bothered my work, as it did to others. So I'm happy to hear that this will be changed back again.

Keep the good work going!

Greetings!

(in my case actually, i also found the attachement tab usefull, to see at a glance which and what kind of items were attached. but as nobody else seems to care about that, you should probably keep it the way it is now)

Just want to add my thanks as well, and particularly for the continuously positive and constructive way you take and respond to user comments. It's appreciated.

I would also like to thank everyone who commented and especially to the developers that were so involved in the conversation. This is precisely why these open access kinds of programs and add-ons will ultimately win over proprietary software.

Cheers!

brillant! another 200 points on your score for answering quickly to user demands!