Save all tabs?

Thought I would be able to find some sort of discussion about saving all open tabs to zotero at once. Is this possible?
  • I don't believe there is currently a way to do so. But you might try contacting the developer of the Zutilo Add-in. He might be able to add this functionality to the plugin.
  • @Tsau017 This is a good idea so I ran a rough experiment.

    The steps for achieving this are as follows.
    This refers to Chromium Web Browser running in Ubuntu 14.04.
    Zotero standalone.

    (a) Right click on any tab in the browser and select “Bookmark all tabs” .. (Ctrl + Shift + D)

    (b) Save the bookmarks into a folder in browser bookmarks .

    (c) Launch Bookmarks manager .. e.g. use menu or go to
    chrome://bookmarks

    (d) Select the folder containing exported tabs/bookmarks

    (e) Click on “Organise” drop down menu and select ... "Export bookmarks to HTML file"

    e.g. bookmarks_11_8_16.html

    (f) Now import this HTML file into Zotero collection. Use the gears icon and choose "Import".

    The import options are here ..

    https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library
    https://www.zotero.org/support/import_formats

    ...

    Probably a script can be written to simplify this workflow.
  • @dragonfly Thanks for the suggestion, but I was meaning save all tabs as Citation Items with associated pdf's.

    As in, the same functionality you get by clicking the button once, but for all open tabs. Your method saves the webpages (as webpages) rather than saving the Citations (as journal articles or whatever format they are with their associated pdf).

    I find it strange that I can't find any discussions or mentions of this functionality anywhere other than a really old chickenfoot script that someone knocked up to implement this kind of thing in one of the early versions of zotero. Surely its the sort of feature that Zotero would come with out of the box rather than requiring an extra plugin/addon like Zutilo to implement. Obviously the devs are crazy busy with the 5.0 release (and I'm very much looking forward to 'my publications' and 'journal feed' features in that release), but surely its a standard feature?
  • I can't recall anyone else requesting this feature in 10 years. I think quite a lot of people have dozens or hundreds of open tabs at any given time, so I don't see this being a commonly used feature, and I don't think we'd add it to Zotero proper.
  • edited November 10, 2016
    "I think quite a lot of people have dozens or hundreds of open tabs at any given time, so I don't see this being a commonly used feature."

    But that's my point, tabbed browsing is ubiquitous and so efficient. Doesn't everyone use multiple tabs to open publisher pages or open up promising entries from a database? Being able to save 5/10/20 tabs at once into Zotero along with the pdf's seems like a no-brainer to me - huge boost in productivity surely?

    I'm genuinely surprised that people would rather save one source at a time, by clicking a button once, and then moving onto the next one, when they could be saving 5+ with a single click instead.

    Anyway, I couldn't have more respect for you guys and I really appreciate the stuff you do with Zotero, so thanks for making the research process a lot more efficient and organised.
  • edited November 10, 2016
    @Tsau017

    I take your point that you want to batch save pdf's etc.
    Instead of extending features in plugins you can achieve this by using automation scripting which cycles through your browser tabs.

    e.g. when Chromium Web Browser window is in focus you can script keys Ctrl+Tab to select next tab.

    Then put Zotero standalone into focus (if you use the Firefox version Zotero window will be in focus in your browser) and then automate clicking “save to Zotero” into target collection.

    Repeat with next tab. Ctrl+Tab.
    A python script can automate this.



  • But that's my point, tabbed browsing is ubiquitous and so efficient.
    But if people usually have hundreds of tabs open, a feature that saves open tabs would almost never be useful, because there'd be a huge number of unrelated, or you'd have to open a new window first, which I suspect most people never do.
    I'm genuinely surprised that people would rather save one source at a time, by clicking a button once, and then moving onto the next one, when they could be saving 5+ with a single click instead.
    People save multiple search results to Zotero using the folder icon.

    As for @dragonfly's automation idea, I'm not sure how you'd know from a non-browser-based script how many tabs you have open, but if you could figure that out, you could trigger the save button with Cmd-Shift-S/Ctrl-Shift-S, so you could do this with a program like Keyboard Maestro on macOS. At the very least you could set a macro for go-to-next-tab-and-save-to-Zotero.
  • As for @dragonfly's automation idea, I'm not sure how you'd know from a non-browser-based script how many tabs you have open, but if you could figure that out, you could trigger the save button with Cmd-Shift-S/Ctrl-Shift-S, so you could do this with a program like Keyboard Maestro on macOS. At the very least you could set a macro for go-to-next-tab-and-save-to-Zotero.
    For this use cases, which I also have sometimes (e.g. I need a clean Firefox for a presentation but still have some important tabs open): How about the "Create webpage from current page" option in the browser context menu (right-clicking the page background)? Could one do there an option to do the same saving but for all opened tags?
  • need a clean Firefox for a presentation but still have some important tabs open
    Firefox has a "Bookmark All Tabs…" option.

    We're not going to implement this in Zotero, for the reasons I say above — there's almost no demand for it, and it doesn't make much sense to me as a feature.
  • or you'd have to open a new window first, which I suspect most people never do.
    I'm sure people would open a new window dedicated to their zotero research if they knew they could save 50 tabs with a single click, but obviously I'm speculating.
    People save multiple search results to Zotero using the folder icon.
    Yes you can save citations this way, but I almost never find a database that has pdf's linked to results in a way that makes this useful for actually getting pdf's into zotero. Many times the folder doesn't actually show up - for example with Scopus theres not even the option in Zotero for Firefox (currently anyway, I'm sure it used to work?).





  • If there's a site (other than Google Scholar) where saving from search results doesn't save a PDF but saving from the article page does, you should report that (in a new thread). And obviously if the folder icon doesn't show up on a supported site you should report that as well.
  • Will do Dan, and thanks for explaining your position.
  • This ability to download from multiple tabs would be helpful for downloading multiple chapters from OUP academic ebooks, eg:

    https://academic.oup.com/book/26783?searchresult=1

    Is this now possible with Zotero?

  • @s11291! -- that's something we should be able to support (with the existing folder icon, no need for saving all tabs).
    Ticket created here: https://github.com/zotero/translators/issues/2862
  • Chapters from OUP Books will now import properly using the Add to Zotero icon.
  • The system does not yet support all OUP books, eg:

    https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28005

    Can this be resolved?
  • The last mentioned issue with edited-volumes was resolved. Thank you. But the system does not yet support OUP Very Short Introductions, eg:

    https://academic.oup.com/book/35482?searchresult=1

    Can this be resolved?
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