Firefox browser extension - prevent icon changing appearance?

philipmgrant
The Zotero Firefox browser extension changes its icon according to the detected type of content on the currently open webpage. For example, a dissertation gives you a "mortar board" icon, a preprint gives you a "page with pencil" icon and so on.

While this is neat, it makes it harder to pick out the Zotero icon on the toolbar straight away and navigate to it. If the icon remained as always the red Z (or some other consistent icon), it would be easier to find it out and go straight to it without hunting around.

Is there any way to disable the changing of icon type? I can't find anything in the preferences of the extension, but maybe it's possible via the advanced config?
  • adamsmith
    No, sorry.
    FWIW, it also provides a significant amount of information beyond just the item type, e.g. if Zotero is recognizing a page at all, if it's recognizing it just as a webpage, if it's finding multiple items on the page etc., I don't think anyone has ever requested disabling this functionality before.
  • dstillman
    (There has been talk of adding a small Z to each icon, though, to make it clearer that it's from Zotero.)
  • philipmgrant
    Fair enough, and thanks for your replies.

    In the end I modified Firefox's userChrome.css to give the Zotero icon a distinctive background colour - that should make it easy to pick out visually.
  • Wibble
    I agree with philipmgrant that the changing icons in to the toolbar extension are distracting.

    If I go to the extensions page within the browser it shows the red Zotero icon. If I go to the New York Times website the icon becomes a newspaper (If I go to a news site, I know where I am and don't need an icon to tell me). If I go to the Zotero forums page it changes to a non-descript blue rectangular icon.

    I'm sorry but I just don't see the point. If I'm collecting research material I really don't want the slowest part of the process to be working out which icon I'm looking for.

    Personally, I'd prefer an option for it to remain constant as the Zotero icon. As for it providing other information, couldn't it grey out if the page wasn't recognised?
    Maybe change colour if it finds multiple items on a page. I understand that some people may like the icons changing as they do now but there has to be more than two people who prefer consistency over pretty.



  • hmijail
    +1. Apart from the initial confusion when looking for the Z, the icon changing made me think that I could use it to select how the page would be saved to Zotero (link vs snapshot, etc).
    (By the way, would be nice to have a way to cancel the saving in the subsequent pane asking for the destination)

    If multiple items are detected, maybe one option would be to indicate that with a number in a badge.

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