Upgrade StorageKeyboard navigation
One of the biggest things that keeps me from moving to using Zotero more extensively is that I find the navigation within the Zotero pane still be kind of clumsy. There seem to be a number of things that you can only accomplish by using the mouse. I'm not so much concerned with the functions that have dedicated shortcuts in the preferences, but rather moving the focus from pane to pane.
Tab works mostly as expected, but it is as far as I can tell unable to reach the pane on the right. What I want to be able to do is select an entry in the middle pane, then get the focus off to the right so that I can move between the Info, Notes, Tags, Related panels, and then down into the, e.g., note list to select or add a note.
At the moment, tab from the middle pane takes me back up to the address bar, rather then off to the right pane. And once I'm editing a note, I can't seem to get out of it in any way other than clicking the mouse (well, actually, I guess I can hit Cmd-Shift-Z twice to close the Zotero pane and reopen it. That will complete the edit, but it also seems like overkill somehow).
It would be very useful to be able to at least navigate everywhere with the keyboard. I don't mind if there is no specific keyboard shortcut to add a note, etc., though I know some of those exist already. Just the ability to navigate with the keyboard to get TO the function, hit the buttons, select from the lists, maybe jump to the "Related" and "Tags" fields of an entry, open an attached PDF, all without needing to mess around with the mouse.
I really like all the stuff Zotero can do, but I keep not quite moving in because I don't like having to click around everywhere. Having actually typed that "out loud," it sounds like kind of trivial complaint, but it nevertheless has in fact been the thing that keeps making me decide to come back and look at Zotero again later. I don't know how difficult it is to improve the keyboard navigation, particularly with respect to moving focus into and around in the rightmost pane, but I know that would make a huge difference to me at least.
The other thing is that: some of this stuff might exist already, perhaps I just don't know how to do it. I've seen a couple of references to hitting the + key to expand everything, and it works. But is there anything else like that? This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere except in a list of "tips & tricks," at least nowhere that I have yet to find.
Thanks..!
Tab works mostly as expected, but it is as far as I can tell unable to reach the pane on the right. What I want to be able to do is select an entry in the middle pane, then get the focus off to the right so that I can move between the Info, Notes, Tags, Related panels, and then down into the, e.g., note list to select or add a note.
At the moment, tab from the middle pane takes me back up to the address bar, rather then off to the right pane. And once I'm editing a note, I can't seem to get out of it in any way other than clicking the mouse (well, actually, I guess I can hit Cmd-Shift-Z twice to close the Zotero pane and reopen it. That will complete the edit, but it also seems like overkill somehow).
It would be very useful to be able to at least navigate everywhere with the keyboard. I don't mind if there is no specific keyboard shortcut to add a note, etc., though I know some of those exist already. Just the ability to navigate with the keyboard to get TO the function, hit the buttons, select from the lists, maybe jump to the "Related" and "Tags" fields of an entry, open an attached PDF, all without needing to mess around with the mouse.
I really like all the stuff Zotero can do, but I keep not quite moving in because I don't like having to click around everywhere. Having actually typed that "out loud," it sounds like kind of trivial complaint, but it nevertheless has in fact been the thing that keeps making me decide to come back and look at Zotero again later. I don't know how difficult it is to improve the keyboard navigation, particularly with respect to moving focus into and around in the rightmost pane, but I know that would make a huge difference to me at least.
The other thing is that: some of this stuff might exist already, perhaps I just don't know how to do it. I've seen a couple of references to hitting the + key to expand everything, and it works. But is there anything else like that? This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere except in a list of "tips & tricks," at least nowhere that I have yet to find.
Thanks..!
I am 100% sure that Tab from the middle pane is taking me back up to the address bar. Is there a chance that there's something different about the Mac version?
What I find is that when I click into the right pane on a tab that is not open (not when I click on the one that is already open), I can subsequently use the right and left arrows to move between tabs, as well as Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab, and the up and down arrows.
Actually, also: when I hit Tab in the center pane, taking me up to the address bar, if I then hit Shift-Tab, focus disappears entirely. I don't know where it went, but nothing seems to do anything. A second Shift-Tab takes me back to the center pane.
It is conceivable that something else I've got installed is interfering, too, I suppose. The Firefox plugins I've got running now are 1Password (3.0b81), Firebug (1.4.3), Read it Later (0.9948), Xmarks (3.3.2), and Zotero-to-BibDesk (2.0), if that helps. And a few things watching my keyboard (TextExpander, Quicksilver, Google Quick Search Box).
I'm glad that these things are intended to be possible, at least. I'd love to get it working on my actual installation, of course. Any ideas? Maybe other people with a similar setup to mine might see this and chime in too, either to say it's working for them or not.
Thanks again for your quick and detailed response..
You can and should try disabling your other Firefox extensions (though I have 1Password installed as well, so it's probably not that). If you're using a non-standard theme, you should disable that as well.
Just to be clear that we're talking about the same thing, you're saying that if you click an item in Zotero's middle pane and then hit Tab, focus jumps to the Firefox address bar? With a regular item selected in the middle pane, you should be able to Tab and Shift-Tab back and forth between the quick search box, the item in the middle pane, and the View/View Snapshot button in the right pane (and then, going further, the metadata fields).
I wonder in what way my setup differs. I don't think I can try this now, but I'll see if I can create a new user account tomorrow and try installing Zotero there to see if I see the same behavior. I'll also try it on my desktop machine and see what I find out.
Thanks for the help, I'll report back with the results of my further explorations.
System Preferences -> Keyboard: there is a radio button at the bottom (on Snow Leopard, I think there's an equivalent setting in Keyboard & Mouse on Leopard) that reads "Full Keyboard Access: In windows and dialogs, press Tab to move keyboard focus between [] Text boxes and lists only, [] All controls."
I had it set for Text boxes and lists only, which I assume was the default setting (I don't recall changing this anytime in recent memory). Changing it to "All controls" allowed me to tab over into the right hand pane in Zotero, just as I was intended to be able to.
I suspect that all of my problems with this are now solved. It might be worth a note somewhere in the installation documentation, at some point.
However, once you've selected a note, why doesn't the right arrow shift focus to the right-hand notes pane? Then the up/down arrows should let you read/scroll the note, and the left arrow would return you to the library tree.
It would be excellent if the arrow keys were sufficient to navigate & read, since I could then use my OLPC XO-1 netbook in tablet mode (where only KP_arrow and KP_home,pgup keys available)
thanks!
-evan-