You can collapse the Info pane or pin the Abstract section (double-click the icon or right-click → Pin Section) if you want to see the abstract while switching between items.

It will be possible to reorder item pane sections in a future update.

Ah, I see now. The pin marks the anchor point it scrolls to in the info pane.

Ok, thanks. I think I'll still wait for the update before switching in that case.

When you say item pane header, what are you referring to specifically? I'm not finding any way to customize anything in the item pane.

Got it. That's an interesting feature. I switched it to bibliography for now.

I really liked the ability to see the abstract in between the authors and the rest of the info, though. I believe the original decision to do that was a superior way to display the item info than it is in Z7.

I really hope as dtstillman said "It will be possible to reorder item pane sections in a future update."

I must wholeheartedly concur with @jeapordy: the demotion of the Abstract of a piece of research beneath all of the bibliographic material (and even the "dates added and modified," which are of no bibliographic merit) seems highly counterintuitive to put it mildly. What was the solid case for this decision?

>there have been incredibly few complaints about this by folks

You said the same thing when I pointed out a major issue with search which you ended up fixing.

>tons of positive comments about the info pane design in Z7

To be fair, the vast majority of people are quick to praise before trying anything out. That is the trend with most things. Many people are just happy for an update.

I can guarantee you we are not the only ones as several colleagues have agreed with me on this issue already. They're just not the type to create an account on a forum and write about it.

It seems that the way the Abstract field now expands and contracts is sufficient to avoid most of those complications of its former behavior in Z6 (e.g. the jumping, and finnicky unfolding of it), and that moving it to such an inconspicuous position was not necessary.
(And regardless of where it is positioned, taking away the ability to vary the size of the Abstract field does not seem like an improvement)

Concerning the inspection of metadata, as things stand now, we still cannot inspect the bibliographic metadata and the abstract at the same time. In fact it seems that the Z7 interface has exacerbated the issue of obscuration of these two crucial bodies of information, because, *in the Stacked View,* pinning the Abstract moves the entire info pane beneath the library catalog, thus completely obstructing our line of sight; and vice versa: expanding the info pane completely removes the Abstract from the field of vision; minimizing the library catalog would then allow us to see more of the abstract and metadata, but you'd have to minimize the library so much that you can only see and interact with a fraction of the catalog -- which is how we access all the bibliographic metadata and the abstract in the first place.

And using the item pane header is not a viable solution since, even when set to display the item as "Bibliography Entry" (its max capacity), it only displays a fraction of metadata, and, as it is not a live field, it is displaying that metadata in a fixed, uneditable form.

Admittedly, the issue is not as pronounced in the Standard View, but The Standard View poses its own visual challenges since, by trying to parallelize everything, the information of the library catalog in particular becomes so compressed that the library becomes difficult to see and analyze.

So I wish to humbly plead for at least some way of allowing us to return the abstract to where it was before. @adamsmith I do see your point concerning the majority of user feedback, but @jeapordy is getting at what I think is the more principled point: fixes ought not be based on user feedback, but on their inherent efficiency gains (which as @jeapordy points out, users may not be inclined to point out -- or even be aware of!), and in modern scholarship, a prominently displayed abstract makes for highly efficient analysis (not to mention the fact that, as it was positioned in Z6, the Abstract field was the most compendious way to quickly make an explanatory note about an item (e.g. "Photocopy pg. 45" "Finish reading!" "Not extant" "Missing pages" "at Harvard Widener library") -- much more so than the Notes feature, I would argue, because Notes are items separate from the bibliographic data of an item which have to be attached to the item).

You seem to be misremembering how this worked before.

And regardless of where it is positioned, taking away the ability to vary the size of the Abstract field does not seem like an improvement

This was never possible before. All you could do is expand it completely or collapse it to one line, the same as now.

Concerning the inspection of metadata, as things stand now, we still cannot inspect the bibliographic metadata and the abstract at the same time.

I don't know how you think this worked before, but if the Abstract field was expanded, a long abstract would push all other metadata below the fold. It's the exact same amount of data either way. The main difference is that the default density and font size have changed, but you can adjust those from the View menu as you see fit.

It seems that the way the Abstract field now expands and contracts is sufficient to avoid most of those complications of its former behavior in Z6 (e.g. the jumping, and finnicky unfolding of it), and that moving it to such an inconspicuous position was not necessary.

This is nonsensical. It expands and contracts the way it does now because it's a collapsible section, like all the other sections. Arguing that it should somehow be placed in the middle of the Info pane — which is also a collapsible section — makes no sense.

And using the item pane header is not a viable solution since, even when set to display the item as "Bibliography Entry" (its max capacity), it only displays a fraction of metadata, and, as it is not a live field, it is displaying that metadata in a fixed, uneditable form.

Again, I don't know what you think you're remembering from Z6, but the only fields that were shown above the abstract were item type, title, and creators. Title and creators (and optionally year) can now be shown in the item type header, so once it's possible to reorder sections, you'll be able to place Abstract above the Info pane and see the exact same data (minus item type, which will be directly below the abstract) at the top of the pane. The title can be edited directly in the header in "Title" and "Title, Creator, Year" modes.

I promise you we put a lot of thought into the redesign and have good reasons for the changes. Once you can reorder sections, you'll be able to have an equally prominent abstract as before, with the same fields above it, while others who don't use Zotero exactly as you do will be able to configure it differently. We really don't need to keep talking about this.