Upgrade StorageClick on highlight to comment no longer functional
I used to really like the feature (in the beta versions of zotero 7) that if I clicked on a new highlight that I made, my text cursor would automatically go to the comment box for that highlight. This made highlighting something and saving some notes SUPER easy. Doesn't work anymore though. Not sure if there's a setting somewhere or if it's broken or if the feature was removed
In Zotero 7 (7.0.8):
1. Open a source. (Mine is a PDF)
2. Select text and wait for a pop up to display colors for highlighting
3. Click on a color so that the text in the PDF highlights in the color selected. (Alternative to Steps 2&3, click the highlight button in the middle of the toolbar and highlight the text directly).
4. The highlight will also now appear as an item in the left panel
5. Start typing on your keyboard
At this point, I would expect the text to stream into the "Add comment" section of the highlight in the left panel. However, what actually occurs is that the text is not captured by Zotero.
After Step 5, if I do what @gzimmickel describes and click on the highlight in the PDF so that the highlight is selected (with a blue dashed line around it), then typing again does not store text in the "Add comment" section of the highlight in the left panel. Likewise, if I select the highlight in the left panel and start typing, the text does not stream into the "Add comment" section unless I specifically click on the "Add comment" box. I would expect that what I type would simply go into the comment box after selection of the highlight in the PDF or the side panel (but not necessarily clicking on "Add comment").
In Zotero 6, I remember that typing after highlighting does store the text in the "Add comment" section of the highlight. I much prefer this and would like Zotero 7 to work similarly.
In the first case:
> 1. Open a source. (Mine is a PDF)
I followed the same steps as in the previous comment and the highlight box in the left panel still does not capture the text.
In the second case:
> After Step 5, if I do what @gzimmickel describes and click on the highlight in the PDF
This again behaves the same way as described above.
Could you please let me know if you are able to reproduce this issue?
1. Click the highlighter icon in the center toolbar
2. Highlight some text in a PDF
3. Then click the highlight
In this case, the cursor does move to the "Add comment" section of the highlight in the left panel. This is the behavior I would expect in the previous two cases.
Could you record a video demonstrating all the issues you mentioned?
In the first case, if my cursor is not already in a note, I would like to be able to add an annotation right away after highlighting as shown.
The second case appears to be solved in 7.0.9 as shown.
In the third case, I would like to be able to append to the comment right away, or at least be able to hit "Enter" to move the cursor to the comment and start appending.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BbmhV92k8sRKLMRDHg9v7MTKhI_j1doK/view?usp=share_link
Thanks for the great video!
Only the second case was a regression. The first and third cases are the same as in Zotero 6.
Only the Note annotation automatically focuses on the comment field right after it's added.
For the first case, clicking on a newly added annotation is convenient enough, and many users may not want the comment field to be focused automatically after highlighting.
In the third case, if the comment field is empty, clicking likely means the user wants to add a comment. But if a comment already exists, placing the cursor at the end might not be what the user intends. They might want to edit a different part of the comment or just change the color without modifying the text.
For the first case, I agree that the behavior is OK for most users. An alternative would be for Zotero select the highlight after highlighting so that pressing "Enter" would move to the comment field, as would happen if a user selects the highlight in the left panel and hits "Enter". I would prefer that to the current functionality.
The comment about annotating is also helpful and I've started to use that feature more now since it behaves the way that is most useful to my workflow.
I started a separate thread for the issue here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/119659/note-annotation-tool-deselects-after-one-click?new=1