Available for beta testing: Improved attachment saving

dstillman
edited yesterday at 9:02am
In the latest Zotero beta, along with the latest release versions of the Zotero Connector, we've made major improvements to how PDFs and other files are saved. These changes should greatly improve attachment saving on sites with aggressive anti-bot measures or unusual authentication schemes, for people using certain proxy servers, and for people on networks where the Zotero app has more limited network access than the browser.

Essentially, if you can access a PDF via the browser, the Zotero Connector should now be able to save it to Zotero in nearly every case.

(By sheer coincidence, the site that would have most benefited from this change, ScienceDirect, seems to have just removed their strict anti-bot measures [Update: apparently only for some people — see below]. But these changes will help if they restore those measures in the future. )

These changes also enable file saving to the online library when the app isn't available. File saving should also now be a bit quicker in general.

Finally, we've made some improvements to the save popup, such as showing the title of the new parent item when metadata is found for a directly downloaded PDF.

The new Zotero beta requires the latest Zotero Connector, 5.0.163, so if for some reason you haven't been automatically updated, you'll need to do that. (Firefox users who haven't yet updated will need to accept a new permission via the application menu in the top right.)
  • bwiernik
    Have you also changed behavior with regards to saving both the PDF and a snapshot for the same page?
  • warguelles
    @dstillman Thank you so much.

    Just one detail: Regardless of the website from which you try to add an item (Journal Article), it is always saving the snapshot of the page, even if you have it unchecked in the settings. Could that be corrected, please?

    And yes, it continues to work correctly the PDF download from ScienceDirect. Fingers crossed, ha, ha, ha!
  • RamonMi
    The new beta works perfectly for downloading the PDF from ScienceDirect, though it is still ineffective in 7.0.15 for me.

    One more thing, for the browser with an IDM add-on installed, when the Zotero Connector saves the PDF to Zotero, it also triggers IDM download, just like when I manually clicked the View PDF button. Is there a better way than disabling this IDM add-on.

    Thanks for the awesome feature, it saves me from the dilemma of downloading PDFs from ScienceDirect and manually importing them into Zotero Items.
  • dstillman
    edited yesterday at 9:21am
    Regardless of the website from which you try to add an item (Journal Article), it is always saving the snapshot of the page, even if you have it unchecked in the settings. Could that be corrected, please?
    Sorry, fixed now in Zotero Connector 5.0.164 for Firefox and Safari (the latter with a beta app update) and within a day for Chrome and Edge.
    The new beta works perfectly for downloading the PDF from ScienceDirect, though it is still ineffective in 7.0.15 for me.
    Oh, interesting. So ScienceDirect may have just become more selective with the CAPTCHA (e.g., for some geographic regions). The changes should definitely help, then.
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