Thank you. Yes, there are a few issues:

(1) it is hard for me to search and find the items that I am looking for.
(2) there is no editor panel (as in the old one) so I can know what my citation looks like before posting it
(3) it lists the citations author-date but this is very unintuitive to me and I often can't figure out what piece is what by author-date without the title
(4) I don't knwo what the "cited items" bar means because it gives a lot of citatios that I am not looking for?

it is hard for me to search and find the items that I am looking for

Why is it hard? There's a large search field at the top of the dialog, where the cursor is placed by default. You just type your search. In Library mode (toggle in the bottom right), there's a standard library browser below that mirrors the main Zotero window. Again, Library mode is a direct replacement for the classic dialog.

there is no editor panel (as in the old one) so I can know what my citation looks like before posting it

Why do you need to see what it looks like? It will be formatted based on whatever citation style you've selected in the document. If you need to customize the citation, you do that via the citation popup. The editor in the classic dialog wasn't even representative of what you'd get, since that depends on the context of the document.

it lists the citations author-date but this is very unintuitive to me and I often can't figure out what piece is what by author-date without the title

I'm not sure what "can't figure out what pieces is what" means. They're just the citations you've selected.

I don't knwo what the "cited items" bar means because it gives a lot of citatios that I am not looking for?

They're the items you've already cited in the document.

(It might help to provide screenshots if there are things you don’t understand.)

"Why is it hard? There's a large search field at the top of the dialog, where the cursor is placed by default. You just type your search. In Library mode (toggle in the bottom right), there's a standard library browser below that mirrors the main Zotero window. Again, Library mode is a direct replacement for the classic dialog."

It feels much harder to navigate, also random citations keep popping up below the search bar which is distracting.

"Why do you need to see what it looks like? It will be formatted based on whatever citation style you've selected in the document. If you need to customize the citation, you do that via the citation popup. The editor in the classic dialog wasn't even representative of what you'd get, since that depends on the context of the document."

I use the editor panel _a lot_. Sure, I can customize citations. But now I can't know what the customization results properly until I insert the citation. Since that can be very slow, it can take me several minutes to format a citation.

Also, the "citation popup" is really annoying. It was very easy and intuitive for me to have the page/prefix/suffix/omit author/etc. right there for each citation. The citation popup goes away also very quickly. Now I have to pull up the citation popup on each citation over-and-over again just to make sure I didn't forget anything.

"I'm not sure what "can't figure out what pieces is what" means. They're just the citations you've selected."

I mean, if it's like Alice 2020a, Alice 2020b, Alice 2020c. Is there no way to show the title?

"Re: knowing what an author-date citation is once you've added it in the editor -- you can just click on the citation in the editor and it shows full details at the top:"

I understand that. But these processes are much more work than the classic dialogue. All I'm asking is if there is a way to restore what I'm used to...

"You should not do that — that's just not how you use Zotero, and the classic dialog encouraging its use was one of the biggest problems with the dialog. Manual editing prevents Zotero from updating citations properly as you insert more citations, update metadata, or change citation styles. To customize a citation, you use the citation popup. "

It's been how I've been using Zotero, and I don't see what the problem with using the editor panel is if it works for me.

At any rate, the loss of editor view is probably my biggest hurdle. If I want to do something like: "Dulany, _Considerations_, in Wood, _Pamphlets of the American Revolution_, I:45" or "Landemore, Open Democracy, provides a great example."

Then I can't see how that looks as a citation until after I've added it. Which (if I am using tons of citations, as I often am) can take a very long time to load.

I'm also finding the new citation dialogue box harder to use.

For one, the Library window is huge, and blocks much of the screen. I tend to have the Word document I'm writing open side-by-side with my research documents I'm gathering the citations from, and I've thus far been unable to minimize the Library window to half-screen so I can see the research documents.

Also, I want citations to appear in every footnote ordered by date, oldest-to-newest. In the old dialog box, I was able to add additional sources I found and place them in order. The new dialog box won't let me so this, so far as I've been able to figure out.

@amymcools: I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the window size. Library mode has to be large enough to let you navigate the library. The citation dialog pops up only when you're actually using it, presumably when you know what you're trying to cite and just want to search for it. What's the issue, exactly?

Also note that, if you're saying you keep the main Zotero window side-by-side with Word, the new citation dialog actually helps with that, since it will show both selected items and open documents at the top of the dialog for quick selection. If you have a PDF open in Zotero and click Add/Edit Citation in Word, you can just press Enter/Return twice on the keyboard and add a citation for that document without doing anything else. Making that feature — which was available in the default (red-bar) citation dialog for a while — available to people who prefer citing using a library browser is one of the biggest advantages of the new dialog.

@VilleHamalainen: This is just a misunderstanding. You've been able to edit citations manually in the document for 15+ years — that's the reason the previous default (red-bar) dialog didn't have an editor for all that time. But as I say above, the same reasons against manual modifications apply: they prevent Zotero from being able to update the citations going forward.

It's not clear to me exactly what manual edits you're making. If you provide examples with the unmodified citation and what you're editing it to, someone may be able to provide suggestions on how to do what you're trying to do without breaking citation updates.

"Because, as I said, it breaks core Zotero functionality — it prevents Zotero from updating citations and keeping them correct, which is one of the main points of using a citation manager."

I'm grateful that you made it easier to update citations without breaking Word. That was a serious issue for me. But as you said, it's only "one of the main points" for using Zotero, not the only one. Citation customization is another main reason I liked Zotero relative to other models. I agree with the comment about the patronizing tone. For example:

"Even your examples suggest that you may just be misunderstanding basic usage:

"- The Dulany example should just be a Book Section item on its own. You don't need to modify the citation to get proper output for that."

No, for a few reasons. (1) Book section puts the document in quotes, but the Dulany citation needs to be italicized like a book because it _is_ a book. (Compare with Aristotle's Politics in the Complete Works. I'd be a laughing stock if I cited Aristotle, "Politics," in The Complete Works. And I'd have to manually change "Politics" to Politics every single time.)

(2) The Dulany citation is to the original source

(3) I have multiple original sources that are reprinted in edited volumes, which I cite for convenience. I don't want to have to remove the edited source from the original citation in the bibliography, then re-add the edited source. By giving two citations (Dulany + Wood) instead of just one citation (Dulany as a section of Wood), I have much more flexibility

"- It's not clear what you're trying to do for the Landemore example. What citation style are you using, and how are you trying to include this in your text? It's not clear you need to do anything other than type ", provide a great example" into a footnote."

Because Zotero won't let me end a citation with a comma, so I need to edit the citation. If Zotero added that function (it already lets me end citations with a semicolon or a colon), some (not all) of the foregoing issues would fade away. That way I could just do [Dulany Citation [comma]] in [Wood Citation] (Dulany, Considerations, in Wood, Pamphlets).

"In both cases, you're likely breaking citations for no reason and doing more work than necessary."

It's not really your place to say that I am doing something "for no reason."

"If you're not sure how to format something with the citation popup, provide specific examples of what you're getting with an unmodified citation and the text that you want, and someone can provide guidance on how you'd enter those."

It's less that I can't figure out how to format something -- the prefix and suffix options give me a lot of flexibility. It's that I can't preview the citation before adding it. If I just had a preview window to see what the citation looked like in real time, I'd be much happier (even if I couldn't edit anything in that window). That way, I wouldn't have to keep going back and forth between Word and Zotero for complex citations.

"But the editor was never meant as a preview of the citation — it only existed because, many years ago, if you really needed to edit a citation manually, that was the only way to do it. Fifteen or so years ago, with the introduction of the previous (red-bar) citation dialog, it became possible to edit citations in the document if you really needed to (though it was still strongly discouraged, for the same reasons), and the editor became unnecessary. It's just not something you should need to use if you're using Zotero correctly."

I mainly used it as a preview of the citation. Almost all my manual changes were via the prefix and suffix entries.

Also, I agree entirely with VilleHamalainen. There is simply no way to do what he needs without the old editor view. That's less of a problem for me, but I can see it would be a real problem for othres.

"But what do you need to see? Prefix and suffix add text at the beginning and end of the citation, inside any containing parentheses or brackets. What else is there to know ahead of time?"

I mean, the zotero "preview" and the actual Word outcome are very different...

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5063049/u9varkxdp9bhheqbuuj5.png


https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u5063049/gb7pj8twbtoie8wh8e5i.png

"What? If you need a comma at the end of a citation, you would put it in the suffix field. But I'm not sure why you would ever need that as part of the citation field rather as document text."

If I put it as a suffix, then the outcome is ",." because Zotero adds a period to almost every suffix (barring a few, like semicolons and colons).

In my experience, editing the citations directly in Word creates many logistical and technical headaches. Among other things, it seems to break citation updating -- the exact same thing you're telling us we're supposed to avoid.

"I'll let others comment on the specific citation examples, but generally, if you find that you're regularly editing citations manually rather than customizing them, you should create new threads with those examples to see if there's a better way to do what you're doing without breaking citation updates. I know there are some archival citation patterns that CSL doesn't support, but those are the minority of cases."

I just don't see the alternative, given my citation preferences

"That's just not the case. Again, you have been able to manually edit citations in the document for 15 years. The classic editor has not been necessary for editing citations that entire time. The only reason the classic dialog stuck around for all those years was because some people preferred adding citations via a library browser. That's now available in the new dialog, and so we've removed the classic dialog. "

Yes, but see above about manual in-document editing as causing the problems you're telling us we're supposed to avoid.

"2) If you used the editor solely as a preview of how customizations would look in context, that's a legitimate regression, particularly for multi-item citations. The main bubbles kind of have to be author-date for space reasons, but we could consider adding a contextual read-only preview as a toggleable component at the bottom of the dialog."

Yes, that's pretty much all I'm asking for :)

[And the comma change -- or at least an option not to end citations with a "." in Chicago footnote style.]

Than kyou!