Zotero window layout

wednesdaysouth
Hi all,

I can't see anything in the forums about this, so thought I would mention it. My Zotero window has started screwing up its layout recently (I couldn't say exactly when). It's a bit hard to describe, but from time to time, one or other of the columns seems to think that it has more screen area than it actually has, and it draws itself off the bottom of the Firefox window. This means that the bottom part of the column isn't visible or accessible. If there is a scroll bar, it also extends off the bottom of the window, meaning I can't scroll down all the way. To resolve the situation, I do a combination of resizing windows and/or restarting Firefox, which does the trick sooner or later.

I'm running Firefox 3.5.1 with Zotero 2.0rc5, and quite a few other extensions. I haven't tried disabling them yet, because its an intermittent thing and I rely on them all in their own special ways. I also haven't noticed anything obvious in the errors log. So is this a know problem, or are others seeing the same thing, or does anyone have any advice for me?

Thanks,
Jem
  • ajlyon
    I know that you don't want to have to go this route, but this really sounds like an incompatible extension. If you haven't already, check the list of incompatible extensions, but you're probably best-off disabling all extensions, seeing if Zotero works properly, then re-enabling them one at a time as you need them and seeing if they break Zotero.
  • anders_royce
    I have noticed this as well, except that it is constant, not intermittent. I just figured it was a screen resolution issue on my netbook. I did try disabling the addons that seemed like they might be responsible, but I guess I will try will all of them disabled next.
  • dstillman
    Be sure as well that you're using the default theme. You can also try deleting localstore.rdf in your Firefox profile directory, which contains window settings.
  • fbennett
    edited February 18, 2010
    It noticed this on my notebook. It's quirky, but I think the following steps will reproduce the symptoms I've seen.

    (1) Open the Zotero panel.
    (2) Grab the right edge of the leftmost panel (the collection tree), and drag it all the way to the left until it disappears.
    (3) Grab the right edge of the middle (now leftmost visible) panel, and drag it to the left as far as it will go.
    (4) Now grab the left edge of the overall Zotero pane, and pull it to the right until the collection tree reappears. Dragging the right edge of the collection tree panel back and forth should cause the icons in the upper right of the overall Zotero pane to slide off the screen to the right, and back again, as the leftmost panel is resized back and forth.

    The slide-off-screen behavior actually happens when you pull the cursor a bit to the left of the panel's limit. Instead of the panel resizing to the left, the icons slide off to the right.

    It looks like there's a compensatory adjustment in overall panel measurement that's looking at the cursor position instead of the actual measurement of the panels.

    (EDIT: oops, different issue)
  • ajlyon
    fbennett: That's certainly an odd display issue, but the original poster wrote about columns extending off the bottom of the screen. I can't seem to reproduce that kind of issue, although I also see the behavior you describe with the right edge of the window.
  • wednesdaysouth
    Hi again,
    Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not running any of the incompatible extensions (which doesn't mean much I suppose), and I can confirm the behaviour fbennett reported, but that is different to what I have seen.

    I have removed my localstore.rdf (with firefox closed) and will report back any developments.
  • wednesdaysouth
    Ahh, I think I have worked out what is going on. The machine this is occurring on is a tablet notebook (running Debian unstable) that has an external monitor attached (at times). I haven't been undocking it for a while now (maybe 6 months) but have started again recently. Undocking, and flipping to tablet mode does XRandR dynamic resizing (reorienting, and re-perspective-ratio-ing) of the display, which does confuse some other apps. I have never noticed a problem with Firefox or Zotero before, but perhaps something with Firefox, or Zotero, has changed which is causing the unpleasantness (or maybe I am just more observant than I used to be). Not sure how to proceed: its not really a major problem for me, and I have no idea how to trace what is going on. Perhaps I just float this out into the ether and say I am happy to help with any troubleshooting...
  • anders_royce
    Be sure as well that you're using the default theme.
    I switched to the default theme, and the problem disappeared. Strangely I also re-enabled my theme of choice (Classic Compact), and the Zotero pane is still fine. I don't know why that is the case, but it works for me since I really didn't want to give up my theme.
  • wednesdaysouth
    For what it's worth, I've been using the default theme all along.
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