Upgrade Storagepreview pane
From a user-interface standpoint, the one thing I think is missing from Zotero is a pane that would show a preview of each document -- without the need to click "show snapshot." The Mac program I presently use for data management, Eaglefiler, does this, as do most of its competitors (Together, etc.).
I see that this came up once before, but that the request caused some confusion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7143/pdf-preview-window/
Yes, in Zotero the item's contents are just "a click away," but that's a lot of clicking--a seemingly unnecessary extra step. (With a preview pane, of course, you'd still have to click to fully open the document.)
Ideally, one would be able to edit text files in the preview pane, though for pdfs and word files they would be read-only.
I see that this came up once before, but that the request caused some confusion: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7143/pdf-preview-window/
Yes, in Zotero the item's contents are just "a click away," but that's a lot of clicking--a seemingly unnecessary extra step. (With a preview pane, of course, you'd still have to click to fully open the document.)
Ideally, one would be able to edit text files in the preview pane, though for pdfs and word files they would be read-only.
As would be a thumbnail view for the middle pane!
I think there was once a quicklook plugin that let you preview webpages but that has been discontinued and I cannot even find it anymore.
Then of course there is Zoteroquicklook in development, but that is only for Mac.
If you mean
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/7170
then I would not see you mean.
I complete agree that there should be a possibility of browsing book covers. Even more, the book cover should be part of the Zotero pane when browsing your library.
The main reason is that our visual memory is way superior to our ability to recall book titles.
The option of installing the plugin ZoteroQuickLook I find inferior - besides not working in my case (I've posted on that issue elsewhere). That plugin requires maComfort to be installed which will add (yet another) service to Windows, besides limiting certain functionality (e.g. Ctrl+arrow key to jump words will cease to work; maybe it can be disabled maybe not; maybe other things are affected as well, maybe not).
Nice implementations of book browsers are done in Apple iTunes and Calibre (the latter much slower).
I think helping to further improve quick look is the way to go.
For the people who want book covers, I'd recommend thinking about a 3rd party plugin that downloads and attaches jpgs of book covers. I don't see that happening in Zotero itself.
"This is not true".
I admit I got carried away, though it does seem that text and visual materials work well together (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006). Indeed, various researchers have found that as much as 80% of all learning takes place through the eyes with visual memory existing as a crucial aspect of learning (Farrald & Schamer, 1973).
In my case, I guess it boils down to having a library in the order of some 66 GB corresponding to roughly 35,000 files of which I have only a fraction of science related books and articles in my Zotero (957 items indexed). When navigating this amount of data I am happy to make the most of any clue to jolt my memory.
I agree that articles from journals benefit little from having a cover representation.
@adamsmith
"...most Zotero users have a lot of different items, probably most of them papers and articles."
In my case, that would be a little more than half the total number but still way too many to enter into Zotero. For articles I mainly rely on my directory structure and Google Desktop to find what I need.
I wonder if ZoteroQuickLook (and other third-party plugins - largely not developed) will be able to keep up with the Zotero Everywhere initiative (http://www.zotero.org/blog/zoteros-next-big-step/). I for one have moved to Chrome/Chromium for general web access, when I found Firefox to be too sluggish.
I would love to also access my Zotero through portable devices.
Regards!
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Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images. Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication.
Farrald, Robert R. and Schamer, Richard G. 1973, Journal of Learning Disabilities, vol. 6, Educational Press Association of America.
ZoteroQuickLook will support what ever version of Zotero and which ever OS I am using. Currently this is Firefox on Mac OS, but I do use Chrome for general web browsing. If a superior alternative to Zotero on Firefox emerges, I will most likely switch to that.
If Zotero Everywhere turns out to be useful (which I have no doubts about), then ZoteroQuickLook will eventually support it.
That's great (though I may still prefer it built in)! I have to sort out why it will not work on mine. Pls give me a couple of days before I respond to your message in http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/11441/3/new-plugin-zoteroquicklook/#Comment_74322
https://s31.postimg.org/5mb4w8w2j/calibri.jpg
If they can do it, Zotero certainly can. It would be a tremendous time saver to have a preview of the selected document's cover, and it would greatly enhance the look of the user interface.
Please Zotero, incorporate this feature in the next update!
http://www.bayarcheo.com/uploads/1/8/6/1/18615142/zotero-potential-cover-preview-pane.jpg