Export Zotero Library to HTML for Chrome Import

Joe Naab
Hello,

I've been using Zotero principally for managing bookmarks, not to build a research bibliography. I have hundreds of sites stored in collections and subcollections. I am migrating from Firefox to Google Chrome and can't seem to find a way to export my Zotero library into a form that can be easily imported into Chrome bookmarks (which seems to import only from an HTML format). I was able to do this easily with the Firefox bookmark collection.

Is this at all possible? If not directly, is there a multi-step process that someone can recommend? I can't find anything on this and, of course, I dread having to do this manually. I work on a Mac with Snow Leopard.

Thank you for any help.
  • ajlyon
    No, not really. Zotero is not designed as a bookmark manager in the sense that it would replace the built-in system, and as such it doesn't read or write the HTML-formatted bookmark file format that is the de facto standard for browsers.

    There is a tool that syncs your library with delicious-- perhaps then you could export from Delicious into Chrome.
  • Joe Naab
    Thank you, ajlyon.

    Can you possibly refer me to where I can find that tool?
  • RintzeRintze
    edited January 3, 2011
    http://code.google.com/p/delicious-library-export/

    [edit: whoops, wrong direction]
  • Joe Naab
    Begging your patience, this app seems to convert a delicious library into Zotero rdf format for Zotero import. How can I use this app to go in the other direction?

    I would need to export my Zotero library in one of it's supported export formats, then use a tool to convert it into a format importable by delicious, right?

    Thanks.
  • ajlyon
    No -- that's not it. That link is for Delicious Library integration (a different product). The only thing I can find right now is https://github.com/waynegraham/zoterolicious, which is for Yahoo! Delicious, but I did run into links to a two-way service that was being discussed on Twitter shortly after the Delicious possible closure news broke. Unfortunately, I can't find that link.
  • ajlyon
    I did look into writing an importer for HTML bookmark files, but I was put off by the lack of good documentation. It would be a good idea to write and importer and exporter for this ad hoc format, but no one has really taken up the idea.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited January 3, 2011
    [not awake]
  • ajlyon
    edited January 3, 2011
    No-- it was mentioned by someone else who had actually written it some time ago, but set the project aside and only mentioned it again after the Delicious announcement made it particularly relevant.

    [Rintze: I understand completely. Note my original draft of the item types proposal post, before you rewrote it to actually make sense.]
  • RintzeRintze
    One more try to add something useful to this discussion:

    How did you store your bookmarks in Zotero? As Web Page items? I am wondering if you could use a customized CSL style to prepare a bookmark (HTML) file that can be imported by a browser like Firefox or Google Chrome.

    The format doesn't seem too tricky:
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa753582(VS.85).aspx
  • ajlyon
    No, that actually looks not bad at all. I'm not sure whether a simple exporter could still maintain the collections and tags, but this wouldn't be very hard to do as a Zotero export translator.
  • Joe Naab
    I used it purely as a bookmark system, thinking someday I might use it more for it's intended purpose. I'm an avid researcher and have thousands of bookmarks in Firefox and only a few hundred in Zotero.

    I live in Brazil and am finding Chrome remarkably faster than Firefox to a degree that I'm probably an hour more productive per day now.

    When I was on a page I wanted to bookmark, I would either select the subcollection I wanted to put it in or create it if need be, and then I'd click on the icon with the little plus sign that says on mouseover, "Create new item from current page". Occassionally, I would select the item in the middle pane and change it's title in the right pane.

    So, I'm not sure if that is storing them as web page items. I also don't quite understand the above suggestion about a customize CSL style. It might prove easier/faster to spend a day, maybe a half day, plowing through a manual process to recreate them all.

    Thanks.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited January 3, 2011
    Sorry for the jargon. If you use the "Create new item from current page", your bookmarks consist of Zotero web page items: http://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library#archive_web_pages

    Ajlyon and me were wondering what could possibly enable you to transfer your bookmarks to Google Chrome, so we needed to understand how you store them.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited January 5, 2011
    I've created a style to convert Zotero web page items to a Netscape Bookmark file:

    After installing the style, create a formatted citation (not a bibliography!) for the web page items you want to export. To do this, set the "Bookmark Export" style as the Quick Copy style, and use the "Copy Selected Item Citations to Clipboard" shortcut. Then paste the output into a plain text file (e.g. using Notepad for Windows), give the file a ".html" extension and import it with your browser. This should work as long as all exported items have a title and URL (my copy of Firefox 3.6 successfully imported a HTML file generated with this style). An example of a HTML file generated with this style:

    <!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file-1>
    <!-- This is an automatically generated file.
    It will be read and overwritten.
    DO NOT EDIT! -->
    <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
    <TITLE>Bookmarks</TITLE>
    <H1>Bookmarks Menu</H1>

    <DL>
    <DT><A HREF="http://www.google.com">Google</A>
    <DT><A HREF="http://zotero.org/">Zotero</A>
    </DL>

    There are some limitations: this approach won't escape HTML characters that are present in the titles or URLs, and doesn't support tags or collections.
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