Attachment - Add link to any URL (NOT current page)
Hi,
I have the problem that many books I have in my Zotero library are in the NetLibrary (Netlibrary.com). The problem is that I would like to be able to link to the electronic full versions of the book via an attached link. However, the Zotero dialog in the "Attachments" pane will allow me only to add a link to the "Current" page. Now, the problem is that NetLibrary does somehow do some weird redirecting (their page layout uses frames), so that the current url of the page is always http://www.netlibrary.com/Reader/, no matter which book I'm reading.
There ARE however direct links to individual volumes (e.g. http://www.netlibrary.com/AccessProduct.aspx?ProductId=52911), but I can't attach them to my bibliographic database entry.
Would it be possible to include an option in the Attachments pane to add "Link to URL" with a dialog popping up where I can paste in any URL I want? Right now, with the restriction to the URL of the current page, I'm limited to what my browser location bar displays (which isn't always enough).
BTW, I tried pasting a URL into the location bar and then adding a link to the current URL, but his doesn't work...
I have the problem that many books I have in my Zotero library are in the NetLibrary (Netlibrary.com). The problem is that I would like to be able to link to the electronic full versions of the book via an attached link. However, the Zotero dialog in the "Attachments" pane will allow me only to add a link to the "Current" page. Now, the problem is that NetLibrary does somehow do some weird redirecting (their page layout uses frames), so that the current url of the page is always http://www.netlibrary.com/Reader/, no matter which book I'm reading.
There ARE however direct links to individual volumes (e.g. http://www.netlibrary.com/AccessProduct.aspx?ProductId=52911), but I can't attach them to my bibliographic database entry.
Would it be possible to include an option in the Attachments pane to add "Link to URL" with a dialog popping up where I can paste in any URL I want? Right now, with the restriction to the URL of the current page, I'm limited to what my browser location bar displays (which isn't always enough).
BTW, I tried pasting a URL into the location bar and then adding a link to the current URL, but his doesn't work...
N.B. That does limit you to one of these types of link per book, but for your use case I would imagine that would be all that you need?
Yes, I considered using the URL field on the Info tab, and that would indeed solve my problem but then the URL shows up in my bibliography, which I want to avoid - regular books which I just read online for convenience should not indicate where they are available online (since this information is useless to others whose institution doesn't buy the same electronic access package). It clutters the bibliography with long urls and is unusual style...
Right now, my "solution" is to save the invalid link and then enter the working link in the text box right underneath the link details (never could quite figure out what I need that URL-textbox for anyways...)
We generally try to avoid adding features that can be accomplished by integrating with existing browser functionality.
I agree, the URL of a subscription-based content provider is not really appropriate for the canonical URL...
Your suggestion of adding the right-click submenu sounds fantastic and would solve the problem at its root... I then would however advocate having the same functionality within Zotero as well (ie. in the dropdown list of the Add-Button on the Attachments pane). It would be confusing to have different feature sets depending on whether you are in the Zotero interface or in the Firefox interface (and even more confusing to have MORE functionality in FF as compared to Zotero).
I hope we'll see this implemented... Cheers!
a) I go to the attachment tab and see if I can get this done there
b) I am in Firefox, right-click on the link and see if I find a menu item that does this
With option a), I obviously have to specify the link in an extra step, but I think it would be confusing to the user to be able to have the "add an arbitrary child link" only within Firefox, but not within the Zotero interface.
For example: in Firefox, I can right-click on a link and open it in a new tab. OR I can use the Firefox menu to open a new tab and enter the url manually. It would be weird if Firefox allowed me to open URLs in new tabs only with a right click - at least I would think so. Because a users who don't know a software by heart tend to first look around for menus/buttons in the interface before rather than going through all available right-click options.
Would love to see such a manual URL ability as well for similar reasons as andylin. I'm using Devonthink and would like a way to export links from individual DT-files to my Zotero entry. These links look "x-devonthink-item://..." Currently I can paste one of them into the URL slot on the info pane (with the disadvantages mentioned in this thread) or I can paste several into the note pane and turn them into URLs with the link button.
Ideally though, they would go to the attachment pane and could be added there with a manual option.
By the way: any chances that Zotero (on importing links) could support the "CorePasteboardFlavorType" or "WebURLsWithTitlesPboardType" pasteboard types? If so my links from DT wouldn't appear "raw" in Zotero anymore but keep the actual title of the file they point to in DT. Thanks for some giving thought to this.
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/12174/attach-link-to-specified-url/#Item_2
What is so difficult about making the link in the property pane of an attached link an editable field???
The title in the property of the pane of a link can be changed as well!
Please think about it again, Dan, I think this is an essential feature for many.
As an example use case, I did a Google Scholar search for an example article and the first result linked to a script that returned a PDF with the result. This downloaded as a file rather than opening in the browser, so I could not add it via Create New Item from Current Page. When I tried adding via the right-click menu, it only added a PDF called "download" to my library, which is not all that useful in terms of helping with organization and citation management.
I propose adding URI as a means of adding an item, along with ISBN, DOI, and PMID.
Thanks for some great software!
Another workaround would be to add multiple URLs with the primary one reserved for the true web URL and the other for secondary apps, but atm you can only add one URL.
For now, my process will be to create a note item in the Zotero entry, add text "OneNote" and link to OneNote page there. I need to generate a report from the page in order to get to click it though due to the limitations with the TinyMCE notes interface.
Here's the Evernote thread:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/18406/evernote-links-enable-them-within-zotero/
Thanks very much!
PS If there is another work-around for Evernote, please let me know...
I don't see why this couldn't be fixed in the next major release (Zotero 3.0), if not earlier. But these things move in mysterious ways, and I can't promise a thing.
(Any suggestions about how to proceed in the meantime?)
Here's the link:
http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=9120&p=114474#p114474
Of course, if I've misunderstood what's going on with Zotero's plans, I apologize.
(I've attached a patch to the ticket that adds support for the protocols.)
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