Zotero Updates Word Processor Plugins
If you are using the 2.0 Beta version of Zotero then I have good news. Zotero has recently updated their plugins for word processor integration. I have had a couple of problems with the OpenOffice plugin, so I am excited to see that work continues.
It appears that the update is fairly significant. One major change is that the both the Microsoft Word and the OpenOffice plugins are installed as browser components. Previously you had to add them as Word Processor macros, which can be messy and is difficult to upgrade when there are changes. By contrast, the new plugins are always up-to-date because Firefox does the checking for you, and all the messy installation is handled by the plugin itself, rather than the old manual process. In short: if you can install a Firefox plugin, you can install Zotero’s Word Processor integration.
There are a number of back-end changes to the plugins (ie., Java), with the result that everything seems to run a lot more smoothly. Two major problems I had with the previous plugins—errors in footnotes with multiple Zotero fields, and lack of support for adding citations within a table—are now fixed, which makes me an even happier camper than I was before.
How to get it
You will need the latest Beta of Zotero for the new plugins to work. To install the plugins follow the instructions on this page (be sure to install the 2.0 plugins, about half-way down, rather than 1.0 plugins). Once you restart your browser Zotero will do the rest.
If you are not already familiar with Zotero check out my description and guide.
Note for Linux users: if you haven’t already, you will need to install Sun’s version of Java (“sudo apt-get install sun-java6-plugin” in a terminal).
Related posts:
- Zotero 1.5 and OpenOffice 3.0: Getting it all to Work
- A Guide to Using Zotero in Biblical Studies: Collecting, Annotating and Citing Bibliographic Data
- Zotero: An Introduction, now with SBL support
- Setting Up Zotero: Link by Link
- Zotero 1.5 Preview Released
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Comments
Hadn't noticed that update, thanks David. Almost all of my documents make use of tables, so I'm particularly excited about that.
Thanks for the notice, Tommy. Where did you find the release notes?
(Looks like you've got some nasty spam in the comments of recent posts.)
Zotero has not been publishing release notes for incremental releases as far as I can tell. Would love them if someone knows where they are. They information in the post is a combination of the plugin page (linked above), forum conversations, and and my own experiences.
Yeah some bad spam. I just don't have time to get rid of it.
Cris and Tommy,
Are these the release notes that you're wanting: http://www.zotero.org/support/changelog?
I'm not sure how the closing anchor tag and question mark got pulled into the actual link in that last comment. Let's try this one: http://www.zotero.org/support/changelog
I don't like the java calling on openoffice, there's take a lot of resources from my processor, what is the advantange of java on the implementation of zotero?
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Some good points there, Tommy. I'm also particularly appreciating the ability in this release to move the add / edit citation dialog box as its own window. This ability makes referring to multiple parts of a page to compose a single citation so much easier. The close feature will also probably prove helpful at some point when my computer hangs up, but thankfully, I haven't had to try that yet.