Hypothesis - Web & PDF Annotation

very bad

Chrome extension never completes log in. Can't use it.

Useless social media-ized antonation tool. You literally cannot even antonate or highligth local files without creating an account. Dev needs to clearly state their niche on app page, because this was a waste of 20 mins of my life

Updated review: From 3 stars to 1. DO NOT USE. I spent HOURS going through and making notes on dozens of pages (an annoying, inefficient process as detailed below) yesterday, only to go back to it today, without even having closed the browser or the tabs in the meantime, and ALL but ONE page has lost the annotations. If I search for them, or for any done by me, it's the only one that comes up. So HOURS of work gone. This "service" is garbage and should NOT be used. Consider yourself warned. It's nice being able to annotate, but has issues. Can't set to always show notes (have to either leave the sidebar open or manually open it each time, instead of being able to keep note visible in corner), constantly having to log back in, which is both annoying and can cause issues, have to manually enable it on each and every page, even within the same site, and after having to log back in this last time every time I tried creating an annotation it would increment the counter number but not let me type anything, until I refreshed the page. Also, it reverts back to public instead of staying on private as set (or allowing a default to be set). Much potential brought down by poor design and possible bugs.

Keeps logging out. After each refresh of page I have to login again. After logging in I have to change "group".

Cannot use it without signing up

Conusing, not intuitive, awkward.

Cannot comment without sign up... 1 star.

I literally installed this just so I can turn it off on journal article pages that have it on by default. There's no way to turn it off. Reading a journal on a web page is extremely annoying when every time you click opens a bubble asking to highlight or annotate.

Can't do multiple annotations???

Warning. You need to create an account before you can do anything. That is just crazy, why do i need to signup when I just want to create labels to my pdf files??

Not working with local pdfs: "We’re sorry, Hypothesis couldn’t open that file… This extension can’t be used on local HTML documents at the moment." File url access allowed Version 88.0.4324.182 (Official Build) (64-bit), Ubuntu 20.04.02

It's a great idea, but very annyoing that many users add useless Page Notes. It would be great if we could block individual Users and if we could block public Page Notes for selected domains.

Incredible concept, but not usable for me. I have to re-login everyime I want to annotate a new page. Plus I just spent 15+ minutes annotating an article and it looks like 2/3 of my annotations didn't get saved.

Every time i log into my account on a page i previously annotated, i get random highlights which i did not put there, nor do they make any sense. Anybody knows what is the problem/ solution. Thank you very much.

I can't log in. I tried to make an account, I forgot I had one already. The extension told me that there's already an user with this email. I try to log in, the extension tell me that the user and password is not the right one. I reset my password by mail, I try to log with the new password, and then, it's still not ok.

Because of the notes capability, I'd probably be using this extension instead of GistNote Highlighter. But I really need a minimum of two different highlight colors. Just yellow alone is not adequate.

Convoluted UI. Can't just do a simple "right-click, add note," but rather you have to highlight something and make a note specific to the highlight instead of just specific to the page, and it pops up in a sidebar rather than inside the page. Icky.

Promising but with some major holes. Once you've annotated a file, there is no where to save it (no dashboard or list of files you've worked on). The help doc on printing didn't work. The overlay doesn't show up when you go to print. So take all the notes and they are stuck on your screen. Also, there is so little for help documentation. Not helpful as a research tool yet. Could be really cool. Just missing some key pieces.

It always shows "failed to load" and can not work properly.

Too many problems. The URL to activate my account returned a 404 not found error, yet I was able to use the tool. I attempted to highlight portions of a PDF on the web. The selected area was highlighted with multiple shades of blue with embedded gaps. It was hard to select the text I wanted as the selected area jumped around as I approached the end of the desired line. It selected everything above the line I wanted. I found it to be unusable in its current state.

It doesn't seem to be working anymore

This is a "social" annotation tool. Which is a weird thing. It makes your annotations public (for some reason) by default and accidental clicks show you every other user's annotations (for some reason). Collaboration makes sense, but this vast social media approach is bizarre and distracting, and it seems this is mostly a social media ap for discussing articles with every other user. The steps to make things private are unintuitive and awkward, and the labels in this regard are contradictory (eg your annotation will say "public" but with a lock icon, which means it's in a public sphere, but locked from view. Disconcerting.) There are other similar aps without the social media aspect whose features are similar.

Want to love it, but really need ~4 colors. Core functionality for me.

The annotation button and highlight button are nowhere to be found. It doesn't appear when you highlight a text. So I can only make notes on pages -_-

broken under this site: https://reactjs.org/docs/thinking-in-react.html annotations from different pages shown in one page

The online help files are too brief. I could not find a way to organize my annotated pages

After you annotate text, when you are writing your note, none of the text tools like "Bold", "Italics" work for me. When you hit Bold, you get * on either side of selected text. The Link function does not work. Please fix this. Also, pl add some more highlighter colors. Otherwise a good product.

I wish I could rate this higher because, in the beginning, I really loved it. It allows you to annotate, highlight (although the highlight function acts up sometimes. You try to highlight one thing, then when you go to highlight something else, the first thing that you highlighted becomes un-highlighted). Also, it is nice that you can make page notes in general (i.e. if you want to summarize a page) or just highlight one specific word or phrase and make an annotation of that. Furthermore, it saves all annotations and highlights, even if you close the tab or turn off your computer and then later revisit the pdf. BUT, and this is a major flaw. I hope this gets fixed soon: I will be on a certain page and then all of a sudden the app suddenly takes over and moves 10-15 pages forward or backward to another page. And then I try to move back to the page I was on and the app just does it again. Pretty soon it turns into a battle of me and the app and I just want to give up on the assignment I am doing. Please fix this. I am becoming angry to the point where I am considering getting rid of this extension.

Great plugin! Would be 5 stars but can't invert pdf colors (white backgrounds make my eyes bleed). If I have the pdf's colors inverted already (i.e. hackervision) it _undoes_ the inversion upon activation. I want to love this plugin. Hypothesis, if you're listening please make me update this review :)

Having issues to log-in. It's not very stable at this point in time but it's a great initiative no doubt! I hope development will make this add-on more user friendly soon.

The basic functionality seems to work, but the extension still has some rough edges. For instance, global comments (introduced without previously selecting text on the page) aren't shown even when clicking the eye icon, but they do show up if one enters a new comment. Also, selecting a text with the sidebar activated shows a little pen icon -- a tooltip would make it clearer that this icon is meant to introduce a new annotation. Highlighting and introducing local comments in pdf documents doesn't seem to work yet, but at least the extension doesn't automatically load all pdfs with PDF.js anymore, which confused me previously. A common UX defect: when trying to login, it isn't revealed whether the password was incorrect or the username simply doesn't exist. I don't think obscuring this information from the user provides as much extra security as to justify the user frustration when an attempt to login fails. All in all, the extension is still in a phase I'd call beta, but the developers are actively workign out the issues on github, so I expect it to keep improving.