This release mainly includes bugfixes and interface changes pointed out and requested by our members. You can download Mendeley Desktop 0.5.8 here.

Current issues on Windows only

• Mendeley Desktop on Windows will claim to be the latest version. If it is version 0.5.7 or below, the message is a lie. We told it to tell the truth from now on.

So what has been fixed exactly since version 0.5.6?

• Fixed order of authors for an article
• Fixed high CPU usage on Windows when shared groups are visible
• Fixed several crashes which could occur in the client when responding to notification of upload/download errors from server
• Fixed authors edit field in Edit Metadata dialog being very small if there were a large number of authors
• Fixed auto-update on Windows XP/Vista if Mendeley was installed with administrator priviledges but run without them (mainly affects Vista users)
• Fixed several possible crashes in shared groups synchronisation
• Fixed problem where documents uploaded to both shared groups and ‘Publications I’ve Authored’ would appear twice in ‘Publications I’ve Authored’
• Fixed ‘Edit Metadata’ and ‘Remove Metadata’ buttons not being disabled if an article was selected and then hidden as a result of changing the filter
• Fixed articles deleted by a non-admin user in a shared group not appearing as ‘suggested for deletion’ (with strike-through text) in other group members’ clients
• Fixed possible problem where wrong documents would be downloaded when syncing from online library
• Fixed documents uploaded to ‘Publications I’ve Authored’ not appearing if the document was already in the user’s Online Library
• Fixed grey text in Tags and Notes edit fields not disappearing immediately when clicking in them
• Fixed appearance problems with inverted themes (esp. under Linux)
• Fixed tags and notes emblem being shown next to articles which have no tags or notes after editing an article on the server
• Fixed Edit Metadata dialog prompting the user to save changes even if no changes had been made

What’s new?

• Faster startup
• Faster handling of library lists containing many articles
• More responsive user interface during login and up/download
• Faster synchronisation between Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Web after clicking ‘login’ button
• Faster upload and download of articles from Mendeley Web
• Faster re-drawing of library list
• Faster document deletion from server
• Added ‘Sync’ button to refresh contents of Mendeley Web groups and Shared Groups documents instantly
• Added ‘Tutorial’ dialog which appears on first start to provide a simple introduction to using Mendeley
• Highlight document group under mouse when dragging an article from one group to another via the library tree
• Show progress during PDF upload
• Smooth per-pixel scrolling of library list
• Display list of changes when an update for the client has been found (available from version 0.5.8 onwards)
• More responsive user interface during document deletion
• Prevent duplicate imports of PDFs into My Library
• And many more minor changes…

So quite a bit has improved in the last three weeks but there is a lot left to be done. Even though Mendeley Desktop has become more responsive and quicker – speed is still our main priority. In the coming weeks major refactoring work is taking place which will allow much faster handling of thousands of library entries and faster communication to the Mendeley server. While doing this we will try to keep on fixing major bugs and implementing features.

Thank you to everyone who has been testing Mendeley and reported bugs and requested features. It has been a great help.