We are very pleased to announce the official release of Sente 6.5.0.
Sente 6.5 is a major update to the application, and the result of almost a year of development here at Third Street Software and months of testing by Sente users. We had several goals for this major update, including significantly improving the user experience for both new and existing customers.
Because of the extent of the user interface changes we were making in Sente 6.5, we knew that we had to be sure that existing customers, the people who depend on Sente every day, liked the changes. To achieve this goal we made a series of private previews available, and then a series of public previews, and we listened carefully to what we heard. Sente 6.5 is a much better program because so many people took the time to give us detailed feedback on these preview releases.
So, what is new in Sente 6.5? A lot. I will not be able to list all of the new features here, but here are some highlights:
- The new multiple-line reference list view is much more attractive and readable. While the old, grid view is still available, most users prefer the new view for most work.
- Single collection tabs let you open tabs containing only those references in any collection in your library, like one showing all references with a particular status.
- The completely new reference editor is more attractive and usable. It supports custom layouts based on reference type, and all layouts can be tailored to meet your specific needs.
- The new notes interface features color coding to match the highlighting you added to your PDFs, and the ability to jump from any note to its original source in the PDF.
- New window layout options let you set up each tab to make best use of your particular screen setup. You can, for example, place the reference list at the left edge of single collection tabs, making them particularly useful on a large monitor.
- Support for Full Screen Mode under Lion (OS X 10.7).
- Improved citation lookup now supports many more data sources. The new Citation Lookup sheet, which can be used either as files are being added to your library, or after the fact, makes it easy to locate the citation data for a paper using dozens of common sources.
- Scan-in-place support for Microsoft Word and Apple Pages lets you work with a formatted version of your document at all times. When you select the scan-in-place option, Sente formats any recently added citations and lets you keep right on editing without missing a beat.
- Compatibility with Word + EndNote lets you easily collaborate with colleagues who still use EndNote with Word. You will be able to edit and scan their documents, and they will be able to do the same with yours.
- Common customizations now sync between copies of your library. Items like your custom statuses, reference type definitions, custom reference attributes, web bookmarks, QuickTags, hotword definitions, reference editor configurations and more are all automatically synchronized to all other copies of a library. (These changes do not yet appear in Sente for iPad -- this is coming.)
- The new Print-to-Sente command, available in all print dialogs on your system, lets you quickly send any document as a PDF to Sente.
- There is a completely new user manual, available in both PDF and EPUB formats.
As always, there are some high-priority features or changes that did not make it into this release, like the ability to search for text within a PDF, or a command to share a reference and PDF through email. These are high on our list and should be appearing in upcoming releases in the near future.
We are also announcing a complete overhaul of our web site, designed to reflect the changes in the application itself. If you are accessing this blog post through an RSS feed, I would encourage you to visit the site to learn more about Sente 6.5.
Sente 6.5 is a free upgrade for everyone with a Sente 6 license.
Sente 6.5 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or higher. We recommend the use of 10.7.
So, please take a look at Sente 6.5 -- we think you are going to like what you see!
Michael
