No need to be a dick, anyone reading Zotero's homepage comes away with the message that this is a browser-based application only.

There is no mention anywhere of any other way of using it except on the download page.

The first time I went there I didn't click on the download button because I didn't want a browser-based app.

Okay, we've tried to remove the implication that Zotero is browser-based from the website. Let us know if you have a suggestion to make things clearer. (Also, sorry stakats is a dick :)

That's great news, I'm sure Zotero is getting a traffic bump these days.

You're new here so pro-tip: More concrete details, less snark, or you're gonna downvoted to oblivion.

Instead of just telling someone they're wrong, explain why. How is Zotero not a browser-based application, and how does it do everything OP described?

Sure! Zotero has been available as a standalone application for several years (and even when it only ran within Firefox in the early days, it was still a local application): http://www.zotero.org/download/

Zotero retrieves PDF metadata using a Google Scholar lookup, a method that Mendeley later adopted: http://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata

This process can also be applied to a watch folder using the third-party add-on ZotFile (Zotero supports extensions): http://www.columbia.edu/~jpl2136/zotfile.html

Zotero has always allowed all kinds of searching of metadata and content: http://www.zotero.org/support/searching

Zotero also includes notes (and these notes can be pulled from PDF annotations using ZotFile): http://www.zotero.org/support/notes