LONG ANSWER
----------------
The wallet rescan not being done is more to do with the interaction with bitcoinj and the P2P network.
I'll try to explain - forgive me if this is old news to you.
Normally you have the following:
1) Wallet A receives a zero-confirmation notification of a transaction.
2) After a few minutes, the next block appears with Wallet A's transaction in it and the client knows the transaction is on the block chain.   Everything is good.

Imagine you swap to Wallet B after the zero-confirmation arrives but before the next block arrives.  
You work with Wallet B and then the block arrives confirming Wallet A's transaction.
Wallet B ignores this block as it isn't interested in it.

When you later switch back to Wallet A it 'never heard' about the Wallet A transaction confirmation.   The transaction get stuck at zero confirmations.   To rescan, or I like to think of it as 'replay', the blockchain you have to go back along the blockchain to before the unconfirmed transaction and redo things.   You kind of replay the tape and then Wallet A hears about its transactions being confirmed.

There is a bit more work to do in MultiBit and bitcoinj before I can program this up as there is no API to do the blockchain replay.

SHORT ANSWER
------------------
You can avoid the whole 'wallet rescan issue' by:
o Always waiting for a blockchain confirmation before switching wallets.
or
(simpler and less errorprone)
o Copy the whole MultiBit directory (it's < 20MB) and use one copy of MultiBit for each wallet you use. This is the 'slightly clumsy but safe' way of avoiding any problems.

I have added a little image with the language code into the Preferences | Choose language panel | language combo

Here is a screenshot of the combo box open in Russian:
http://multibit.org/postImages/2011-0914-languageCodeInCombo.png

It helps you navigate when you accidentally set things to a language you cannot read.

Currently MultiBit is localised to:
o English
o Spanish
o Russian (it is missing a few terms that I have added in the last few days).

Swedish is on its way so I have put it in the UI in anticipation.


If anybody would like to volunteer to localise other languages, please do !
It is about 200 terms to localise.

Great thanks.
I will have a look at that site - I was wondering how best to organise the localisation work.
Cheers

Hi,
Thanks - good to hear the QR codes are readable on BitcoinTrader.   I have liaised with Andreas (Android bitcoin wallet) to make sure his app can read them but the wider the testing the better.

It is a thin client yes.   It does not mine and does not offer up blocks to other nodes.   I don't think bitcoinj (which is used for the bitcoin network stuff) is ever planned to be expanded to be a full client.   

It does need to download all of the blockchain to pick up transactions.   The blockchain is smaller in bitcoinj though as the transactions aren't stored after the wallets see them so it is less of a problem.
(All the blocks on the main blockchain are <16MB at the moment).

RE: block count.
I think I will put a 'drilldown' screen when you click the 'Online/ Connecting...' label to give people more network stats.
I don't want to put them in the main screens though as I think it will frighten off the 'general user' which is who I am trying to target it to.

It uses DNS to look up the nodes but I guess it could connect to a specific node.   I will put that on the feature request list.

Thanks for trying it out.   Waiting for the blocks to arrive is definitely the most frustrating thing about bitcoin but I guess we will have to learn to live with it.

In the most recent code (in github) I have added 'copy' icons next to the addresses on both the Send and Receive screens.   There is also a paste icon on the Send screen. One of the beta testers requested it.

I wasn't planning to put the current receiving address on the transactions screen no.  I have an idea for a screen with a list of all your wallets and their balances (a 'My Wallets" screen) so if anything is a main screen it is most likely going to be that.
You might have noticed that whatever you were looking at when you shut down MultiBit is shown when you start it up (like with an iPhone).   I figure if you were in a shop you might always sit on the 'Receive Bitcoins' screen.

RE: will it stay as a Java app.
I have been working on the installers this weekend - I'll just cut and paste from something I just put on the bitcoinj mailing list:

"
I have converted the MultiBit github project to Maven and removed the old ant build.
It now also creates:
o a 'universal' Java based installer - based on IzPack.
o which also gets packaged up to a Mac application bundle.
o and converted to a Windows exe using JSmooth.   JSmooth also handles searching for/ installing a JRE for the installer which means it is there for MultiBit to use too.
Some of the pom is a bit hacky (dropping down to ANT) and there are a few things to do (e.g. no shortcuts, don't really need an installer on Mac) but it's a good start.
"

People will just install it using an installer (or in the usual way with a dmg on a Mac) and shouldn't really be aware if it is using Java, C++ or magic pixie dust under the covers.


Edit: for completeness I thought I would add that I am proposing people install it on Linux using:
  wget <url of installer file>
  chmod +x <installer file>
  java -jar <installer file>

This will then run an installer that looks the same as on Windows (thanks to the magic of IzPack).
I figure Linux users are familiar with command lines and that covers all (I think) the flavours with practically no extra work for me.

The installers have more work to do on them and then I will ask for some help with testing them on different platforms.

Hi Roland,

On the top bar on the screen you can see that your wallet contains 0.4985 BTC but that the 'available to spend' is 0.0000 BTC. I have written an explanation on available to spend here:
http://multibit.org/help_availableToSpend.html as it is unfortunately not an obvious concept.

If you read through that it explains there are two ways you can have the available to spend less than the total in the wallet (pending receipts and waiting for change).

I notice bitpay uses the same terminology as it is a built in consequence of bitcoin rather than MultiBit itself. Hopefully the terminology will become standard.

If you have been switching wallets it could be you missed the transaction confirm of a bitcoin receive. You would notice that if your bitcoins never confirmed - on the transactions page you would see an empty progress box in the status field that never fills out and turns into a tick (no matter how long you waited).
If it is this post back - this is a bit of a limitation of the current MultiBit code that I should get rid of in the next release - and I will explain how to get rid of it.

Regarding your info about multiple wallets and missed blocks: couldn't you associate a "last" block count with each wallet such that if you switch wallets it immediately knows where to rescan from, and update the wallet transactions (if any).

MultiBit is now being translated into French by the friendly staff of Global Standard Bank, based in Montreal.  

http://www.globalstandardbank.com/
Global Standard Bank - The Bitcoin Bank, aims to bring Bitcoin to a mainstream audience by providing Bitcoin banking solutions such as the BitCard - Bitcoins on a high security card. Now available on amazon.com, eBay and from Authorized BitCard Agents.

Thanks very much to the staff of Global Standard Bank for donating their time to MultiBit.



p.s MultiBit is now being translated to:

o English
o French
o Italian
o Norwegian
o Russian
o Spanish
o Swedish

I found my older Linux box takes minutes to load the official bitcoin client, and uses huge amounts of CPU loading and checking the blockchain. Multibit runs like a dream on the same machine, loads instantly, catches up on the blockchain in seconds. Will definitely be keeping multibit around for lightweight usage.

The connect to single node sounds good too, force it to connect to my main bitcoin client, save on bandwidth.

Keep up the good work..