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December 29, 2009

PocketBible 1.2.0 Now Available

Filed under: Product Updates, iPhone — Craig Rairdin @ 7:00 am

Features Devotional Reading Progress Tracking

PocketBible 1.2.0 has been approved by Apple and is available in the App Store.

The new version wraps up what we call our “user-created data” functionality. That is, the program now supports the creation of notes, highlights, bookmarks, and the tracking of your progress as you read through devotional (daily reading) books. This is a fairly major milestone for PocketBible. Initially we weren’t even going to ship version 1.0 until these features were implemented. Our early alpha testers convinced us to ship as soon as possible and wrap up the rest of the features in a series of point releases, which is what we ended up doing.

There are other minor improvements to the program as well. In particular, we took advantage of the extra space in landscape mode and added two additional buttons to the toolbar: “Forward” (the “Back” button seemed lonely) and “Bookmarks” (gives you a quick path to your list of bookmarks). And check out the new, very colorful, Go TO Verse screen.


New Features in 1.2.0

  • PocketBible now tracks your progress reading through devotional (daily reading) books like through-the-Bible reading plans.
    • Select a start date for each devotional book
    • Mark today’s reading, current reading, or selected reading as “completed”
    • Title bar turns green for readings you’ve read; red for those you need to read
    • Today button now activates new Devotional menu when selected while a devotional is active. Gives access to devotional features including new reading progress view and settings
    • “Catch Up” function lets you quickly adjust your reading plan to put you back on schedule
    • Open Book screen uses color coding to indicate which devotional books you need to read today to stay on schedule
    • Progress tracking is optional
  • Added frequently requested “Forward” and “Bookmarks” buttons to the tool bar when in landscape mode (where there is room for more buttons than in portrait).
  • Color-coded the book name buttons in the Go To Verse “Bk/Ch/Vs” selection process. Colors correspond to well-known sections of the Bible (Pentateuch, History, Wisdom, etc.) to make it easier to spot a particular book.
  • Added more “short-cut” buttons to the Go To Verse spinner corresponding to the sections of the Bible mentioned above.
  • Minor updates to the Context menu for non-Bibles to remove inactive choices.
  • Improved handling of saving your notes when the phone rings or you get a text (or simply exit the program) to eliminate potential loss of data.

Next up is providing you a way to sync your user-created data to our server and from there to your PC and other mobile devices. As usual there will be other improvements included in each update.

If you have suggestions, send them to me at craigr@laridian.com rather than posting them here in comments.


19 Responses to “PocketBible 1.2.0 Now Available”

  • Paul Meiklejohn comments:
    December 24th, 2009 at 4:43 am

    just want to wish Craig and the team a very merry Christmas. After giving us the incredible PocketBible this year I hope you have some well deserved holidays. Truly a great product.

    Thank you.


  • Marlon Ng comments:
    December 24th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Just in time to start my New Year resolution.


  • Brien Dickson comments:
    December 28th, 2009 at 2:29 am

    Nice work! Keep up the great job making an excellent product. I used your software on the Palm, Win Moble, PC, and iPod Touch. Every transition had some rough spots, but the rapid improvements consistently produced a superior product over time. Thanks! -Brien


  • Jason F. comments:
    December 28th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    Merry Christmas!
    Thanks for making a great piece of software even better. Any plans for making a native desktop version for Mac?


  • Wheat Williams comments:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:23 am

    It just dropped at the App Store.


  • Dale Eads comments:
    December 29th, 2009 at 9:30 am

    Jason:

    See here: http://blog.laridian.com/?p=80 What they’re doing as far as Mac.
    and here: http://blog.laridian.com/?p=188 Why they’re not talking about it.


  • Craig Rairdin comments:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    Keep in mind when you read the Mac article Dale linked to that it’s over two years old now. I wouldn’t say all the same things about the Mac today. And I’ve gone from doing 100% of my development on a Windows PC to doing 95% of my development on a Mac (programming for iPhone is done on a Mac). I have both a Windows desktop and laptop, but I also have a Mac desktop and laptop. My desktop PC and desktop Mac share my keyboard, but the Mac gets both my monitors whereas the PC only gets one.


  • Chad Webb comments:
    December 29th, 2009 at 10:23 pm

    I have loved using Pocket Bible on my WM and WM Smartphone devices for years and I love using it on my iphone even more!!! I am very happy to know that you are working on a solution to sync with Pocket Bible for PC. I will purchase the PC version the day that sync is available. BTW, version 1.2.0 is awesome. Suggestion - we need a portfolio case for the iphone that is sized similar to a bible (sometimes I feel like others think I am texting at church). Maybe it could be embossed with a Laridian logo.


  • Andrew Davis comments:
    December 30th, 2009 at 8:21 am

    Wonderful job on this bible software.  I absolutely love it, especially with the new upgrades. I read my daily devotional bible in windows mobile from the time it was available, but switched to iPod Touch once it became available.  

    Thanks a bunch for this great bible software. Keep up the good work!

    Andrew Davis


  • Michael Krogstad comments:
    December 30th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    My thanks to the Laridian team for continuing to create a product that is functional and on the cutting edge while maintaining compatibility through multiple platforms. As a user of PC, WM and iTouch versions of the products, I have found it to be a tool of choice eventhough I own others. I as well look forward to the ability to sync the platforms and am please with the enhancements for V1.2.0. Thanks for your continued efforts and dedication to the product and customer base.


  • Adam comments:
    December 31st, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Thanks guys - the devotional side of things is much better now. When you tackle an area you really do a great job!
    Can’t wait til the page navigation, start up time, notes and bookmark folders ar addressed!

    Hope you’re having a relaxing and blessed break.


  • Craig Rairdin comments:
    December 31st, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    We’ll give it a shot Adam, but even though we’re working through the holidays, we doubt we can ever live up to your standards. It’s great to have customers who believe in us, though!


  • Joel comments:
    January 2nd, 2010 at 7:53 pm

    I broke down and bought an iPod touch to replace my Dell Axim. The main reason is I only use the Dell for PB, so I figured I’d update my device. Anyway…I really like PB for iPod, it’s very smoooth and so far, there’s only one feature I really miss (other than synching with PB for Windows which I know will be coming out sometime) and that is the function to lookup a verse in all commentaries and lookup a word in all dictionaries. I use those functions constantly.

    Knowing you don’t discuss future changes to functionality, I’m just curious if given some of the limitations of iPod / iPhone, are these functions even possible?

    Thanks again for all you do!

    Joel


  • Craig Rairdin comments:
    January 2nd, 2010 at 9:50 pm

    Joel, I like those features too. They should be very easy to implement in our iPhone version and are definitely on the list for a future update.


  • Jeff Roster comments:
    January 27th, 2010 at 2:50 pm

    Will the Pocket Bible for the iPhone be compatible with the iPad?


  • Craig Rairdin comments:
    January 27th, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    Eventually, if it’s not already.


  • Kenneth comments:
    February 7th, 2010 at 3:50 am

    I was a previous user of the Palm version of Pocketbible and one of the features that stood out was the highlighting. I really like the ability to highlight especially partial verse on more than 1 verse at a time . if i am not wrong the current PocketBible version only allows one verse at a time which is not very friendly.


  • JPVann comments:
    March 2nd, 2010 at 8:20 am

    Hi Craig,

    I’ve really found myself wanting a way to use my PC Version and iPhone together - ie highlighting sync, bookmarks, etc. It is so frustrating not having notes and other info available when at church or other settings when using PocketBible on my iPhone.

    Any chance of this occurring? I know you have mentioned syncing both to your servers as a way of sharing data. Thanks!


  • Craig Rairdin comments:
    March 2nd, 2010 at 9:18 am

    Like I said, “Next up is providing you a way to sync your user-created data to our server and from there to your PC and other mobile devices.” That’s what I’m working on right now. It’s a non-trivial task.

    The way we did it before was have the device connect to your PC, and all the sync’ing happened on the PC. It was relatively easy to add a new device — we would just write a “sync provider” that talked to the device and we were done. Since the iPhone doesn’t connect to your PC except through iTunes, and because iTunes doesn’t provide an interface that allows us to communicate directly with the iPhone, we can’t use that approach for the iPhone.

    So we’re moving all the synchronization code to our server and having the iPhone upload its data to the server for synchronization. The problem is we can’t really “move the code”. We have to implement everything from scratch because the way the code on the PC works would be horribly inefficient on the server.

    When we’re done, however, we’ll have the ability to make other devices sync with the server, so it will be a more flexible solution than the current PC sync.

    Right now everything is sync’ing fine in so far as it’s been tested. Today I’m adding more robust error recovery and messaging, and adding ways to customize its behavior.

    We hope to upload a new version with server sync before the iPad ships, then get an iPad-specific version uploaded shortly thereafter. (While iPhone apps are rumored to run on the iPad, they’re pretty ugly.)

    Thanks for your patience!



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