As many of you have already seen in a recent newsletter, PocketBible software will be coming soon to your Windows desktop. The newsletter was somewhat vague about features so I thought I’d take a few minutes to provide some details.
Briefly, PocketBible for Windows is the desktop version of our PocketBible software. It uses the same LBK file format as our PocketBible program for Pocket PC, but adds a tiled user interface with windows for your Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and other books. You can hover your mouse cursor over any Bible reference to instantly see the text of that verse. And of course you can search, annotate, highlight, and bookmark the text just like on your PDA.
We have a couple of goals with PocketBible for Windows. First, we wanted it to be “home base” for your mobile Bible software. We wanted to eliminate the need to separately back up your notes, highlights, and bookmarks by providing a way that these could be automatically copied to your desktop PC. Once there, PocketBible for Windows lets you view, edit, and create new notes, highlights, and bookmarks which are automatically re-synchronized with your mobile device.
To this end, the initial release of PocketBible for Windows will be followed almost immediately by an update to PocketBible for Pocket PC that will support synchronization of user-entered data with the desktop version of PocketBible. Changes made on either platform will be intelligently combined so that you always have the latest version of your notes, etc. on both platforms.
Synchronization for iPocketBible for iPhone is being designed in from the start so it should be available shortly. So you can take notes on your iPhone in church then come home and sync your PC to the iPocketBible server and have access to those notes at home. (Then drop your Pocket PC in its cradle and update its database as well!)
Synchronization for MyBible will require significantly more work due to a combination of the way the Palm OS works and the features of the MyBible program. Look for an update later this year.
Our second goal for PocketBible for Windows was to create a great Bible program in the spirit of the original versions of QuickVerse we all worked on back at Parsons Technology. Many of you have written to me over the years to say that QuickVerse 4.0 was “as good as it gets”. We agree. Up until we started working on our own desktop Bible software most of us here used QV4 for our Bible study and lesson preparation needs.
It’s hard to identify what made QuickVerse 4.0 so great, but near the top of the list has to be speed and ease of use. What it did, it did quickly and it did well.
So in the spirit of QuickVerse 4.0 we’ve tried to make PocketBible for Windows as easy to use as possible. For example, we implemented a feature we think is unique among Bible software. With a Bible window active, you just type a reference and the program takes you there. So type “John 3:16″ and press the Enter key and you’re at John 3:16. You don’t have to type it in a special box, or click on a “Submit” button or anything. Just type.
Want to grab a passage for a sermon or lesson? Just type “copy psalm 1″ to copy the text of Psalm 1 to the clipboard. Then switch to your Word processor and hit Ctrl+V to paste it into your document.
Of course you can do all this with traditional menus and dialog boxes, but we just cut out all the intermediate steps. In fact, you don’t even have to type out “copy” — just type the letter “c” and PocketBible will know what you mean.
There are a whole bunch of these commands. You can set bookmarks, launch a search, add a note, or highlight a verse just by using the keyboard.
And lest you’re wondering what all this has to do with mobile computing — which is, after all, Laridian’s foundation — well just try using this instant command feature with a tablet PC and handwriting recognition software. Just write “John 3:16″ on your tablet and your software goes there. It couldn’t be easier.
And if that’s not mobile enough, you can copy PocketBible to a USB memory stick and take it with you. Now this sounds like no big deal, but try doing that with any of the other Bible software out there. They all depend on the system registry being set up, and they all save their data files to your hard drive. PocketBible gives you the option of saving your personal notes, highlights, and bookmarks to the memory stick and requires no system registry entries. You can literally walk up to any Windows computer with a USB port, insert your USB memory stick, and your complete, personal Bible library is instantly available to you, right where you left off last time you used it, even if it wasn’t on the same computer.
Then, take your memory stick home, insert it in your computer, sync to the iPocketBible server and now your notes are on your iPhone!
I know you’re probably wondering what this is going to cost. Final pricing hasn’t been determined, but I can tell you this: Most of the books you already own for PocketBible or MyBible will be accessible without purchasing another copy. You’ll just purchase the PocketBible for Windows program itself, then download the desktop versions of the PocketBible books already in your download account (technically they’re already there — you just can’t see them because you don’t own the PocketBible for Windows program yet).
(A small number of books may not be available for use on your desktop computer due to licensing restrictions. We’re working on eliminating these but can’t make any promises at this point.)
In closing, while a lot of the code in PocketBible for Windows is shared between our Palm and Pocket PC apps and was written by Jeff Wheeler and me, the interface and overall operation of the code, including our unique synchronization software, is the brain-child of Scott Gray, one of our senior developers. Scott, Jeff and I worked together at Parsons Technology 10+ years ago. Scott created the QuickVerse Multimedia Life Application Bible, which was one of the finest products Parsons ever produced. Unfortunately it got caught up in the seemingly endless series of purchases and sales of the company in 1997 and 1998, so you probably never heard of it. Scott has put in (and continues to put in) untold hours on PocketBible for Windows. We hope you’ll enjoy the fruit of his labor.
So keep your eyes on your inbox for that new product announcement!
My first thought is it looks old. Too many dividers and sliders and tabs to look nice. Also, why the fixed width tabs when they should scale to the width of the text.
Rob,
Thanks for your thoughts. One of the problems with posting a screen shot is that it’s just that: A picture of my PocketBible layout at one point in time. There’s no indication of how the program works or what it can do.
For example, if all the dividers and sliders make the program look complicated then just open one Bible at a time. There’s no need to have commentaries and dictionaries open until and unless you need them. That’s fine with us. I like having ready access to the resources I use the most. But everyone is different.
As far as it looking “old” that’s difficult to define. I’m composing this reply using the latest version of Firefox — one of the more popular alternatives to Internet Explorer. It has a title bar across the top, a menu under that, then a toolbar, then another toolbar, then a tabbed window for all my browser sessions. Below that is a status bar. Other than that bookmark bar, it looks exactly like PocketBible for Windows, including those fixed-width tabs you don’t like. They put their tabs at the top; we put ours at the bottom. They have a sidebar for bookmarks and history; we have a sidebar for bookmarks, notes, search results, and highlights.
I know I’m just picking one example, but I’m trying to make the point that “old” and “new” when it comes to user interfaces is tough to define. Furthermore, some of the “new” UI concepts being pushed by Microsoft are of questionable value.
We could have spent a lot of time making PocketBible skinnable and making the windows be round instead of square and use some kind of fancy new kind of controls for scrolling text, but we decided to focus our energy on functionality. The UI does a lot of work for you so that you don’t spend most of your time tinkering with resizing and stacking windows and instead can get right to the task at hand. The program launches in a couple of seconds instead of tens of seconds or multiple minutes that you’ll find in other Bible software. Those are the things we thought were important.
I hope you’ll decide to give PocketBible for Windows a try. We’re pretty old-fashioned when it comes to making people happy: If you don’t like it, ask for a refund.
Will you consider making the application U3 compliant? That would be very convenient for those that don’t have laptops at work, but would like to have their notes with them wherever.
Maybe you didn’t read the article carefully. PocketBible leaves nothing on your PC when run from a USB drive. You can configure it to save its data files to My Documents, but to run from a flash drive you change that option so it saves data files in the working directory, which is the USB drive.
PocketBible doesn’t need to be U3 compliant because there’s nothing to delete when the USB stick is ejected. U3 is for apps that don’t know they’re running from a USB stick and don’t know how NOT to leave tracks on the machine. PocketBible doesn’t need special U3-compliant media because it was designed to run this way.
The other thing a U3 drive does for you is present a launcher when you insert the USB device. When you purchase PocketBible from us on a USB drive, we put an autorun file on the device that gives you the option to launch the program. Otherwise you can just open the folder with File Explorer and run the executable.
I could use some help please:
1. I purchased PocketBible for Windows when it first came out but haven’t seen the sync update that was to come out “almost immediately”. Did I miss that – what is the status of the updates allowing for full syncronization?
2. I noticed that with the desk-top version, when I highlight, the entire verse is highlighted, instead of just the word or phrase that I want hightlighted – which is how it works on my hand-held. In fact, not only the verse, but if it is verse 1, also the heading before the verse and the chapter listing. I understood the features would be the same but at least with this, you cannot seem to highlight a single word or phrase, it always defaults to highlighting the whole verse. ????
Any help on these questions would be appreciated! Thanks!
Craig,
Pardon my previous question about word versus verse highlighting – I now see it was asked and answered in previous blogs that I am now just reading.
ANother question, when I logged in and saw an update for PocketBible for Windows, I ran it – but how do I know what that update provides? WHere would I learn about what the update that is available actually does?
- Jeff
Hi Jeff,
The part that was to come out “almost immediately” was the Pocket PC update to allow it to synchronize. If you’re keeping up with Pocket PC updates, you already have that update.
The part that takes longer is the sync provider for Pocket PC. In my most-recent blog article I give an update on the progress of that software. We made changes to the daily reading part of the program which resulted in some extra time required to finish the sync provider. It is starting beta next week (the week of November 26).
Highlighting in the desktop version is by verse, not by word. This has been discussed in several postings here including this comment (above), and and this one (also above). We’re not sure we can support synchronization of word-level highlights but that is our eventual goal. For now you have verse-level highlights on the desktop.
The revision history for all our products is on a “revision history” page that is accessed from the Help Desk menu on our Web site. You should also go to http://lists.laridian.com and subscribe to all the lists fro products you own. These are announcement-only lists that are only used for product updates. They aren’t used for marketing and they don’t allow members to post so the number of messages is relatively small.