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September 29, 2007
iPocketBible Update Features Simpler Scrolling, Pop-Up MenuFiled under: Product Updates, iPhone — Craig Rairdin @ 3:28 pm
Thanks to some clever CSS and Javascript from Jim Coates, iPocketBible is now sporting a new user interface. While we’re still very fond of the fixed tool bar at the bottom of the screen and using two fingers to scroll, the new mode offers more screen real estate for text (about 35% more text area) and the more familiar “flick” gesture to scroll the text. Current subscribers need only refresh the page to pick up the new code. An easy way to do this is the “refresh” button to the right of the address field at the top of the screen, or go to the About page and select “What’s New…”. You’ll notice a new Welcome message which you’ll see just once when you load the application. This tells new users how to scroll (the default mode is still two-fingers) and how to get help. Switching to the new user interface can either be done on the Options page or by just tapping in the left or right margin. There is an invisible button area about 5 pixels wide along the left and right edge of the page. When you select this button you’ll be asked if you want to change scroll modes. When you select OK, the tool bar vanishes from the bottom of the screen and you’re scrolling with one finger instead of two. To view the tool bar, tap in the margin again. When in the new scroll mode, double-tapping the margin will take you to the previous or next page, depending on if you tap in the left (previous) or right (next) margin. You’ll note we still don’t support the pinching gesture for zooming. This is because we want to avoid requiring horizontal scrolling. You need this for generic Web pages that don’t know about the iPhone, but since we lay out our text to match the iPhone screen size, zooming really isn’t necessary. The problem with not supporting zooming is that there’s no way to enlarge the text. This new version of iPocketBible gives you the option to increase the text font size in your Bibles and books. Just go to the Options page and change it. The final enhancement in this version is something you may not notice. Page loading time has been decreased for pages that do not contain any highlights. In some cases this is significant — on my iPhone, loading Psalm 119 (the longest chapter of the Bible) takes about one-fourth of the time that it did before the change. iPocketBible: The Bible on Nokia Phones?We’ve had a report from an iPocketBible subscriber that he’s been able to successfully use iPocketBible on his Nokia S60 phone. There are a couple things that might be awkward because right now we don’t make any attempt to do anything special depending on the device you’re running on, but this is the idea of how it’s going to work with Web-enabled devices in the future. As long as they support CSS3 and Javascript we should be able to get an adequate implementation of iPocketBible on the phone. What’s Next?This version of iPocketBible actually has most of the code required to support attaching your own notes to any verse. It wasn’t quite done so we disabled it in order to get this version out the door. So that’s the next thing you’ll see. After that, we’ll add features to better support devotional books. This will include setting the start date for a book and recording what days’ readings you’ve read. These two features are the final two pieces of the puzzle that need to fall into place before we can support synchronizing with PocketBible for Windows. Once they are in place then we’ll be working on the “sync provider” that will communicate with the server so that your notes, highlights, bookmarks and devotional reading progress will be synchronized between the two platforms. So you can take notes at home, sync with the server, then view your notes in church on your iPhone. If you highlight a couple passages during the sermon, then when you get home you sync again and those highlights appear on your desktop PC. So if you don’t already have PocketBible for Windows you should consider making that purchase. 8 Responses to “iPocketBible Update Features Simpler Scrolling, Pop-Up Menu”
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