Well, It is finally here, the long anticipated upgrade to Laridian's popular PocketBible program! PocketBible 2.0 was released in March of 2000, largely to coincide with the release of Pocket PC 2000. It used the Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) HTML rendering engine which has its advantages, like hypertext within the document and it meant Laridian didn't have to write their own engine from the ground up. It also has its disadvantages. Every time Microsoft updated PIE, Laridian had to do minor revisions to PocketBible to adjust for the changes. Even worse, some HTML code that users may have put in their notes would have to be changed, most notably the file link to images would change a few times between Pocket PC 2000 and Windows Mobile 5.
Beginning with PocketBible 3.0, the entire rendering engine is Laridian code. This disconnects the program from PIE which hopefully allows Laridian to be compatible with more Pocket PC versions without having to make as much platform specific code, and also should keep PocketBible from showing really crazy page layouts when a new Pocket PC version is released, which happened when Windows Mobile 2003 was released. It also puts Laridian completely in control of the program and how text is laid out.
I purchased PocketBible 2.0 within days of getting my iPAQ 3600. I had been using another bible application, but Laridian was the first to support color screens with red letter text. My library in the other application was modest, so repurchasing a bible version was no big deal. One thing Laridian has always excelled at is content, at least for English speakers. True, they haven't made many enhancements to the interface or added much core functionality to PocketBible 2 for almost 6 years, but they have increased their library substantially. They now have over 20 translations, over 20 commentaries and dictionaries, and over 20 daily reading programs. A year has never gone by that their library didn't increase by a few books in each of those categories, and that is where PocketBible has always shined.
But the program itself has been getting a bit long in the tooth. Users with more than half a dozen books loaded are welcomes with a "Change Book" screen that lists books by cryptic abbreviations in alphabetical order. While you can add notes to books, you can't highlight text. Daily Reader is Laridian's program that allows you to follow reading programs, like going through the bible chronologically in one year, but it lacks almost all PocketBible features like adding/reading notes, launching a commentary to help out with a particular section, or even reading a few verses beyond today's reading without switching days in the progress tracker.
PocketBible 3.0 answers all of these issues and more. First off, let's look at the new user interface. (Side note: All screenshots were taken using the latest beta, which should be substantially the same as the final release, but you might see some minor changes in the shipping product.)
Figure 1: Basic Pocket Bible 3 Interface
On the surface, not a whole lot appears to have changed. If you have a Windows Mobile 5 device, it will make use of the soft keys, and the scroll bars are gone, meaning PocketBible 3 behaves a bit more like an ebook reader than a web browser. However, don't let the family resemblance fool you. Under the hood, PocketBible 3 is significantly improved in functionality. Laridian has packed all of this functionality into a user interface that you will find quite intuitive. It will either work the way you would expect, or you can tweak the user options to make it work the way you'd like. After installing PocketBible 3, one of the first things you might see is the new Tips dialog, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Tips to help you get started.
Whether you are a new or old PocketBIble user, I recommend you read through the tips. It will help you with basic navigation so you can dive right in and use the program. Well, now that you have PocketBible open and hopefully have installed at least one translation, let's jump in to the new features. Probably the best new feature is the ability to highlight just about anything you want.
Figure 3: Highlighting a full verse.
In Figure 3, you can see that a portion of verse 30 has been highlighted. You
just select the words on the screen, tap-and-hold and select Highlight. What I
am doing in Figure 3 though is I have simply done a tap-and-hold on the verse
number "31" and selected "Highlight Verse" from the menu. When you want to
highlight an entire verse, there is no need to select anything, just tap the
verse number. As you can see, you can pick from a wide variety of colors. I have
found some of the colors make it a bit difficult to read the text, but most of
them work pretty well. Of course, you can also underline, strike through (you
are on your own if you want to strike through verses though - just watch for
lightning strikes!
)
or erase previous highlights. Note that highlighting is word specific, even when
you tell it to highlight a verse. That means highlighting verse 31 in the King
James means it will not be highlighted in any other translation. That makes
sense when you are just highlighting a few words, as I have done above in verse
30, since every translation would have different words. That runs a bit counter
to how you would expect though when you told it to highlight a verse. It isn't a
huge issue, but just be aware of it.
While we are on this tap-and-hold menu, notice a few other goodies. You can copy the verse to the Windows clipboard where you can then paste it in Word Mobile, an email message or any other application you desire. You can optionally include footnotes for the verse and verse numbers. It will always copy the translation/book you are copying, so your pasted text might look like "[Gen 3:2 HCSB] The woman said to the serpent..." You can also highlight and copy more or less than a verse from the tap-and-hold menu.
The menu is also showing "Find 31." That really has little use unless you are interested in how many times "31" appears in the scriptures. It has a lot of use though if you had highlighted a word or phrase. It will immediately find all instances of the word or phrase in the translation you are in. The same goes with "Lookup." When you select a word, it will look that up first in your preferred dictionary, assuming you have one installed, and then go to the next dictionary until it finds a hit. You can also add a note at the current verse. This is very similar to PocketBible 2
Figure 4: Viewing and editing a note.
Here I have tapped on a note I have entered at Genesis 1:1. Notes are more than just plain text. With a little HTML skills, and with the aid of the "HTML Tag Helper" dropdown in the Note edit box, you can create bullet points, numbered lists, add bold, italics, change the font color or font face, link to an image or even add a table. Here I have a basic bullet point list. PocketBible automatically detects verse references and underlines them. From the View mode, you can tap on a verse and immediately be taken there. The underlined "Note" indicator, seen at the top of Figure 3, is the only way to access notes in PocketBible 3. PocketBible 2 allowed you to scroll to the end of the chapter to see them, but that was the old method of one page per chapter. The new model has no pages per se, but screens, representing one long book starting at Genesis 1 and ending at Revelations 22:21.
So while I am on this, what has Laridian done with the footnotes? You know, those little letters in PocketBible 2 that when you tapped on them, you would get references to other verses, explanatory text, etc. They are still here, and better than ever. In PB2, you had to tap on the letter and let it jump to the bottom of the page and read the text, then hit the blue back-arrow button in the toolbar to get back to the text. PB3 puts all footnotes inline with the text, and you have three choices about how they work.
Figure 5: Options for setting footnotes.
If you go to the options dialog box and then the display tap, near the top is a dropdown on how footnotes are handled. You have the options for Footnotes Off, Footnotes On or Expand Footnotes. I've copied Figure 1 and put it next to the options box so you can see what expanded footnotes look like. Inline with the text, whatever is in the note will show with a slight blue background. This works better in some translations than others. I am partial to the Holman's Christian Standard Bible, and while it has a fair number of footnotes, they tend to be quite brief and to the point, so having them expanded works for me quite well. The New Living Translation, on the other hand, tends to write sentences and it can be distracting when reading. If I used that translation or another one with a ton of footnotes, I might be inclined to set footnotes to "Footnotes On" mode, which simply puts a hyperlink asterisk next to the text that looks like this: *. Simply tap on that with your stylus and that particular footnote will expand. If you don't want any footnotes ever, simply change the setting to "Footnotes Off" and you will never be bothered with them.
Let's take a look at the Find features. PB2 had a pretty decent search engine that would quickly find words or phrases in the text you were in. You could limit the search to the New Testament, Old Testament or even to a particular set of verses. PB3 lets you do all that and more.
Figure 6: The Find dialog box.
PB3 allows you to further limit your search to bookmark categories you may have set up, or to text highlighted in one or more particular colors. PB3 also adds the ability to search through your notes, something PB2 couldn't do. However, that is another menu selection on the Edit menu, as shown on the right. For those wondering what bookmark categories are, they are simply bookmarks that you assign to a category. For example, you might want to bookmark a few verses dealing with a class you are going to teach. Now, if you are in class teaching and you have 15-20 verses bookmarked but are unable to find the one you want quickly, just select the category you had created in the Find box above and a keyword or two. PB3 will limit its search to the verses you had bookmarked for class.
There are other ways to find information as well. I guess you could call it filtering.
Figure 7: A list of all text highlighted in yellow
If you select View|List from the menu, you can list a variety of things. You can list all notes you have created, all highlighted text, all highlighted text in a particular color, all bookmarks or just bookmarks in one category. Of course, search results would appear in this same list window. Figure 7 shows all of my texts highlighted in yellow. You can see that it also shows that for this grouping of verses, I have a note for each of them. There are two downsides to these lists. First of all, you can see that the text doesn't wrap, it just runs off the screen. That means that unless the words you are looking for aren't in the first part of a verse, you may have to tap on verse numbers to see the verse in the top window to see if that was what you were looking for. Secondly, you can't really tell where you are in your list. Are there 3 items above the Ezekiel 18:30 reference or 50 items? In this image, I have the bible text window as active, so it shows "HCSB: Eze 18:30" in the status bar. If the list was active (as denoted by the blue highlight around the window), it would tell me that I have 9 highlights, but you can't tell where you are in that list. While the only comparable list PB2 had was for search results, it would at least tell you you were "Viewing 28-34 of 42." PB3 gives you no such indication. When you really think about it, I am not sure it makes a difference, but it is one of the few areas, and I mean very few areas that PB2 did something better.
Let's take a quick look at navigational preferences. First and foremost, if you have a Windows Mobile 5 device with softkey support, you can do a tremendous amount with just the menus without ever touching your stylus. This is extremely handy in class when you have a cup of coffee in one hand and your Pocket PC in the other. If you also have donuts, well, just try not to get the keys all sticky. First up, let's go to a bible verse.
Figure 8: Selecting a verse
Perhaps the easiest way for some of you to go to a bible verse is to simply write it, tap it out on the screen, or use your keyboard. That's right. So imagine you are sitting there and you have Transcriber active. Just write "Jn 2" on the screen and wait a second or two and you will be taken to John chapter 2. Now write "10" on the screen and you'll be taken to verse 10 in that chapter. Write "4:5" on the screen and you'll be taken to chapter 4 verse 5. This works with any input method, so you can tap this out on the QWERTY keyboard, FITALY or any other soft input panel you have. It will work with a built in keyboard like that on the HTC Universal, HTC Wizard or Palm Treo 700w. It even works with external keyboards like the Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard.
Of course, you might want to navigate in a more traditional way. Laridian has a method called 3-Tap Selection. If you enable this in the "GoTo" tab in Options, when you press the GoTo icon or select Edit|GoTo from the menu, you will get a dialog box similar to figure 8 above as long as you are in a Bible book, as opposed to a commentary or dictionary. The first screen will list all books of the bible you are in. If you have the NRSV active, you will also see a green list of the Apocrypha. Despite the "3-Tap Selection" name, I rarely tap on it. Instead, you can do this all with the D-Pad on your device. Just move up/down/left/right and tap the center button to select, which gives you full bible navigation with one hand! If you do use the stylus, you can forego multiple taps if you just want a book or chapter. For example, by tapping "Ro" and then pressing OK will take you to Romans 1:1. If those abbreviations are too short for you, or you would prefer them to be horizontal instead of vertical, or even alphabetical, just change the appropriate options when configuring the "GoTo" tab. For those that prefer the PB2 method of GoTo, it is still there and still the default in the "GoTo" tab in Options by leaving "3-Tap" unchecked.
Of course, one of the main reasons to own PocketBible is to actually read the Bible, right? Navigation when reading has enough options that everyone should be satisfied.
Figure 9: Configuring your navigation preferences.
Primary navigation in PB2 was with the D-Pad on your device. Up/Down took you up/down a screen and Left/Right took you backwards or forwards one chapter. You could also use the scroll bar on the screen. PB3 has two methods for navigation. The first is screen taps. You can define the movement if you tap on 4 general areas on the screen, top/bottom/left/right. What those taps do is up to you. Do you want up to be the previous page (screen), the previous line, previous chapter, previous book, something else, or would you like to disable it entirely? You can make it do whatever you want. The D-Pad has similar configurations, so customize away!
Figure 10: Adding/Changing a book.
One area PB2 really got tiresome was trying to find a particular book when you had a large library. If you have a translation or two, a commentary and a dictionary, it worked fine, but if you had a dozen or more books installed, it was tedious. A list might look like AMP, BKC, CJB, EBD, HCSB, IVPNTC, KJVEC, KJVGK, KJVHB, OYWG and TSK. Trying to manage 15-20 books like that is a bit of a hassle until you get the abbreviations memorized. PB3 does several things to make this a much better experience. First of all, while the abbreviations are retained, the full name is shown, as well as the location the book is at. Those three things are all options you can configure, so if you don't like the abbreviation, just turn it off.
You can also see in Figure 10 that PB3 groups the books by category. Here all of my installed Bibles are shown and right at the bottom, you can see the "Commentaries" section. Below that are Dictionaries and Daily Reader books. The only problem with this dialog box is the D-Pad action button on a Windows Mobile 5 device doesn't register as an OK. This is a known issue and apparently not an easy one to fix within PB3. Again, a very minor issue unless you really much change/add books very often and absolutely don't want to use a stylus when doing so.
So while on the subject of adding and changing books, PB3 has surpassed PB2 in another area.
Figure 11: Opening multiple books.
The screenshots in the upper row show the traditional two book view, a three book view and a six book view. I never tried opening more than six books as you are already down to just two readable lines per book. Three books can be handy to quickly look up the definition of a word without having to close another window. Once you get four or more open the windows get too small to be of much long term use, but hey, it is your choice so open as many as you like. The bottom row shows the two and six book views in landscape mode.
Just for reference, my font size on my K-Jam, a 240X320 device is 3 in PB3's settings. On my JasJar, a VGA (640X480) device it is 2. You can make the fonts smaller if you like if your eyes will support it. Below in Figure 12 you can see how PB3 looks on a VGA device. Remember, unless you are looking at this on your Pocket PC or on a really small monitor, these VGA screenshots are inflated roughly 150-200% of the real screen size you'd see on your device. You will also notice the high-res icons at the bottom of the shots.
Figure 12: VGA views on two and three books.
A little while ago you might have picked up on the "Daily Reader" comment, or you may have noticed the familiar Daily Reader icon in the toolbar. Daily Reader as a standalone product has been absorbed into PB3, and quite nicely I might add.
Figure 13: Daily Reader Integration
If you tap on the Daily Reader icon, which is the desk lamp in the lower right, or activate it via the View|Daily Reading menu (see lower right image for all Daily Reading menu options), you will get the image in the upper left. Once you tap on a reading, that entire reading turns pink. This is important because unlike the original Daily Reader application, this feature now works in your main PB3 window. That means if you are reading and you want to look up a word, get some insight from a commentary, follow a footnote reference or anything else, you can. Daily Reader used to lock you strictly into the reading for today. PB3 will show you the reading for today, but doesn't restrict you to it. You are free to go where your studies take you.
If you used PocketBible 2 in the past but drifted to other products because you thought the software was better, you owe it to yourself to at least give PocketBible 3 a serious look. I have always maintained that PocketBible's greatest strength was its content, but have acknowledged that the some of the g-whiz features from the competition have surpassed PocketBible 2 in recent years. No longer. Once again, the software is every bit as impressive as is the library it supports.
Well, that gives you a pretty good overview of what to expect from Laridian's PocketBible 3. It is a welcome upgrade, and one that I can highly recommend. You can stay busy for days seeing what it has to offer, but it is easy enough to use that if you want to, you can leave all of that untapped power alone and maybe just use one or two key features, like the highlighting. Around 7:30am MST on April 26, 2006, you can discuss this review at Pocket PC Thoughts when the announcement thread goes live. You can buy PocketBible from Laridian, and be sure to check out my Laridian PocketBible page. The screenshots on that page are all of PocketBible 2, but all of my comments on the books still hold.