* UI enhancements – Switch between the standard horizontal-scrolling multi-column mode and a vertical-scrolling single column mode. Unfortunately IE8 doesn’t support the necessary CSS features for multiple columns, so if you’re using IE8 you’re out of luck. Switch to Chrome

Several weeks ago I released a new version of the OfflineBible with rudimentary search capabilities. It had many restrictions, but proved that the Gears platform could handle simple, fast keyword searches. A lot of code has passed under the bridge since then, and I’ve fleshed out the search screen into something a little more powerful. Here’s what you can look forward to in the new version.

• Filtering - After running a search, the distribution of the hits is shown in the filter block. Click on a block to restrict the results to the corresponding book. There are also filter blocks for testaments, and one for the whole Bible which removes the filter.
  
• Paging – Quickly sort through many results using the new paging mechanism.
  
• Integration – Previously the sidebar search control allowed you to jump to a given passage by typing in a reference. Meanwhile, the search view allowed you to look for Bible keywords. Now you can do both of these things from either location!
  
• Multi keyword searching – Probably the most useful thing in this release.
  
• UI enhancements – Switch between the standard horizontal-scrolling multi-column mode and a vertical-scrolling single column mode. Unfortunately IE8 doesn’t support the necessary CSS features for multiple columns, so if you’re using IE8 you’re out of luck. Switch to Chrome : )
  
• Resize – In the previous version I added a resizable splitter bar which allowed you to change the size of the sidebar. Unfortunately the items in the sidebar didn’t scale or reposition well. I’ve half-addressed this now. The mini-search and bookmarks scale nicely, but the notepad doesn’t. It’s being replaced with something new and shiny in the future, so I didn’t bother burning time into making it work.

Want to upgrade? Sadly you’ll have to use your browser to remove the current site from Gears (if you already have it installed). Typically, you’ll find the setting in Tools > Options > Gears Settings. It’s in the “Under the hood” tab, in the “Option” dialog in Chrome. I realise this is a pain, and it’s something I’m planning to address soon.

Feedback and suggestions appreciated as always.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it still isn’t quite there yet. However, I’m hoping to make more frequent, incremental updates over the coming months. In the usual style, here’s a quick list of the features I’m still working on…

1. Search Paging – The system currently limits to 10 results, which is a bit useless. I’m going to implement paging to allow the user to click through pages of results. That might sound painful and slow, but coupled with the filtering mechanism I think it should be quite quick and intuitive.
2. Filtering – As mentioned above, filtering has been designed to be as intuitive as possible. After searching for a term, a graphical representation of the search hits is rendered (see below). In this example, I’ve done a search for the word “God”. Here we see that the term is used heavily in both Deuteronomy and Psalms.
   

   Filtering functionality in the Offline Bible

   The results will be filtered by clicking on one of the boxes. Note: I’ve not implemented this yet! So far, only the graphical representation is working!

3. Search Companion – This is a pane down the right hand side of the search area. Currently, it is blank. However, in the future it will provide search tips. For example, suggesting “durst” when the search term “dared” is detected, or providing a list of alternative translations for the search term.
4. Skip to verse –  Currently, following the link from a search result simply takes you to the chapter containing the verse. Instead it needs to take you to the exact verse, perhaps highlighting it.
5. Miscellaneous - Bookmarking a search result is not implemented yet. Also, the search results don’t show the Strong’s numbers for a given search term.

So there is a long way to go yet. However, if you want to shape the development please comment on your likes and dislikes, and God willing I’ll find time to get another update out in the next week or two.

Last night I finally managed to get text searches working, albeit on a very primitive basis. There are still a good number of updates I have to make to the UI (not least to support the new search functionality), but I’m hoping to have it online in the next couple of weeks. Why has it taken so long? Because I wanted it to be FAST.

• Every English word in the Bible is indexed and assigned a unique number
• There is a lookup table which lists every word number against every verse it occurs in, and the number of occurrences in the verse
• Both these tables are now created by the installer
• The lists are understandably pretty huge so I had to rethink the way that I was installing the data to make it more efficient
• By my estimates, the whole install is about 6Mb pipe-weight (content is g-zipped with PHP) or 75Mb on disk

Although I’ve not had time to test extensively, the search appears to be easily as fast as any other study software I’ve used. Once I’ve put some more work into the search GUI I’ll post another update.

1. Offline capability
   Once you have installed, you should be able to disconnect from the internet and still use the OfflineBible. Just type the URL into your browser (note that it’s my.offlinebible.com, not www.offlinebible.com) and the page should load.
2. Error handling
   If the installation process fails you have a good chance of getting an error message rather than a script error reported by your browser. However, there isn’t much by way of automatic recovery (if you get a problem try re-installing, or turning it off and on again).
3. Package management
   While you still can’t manage packages, you are now able to at least see what is being installed. One of the main changes is that the software won’t try to install every time you visit. There are also some pretty new graphics on the welcome screen. Incidentally, you can use the “enter” key to automatically select the “Read” option.
4. Reference parsing
   It is now possible to enter a Bible reference into the search box and have the requested chapter load. Let me know how you get on, and if there are any book abbreviations which you use that don’t load the expected passage.
5. Bugs
   Fixed a  few rendering errors around the Bible navigator. Selecting Revelation 22 used to make the scrollbars appear (all browsers), and some of the chapter selections were actually a pixel or two out of line.

Ah, it’s 3am. I think I should go to bed now.

Meanwhile, what are the upcoming changes to the OfflineBible itself?

Since the last post I’ve done a lot of work around the installation process. The whole thing now runs in the background, so it no longer appears as though your browser has crashed when installing. I’ve also improved the error handling, so if there’s a problem you should get a pretty error page rather than a nasty script error window.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on the following areas:

1. Package management
   The ability to choose what packages you want to install. A package might be a Bible version, a lexicon, or perhaps a set of maps. When you’re online you may be offered any newly available package, or be prompted to upgrade to a more recent version. I’m also working on making the packages themselves smaller, as large packages increase the installation time.
2. Bible passage lookup
   I’ve got code elsewhere that already does this quite efficiently, I just need to port it to JavaScript. The idea is that you will be able to type “1 Peter 5″ into the Search box and have 1 Peter chapter 5 loaded. It should also support more obscure references, such as “ez19″ (Ezekiel chapter 19), and “sos2″ (Song of Songs chapter 2).
3. Basic word searching
   A few months ago I prototyped a database for really fast word lookups. As usual there’s a tradeoff between memory and processor usage, but I’m hopeful that I can migrate my prototype into the OfflineBible. In a worst-case scenario I might have to build some indexing into the installation process.
4. Strong’s concordance package
   Once basic word searching is done the next thing I’ll want to search on is Strong’s numbers. Whilst I have some ideas about switching these to a more logical alternative (I really dislike the H/G prefixes, I’ll blog about this some other time though), I want to support the ability to search via these numbers. There isn’t much point in being able to search Strong’s unless I have the definitions in the OfflineBible, so I’ll need a lexicon package first.
5. IE6 and 7 support
   Currently this site doesn’t render correctly in IE6 or 7, and I’d like to do something about that. It’s not particularly difficult to do this, it’s just irritating to have a site which works according to defined web standards, but which a particular browser decides to display like a jigsaw puzzle after a game of twister.

More news when I’ve actually done something (which is unlikely to be until the other side of the weekend).

All of this is made possible using Google’s Gears plugin, which provides storage for the contents of the Bible on your computer. If you want to try out the OfflineBible, install the Gears plugin and then visit my.offlinebible.com.

So, why have I made this?

Often when listening to an exhortation, exposition, or study I find myself wanting to look deeper into something. Perhaps I want to find another occurence of a phrase, or see where else a Bible character is mentioned. There are three ways I could do this:

1. Carry around a large pile of heavy books
2. Look up the information on the Internet from a laptop or phone
3. Download Bible software (e.g. the excellent e-Sword) onto a laptop

Carrying around a small library is not very practical, as the books will invariably get dog-eared and fall apart. Also, it takes a long time to physically look up a word in an dictionary or concordance. By the time I’ve found a word, the speaker is bound to be talking about something entirely different and I’ll have missed his point. Finally, I don’t want to carry heavy books.

Looking up information on the Internet is a great idea when an Internet connection is available. Unfortunately, not many places of worship have an access point. 3G is always a possibility, but it’s quite expensive (at least in the UK) and not exactly lightning-quick.

Finally, you can download something like e-Sword, or an open-source Bible, and run it on your laptop. There’s nothing wrong with that solution. It’s fast and reliable. However, I personally find them a little hard to use with a touchpad/keyboard, and the way they are laid out is not particularly conjucive to following the many verse references in a typical Bible talk. I find e-Sword particularly good for personal study, but quite unweildy at Bible class.

Back in January I found myself reading about Google’s new Gears plugin at work. Once I realised what it did, I decided to use it to build a simple Bible application. Eventually I built this site around it, which I intend to use to keep people appraised of development (and get some feedback).

Currently the OfflineBible has a few rough edges that I intend to slowly chip away over the coming weeks. If you’d like to try it out, please follow the installation instructions. You can leave feedback in the comments to any blog post.

Meanwhile, I’ve got some rough edges to chisel.