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We just put up a new Symbian Series 60 beta with some cool new features! The features I am the most excited about are the ones that make navigating and accessing common functions faster. We completely redid verse navigation. Verse navigation is now done by using the 5-way navigator to select the book, chapter, and verse from a table. This makes navigating to a verse much easier. We also reorganized the menu to make it easier and quicker to access the menu items. To make accessing common functions even faster we removed the necessity of using the menu. You can assign shortcuts to keys on your phone with the new shortcut options. For example, on my Symbian phone I assigned the center key to bring up the verse chooser. Using this shortcut with the new verse chooser makes getting to verses effortless.

Shortcuts aren’t the only options we added. This new BibleReader now has scrolling options, font options, and color options for customizing how each window looks.

We also added support for a number of commentaries and Christian Writings. You can now read Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Jamieson Faucett and Brown Commentary (JFB), New Scofield Bible Notes, and Grudem’s Systematic Theology on your Symbian Series 60 phone.

You can download this beta BibleReader here.

Enjoy!

Stephen

With the advent of personal computers and handheld devices, studying a portion of Scripture in various translations has become even easier. Olive Tree offers a wide array of English and other Bible translations for you to search and compare, over 80 in all. “What possible use could I have for so many translations,” you ask? Read on to find out.

Anyone who has used both our Pocket PC and Palm BibleReader has noticed that searching on the Pocket PC is much faster than it is on Palm.  This is true even when the Palm unit has a faster processor.  What you will probably be surprised to find out is that the searching code is 98% identical in the Palm and Pocket PC readers.  The reason that the Palm BibleReader searches slower is because it has to go through an emulation layer in the Palm OS.  We are pleased to announce a beta version of the Palm BibleReader that bypasses this emulation layer.  This version of the Palm BibleReader runs natively on the ARM processor.  This reader has faster searching, scrolling, and text rendering. Click here to download the beta reader.

You may have noticed that Olive Tree’s BibleReader now has a new verse chooser. Perhaps you’re wondering why we spent the time to completely recreate this function? In this blog, I’d like to tell you why and let you know about the newer, friendlier verse chooser functions.

As Olive Tree developers, we realize that the verse chooser is one of the most accessed screens in the BibleReader, second in importance only to the main screen that displays the text. So we wanted to make the experience of using the verse chooser the best we could make it. To accomplish this goal we added a number of features to the verse chooser and designed it to work across platforms. Those that have used earlier versions of BibleReader on more than one platform (BlackBerry excluded) have probably noticed that the same pdb files work on the different platforms we support and that the display appears exactly the same. The main screen of the BibleReader is identicle on Palm, Pocket PC, Smartphone, and Symbian; therefore, when we add a feature to the main screen on one platform, it works on all of the other platforms. We wanted to do the same thing with the verse chooser.

One feature we have added is the ability to use the 5-way navigation button to select a verse. This is great for those who don’t like using their stylus and especially good for those whose devices don’t have a stylus. I personally find using the stylus to be distracting when I am in church, but now I can simply use the 5-way navigation button to change verses.

Another objective was to make the verse chooser give a better representation of what verses are actually referenced in a book. Although this feature is presently supported with new databases only, the verse chooser will now show you just the verses that are in the book and nothing else. The verse chooser also now shows introductions, prefaces, outlines, and the like. Formerly, verse 1 of chapter 1 would take you to the introduction for a Bible book, assuming an introduction was present. Now you can see in the verse chooser whether an introduction is present, and you can choose either to read it or to go directly to the verses.

Yet another feature we added was table of contents navigation. This feature works by letting you “browse” through a book’s table of contents to find where you want to go. This is great for non-versified works like Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. We have even used this feature on a number of versified works. The Bible Knowledge Commentary has a very rich outline structure too. So we put this structure into the table of contents navigation. On versified material you can switch back and forth between verse mode and table of contents mode (or TOC). Having both modes gives you more flexibility for locating a passage of interest to you. (Once again these new features are only supported on newer databases.)

Finally one of the biggest advantages of the new verse chooser is that it is cross platform (except BlackBerry). This lets us add new features to all of our platforms much more easily. Right now this verse chooser is in the Palm and Pocket PC release BibleReaders and the Smartphone beta reader. We are currently working on “hooking it up” in the Symbian BibleReaders. This means that Smartphone users can now use works like Grudem’s Systematic Theology, the New Scofield Bible Study Notes, the Ryrie Study Bible Notes, and the Bible Knowledge Commentary. With minimal work we were able to get this rich verse chooser working on Smartphone. I hope you will enjoy the many benefits of this new verse chooser as you use it for reading and studying your Bibles and other tools.  

It has always been the mission of Olive Tree Bible Software to provide Bibles and quality Bible study tools for your handheld computing device. If you’ve visited Olivetree.com lately, you’ve probably seen our newly updated Bibles page with over 80 translations of the word of God available for your PDA or Smartphone.

When you download a Bible translation or other product, you get at no charge all the features of the company’s BibleReader™ software, enabling you to easily access any verse quickly, to search for a word or phrase, to highlight a passage, to create notes and note file categories, to view translations simultaneously in separate windows, to establish a daily reading schedule, to bookmark your Bible reading locations, and much more. Although some of these features vary with different platforms, the company is always striving to accommodate new devices, to put out new products, and to streamline our BibleReader software, making it even better. 

On our Bibles page, you will see links to English Bibles, Non-English Bibles, Original Language Texts, NIV Bibles and Bundles (a whole new page of options), and Bible Study Collections (sixteen in all, tailored to your personal Bible study goals). You will also see a display of some of our most popular Bibles – NIV, NASB, NKJV, ESV, KJV, and many more - with direct links for downloading them to your device, whether Pocket PC, Palm OS, Smartphone, Symbian Cell Phone, or Blackberry. 

If you’d like to try a Bible on your PDA or Smartphone free of charge, with all the benefits of BibleReader software, you’ll find the much respected American Standard Version (ASV) as well as a number of other free Bibles of very high quality, including Darby’s New Translation,  Young’s Literal Translation (YLT), and the Weymouth New Testament. To view these free Bibles and more, go to our Free Items page and follow the link to All Free Resources. You’ll discover more than 75 free resources for your enjoyment. Take God’s word with you everywhere, along with the convenience of all the BibleReader features for reading, searching, and recording your insights.