What's your favorite "new" Bible Works 10 feature?

[bkMitchell]

What new BibleWorks 10 feature(s) or module(s) are you excited about?

1. New screen layouts
2. New Screen (GUI) Colors
3. Screen Scaling
4. Greater Mac compatibility
5. Morphological Coloring
6. High resolution images of the Leningradensis Codex
7. Ephraemi Rescriptus (M-04)
8. Claromontanus (M-06)
9. Essential Biblical Hebrew, Jan Verbruggen.
10. EPUB Reader
11. User Lexicon
12. Stuttgart Original Languages Package - New Testament Edition (add on)
13. Stuttgart Original Languages Package - Old Testament Edition (add on)
14. Texts and apparatuses (add on)
15. Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (28th edition)
16. AGNT Tab
17. Forms Tab
18. Improved Search Window History Button
19. Fuzzy Search
20. Holy Land Picture Database
21. German Bible Society - NA27 Greek NT sound files
22. Robinson-Pierpont Greek NT Sound files
23. ESV Concise Bible Atlas, Barrett & Currid (2012)
24. ESV Bible Atlas, Barrett & Currid (2010)
25. WTT MORPH 4.16 Update
26. AGNT Update
27. The Friberg AGNT morphology has now been updated to NA28.
28. Byzantine (Robinson-Pierpont) version
29. Friberg AGNT 2014
30. Additional "English" versions that are composed of the English Reference Glosses in AGNT/ABYZ (AERG/BERG).
31. The Byzantine Greek New Testament from The Center for Study and Preservation of the Majority Text (CSPMT)
32. The Concise Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament (2009), Frederick William Danker
33. New English Translation of the Septuagint (2007)
34. Hebrew Samaritan Pentateuch
35. Modified version of the WTT Pentateuch
36. Transformation Greek New Testament
37. A new approach to understanding the Greek N
38. ALF - Alford Greek New Testament (1874)
39. CEI74 - La Sacra Bibbia della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana (1974)
40. LACH - Lachmann Greek New Testament
41. MHT - Modern Hebrew New Testament (2010)
42. SBP - Portuguese - Modern Language Translation.
43. TKW- Textbibel von Kautzsch und Weizsäcker
44. VLH - Vietnamese Liturgy of the Hours
45. VIE - Vietnamese Bible (now in Unicode)
46. UWTT - WTT Hebrew without accents or vowel points
47. LPE/LPEH/LPEA/LPEAH - Leiden OT Peshitta
48. GTG - Gospel of Thomas
49. N78N - Bibelen 1978/85 Norsk (Norwegian)
50. N78B - Bibelen 1978/85 Nynorsk (Bokmål) (Norwegian)
51. SIRT/SIRM - Ben Sira text from Egger-Wenzel and Krammer

[bkMitchell]

The features I am most excited about are:

(a) High resolution images of the Leningradensis Codex! I am not sure yet but from what I can see of those images so far they look to be the work of Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman. These images also seem to be in color unlike either of the facsimile editions of the Leningradensis Codex. In my opinion these are more than well worth the upgrade price. Now, uses of the WTM and WTT (and printed editions of the Hebrew) will be able to consult tje Leningradensis when in doubt. Not, to mention access to the actual Massorah Parva and Magna! And being that verse references have also been painstakingly tagged to these images (and can be toggled on or off) this work is probably worth a lot more the asking price of the full edition of BibleWorks 10. Because of the addition of the Leningradensis images, no one who is interested in the text of the Hebrew Bible can afford to ignore BibleWorks 10.

(b) Modern Hebrew New Testament

(C) Samaritan Pentateuch and Ben Sira Text(d) New Screen Layout and Colors (maybe new icons, too). The direction BibleWorks has gone with the GUI is both immediately familiar and highly refreshing at the same time. The GUI looks to be both more flexible and more configurable.

(e) Screen Scaling (Very Useful!)

(f) Forms Tab

(g) Morphological Color

(h) Fuzzy Search

(i) Holy Land Picture Database

[ETC]

I'm really new to BW, having just acquired BW9 in January of this year. And I've not tried BW10 yet, of course. However, these look to me to be the best things for me (I've currently got BW9 running on my MacBook Pro in Mac mode and also in a VirtualBox VM using Windows XP.)

New screen layouts
Greater Mac compatibility
Morphological Coloring
Essential Biblical Hebrew, Jan Verbruggen.
EPUB Reader
User Lexicon
Forms Tab
Fuzzy Search
The Concise Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament (2009), Frederick William Danker

[Michael Hanel]

Since people can buy and download BibleWorks 10 and start running the program today, the use of blog preview posts aren't quite as useful, but I will still try to get some preview posts up so you can see some of the new features. I can't promise to be as good about this as I have been in past years though. This has nothing to do with BW10. It's a huge upgrade and there's so much new stuff here that I could easily go on and on. Rather I am a little overbooked in my personal life (new baby and possible job transition) that I simply don't have the time to write as much as I could before.

BibleWorks 10 preview posts on the unofficial BibleWorks blog!

[Donald Cobb]

Most notably, I would that the major additions I have appreciated using as a beta tester over the last 2-3 months include:
- the NETS English translation of the Septuagint, which has been regularly requested over the last several months,
- the High resolution pictures of the full Leningrad codex of the Massoretic text,
- and the transcriptions of Claromontanus and Ephraemi Rescriptus.

Beyond that, the overhall of the interface is very nice and makes for a much more coherent look to the new version. It's much more highly modifiable, which means you can have a very uncluttered workspace that gives you a premium of room in which to work. It's hard to over-emphasize this point. I find the new version easier and more enjoyable to work with. I wouldn't say that it alone is worth the price of the new version, but it is a strong point.

Although anyone who works full-time on the Biblical texts will no doubt already have access to the NA, BHS and LXX critical apparatuses in print versions, it's also nice to be able to have them in the Stuttgart Original Language modules.

Of course, it would be possible to add to that dozens of minor improvements that add to the overall quality.

Donald Cobb
Aix-en-Provence, France

[Lee]

I'll say that the new Hebrew resources collectively are my favorite, followed by the new interface, Fuzzy Search, and EPUB reader. However, it's after I've been using BW10 for a while that I'll actually find out from which new features I end up getting the most mileage.

[crossnote]

BW10 needs to come out with a robust android/ipad platform or I fail to see a future. I'll stick with BW7 until then.

[FredGreco]

BW10 needs to come out with a robust android/ipad platform or I fail to see a future. I'll stick with BW7 until then.

I agree. I see no reason to pay for an update. Sorry, but that is one pastor's opinion.

[MBushell]

BW10 needs to come out with a robust android/ipad platform or I fail to see a future. I'll stick with BW7 until then.

We have thought long and hard about this. Our conclusion is that there is no future for complex professional applications on these platforms. The iPad is largely a game and social media platform. We could produce greatly trimmed-down applications, as many companies have done, for the iPad and its competitors, but the development costs would only increase the price for everyone and reduce the quality of our desktop flagship. BibleWorks 10 works well on Windows based laptops/pad computers and on the Apple OSX platform. That is where we are putting our focus. BibleWorks is a professional tool requiring a robust environment to function well. The iPad and its competitors have their place (I have an iPad) but that in our opinion is not where the future of serious computing lies. The computer hardware world is very fragmented now. The quickest way for us to go out of business would be to focus on the wrong fad.

I also have a Dell Venue and a Microsoft Surface and they run full BibleWorks 10 wonderfully well. There is not a Bible application on any iOS or Android pad computer that can touch it. But even there the form factor is a limitation when you are doing serious research. The nice thing is the ability to run the same app on the Dell venue that I run on Windows with my 30" screen. The new customization features allow me to tailor the same program to work well in either environment. Porting to an iOS or Android pad (even if it were possible) would never allow that.

There have been a number of review articles out over the last few months which attempt to analyze where the computing world is headed. What they have found is that pad computers really have not lived up to their promise. People with pad computers usually wind up carrying around both a pad and a laptop because there are just too many things that pads do not do well. Eventually pad computers will be absorbed into what might be called convertible laptops. That is where we are pointing our ship. We have stayed in business for 25 years by focusing on the needs of our users and avoiding fads. For the time being we are focused on the PC/Mac desktop/laptop platforms and Windows based pad computers. That won't make everyone happy, but as long as this approach serves enough people to be useful to the church, we will be here, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

I am sorry for your disappointment, but do hope that you still find BibleWorks 7 useful.

[crossnote]

We have thought long and hard about this. Our conclusion is that there is no future for complex professional applications on these platforms. The iPad is largely a game and social media platform. We could produce greatly trimmed-down applications, as many companies have done, for the iPad and its competitors, but the development costs would only increase the price for everyone and reduce the quality of our desktop flagship. BibleWorks 10 works well on Windows based laptops/pad computers and on the Apple OSX platform. That is where we are putting our focus. BibleWorks is a professional tool requiring a robust environment to function well. The iPad and its competitors have their place (I have an iPad) but that in our opinion is not where the future of serious computing lies. The computer hardware world is very fragmented now. The quickest way for us to go out of business would be to focus on the wrong fad.

I also have a Dell Venue and a Microsoft Surface and they run full BibleWorks 10 wonderfully well. There is not a Bible application on any iOS or Android pad computer that can touch it. But even there the form factor is a limitation when you are doing serious research. The nice thing is the ability to run the same app on the Dell venue that I run on Windows with my 30" screen. The new customization features allow me to tailor the same program to work well in either environment. Porting to an iOS or Android pad (even if it were possible) would never allow that.

There have been a number of review articles out over the last few months which attempt to analyze where the computing world is headed. What they have found is that pad computers really have not lived up to their promise. People with pad computers usually wind up carrying around both a pad and a laptop because there are just too many things that pads do not do well. Eventually pad computers will be absorbed into what might be called convertible laptops. That is where we are pointing our ship. We have stayed in business for 25 years by focusing on the needs of our users and avoiding fads. For the time being we are focused on the PC/Mac desktop/laptop platforms and Windows based pad computers. That won't make everyone happy, but as long as this approach serves enough people to be useful to the church, we will be here, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

I am sorry for your disappointment, but do hope that you still find BibleWorks 7 useful.

Thanks, makes sense. I do most of my bible and bible study work off of an 8" android pad mainly due to it's portability. Perhaps something like a BW10 lite would be feasible?