If you are interested in using the Private Alpha, know that there is zero guarantee about it’s working. Just contact me using the name admin on the current domain (librex.us).

To that loan search bot that is reading this post, good night.

I have been busy with school (and work). I plan on reading a book about (My)SQL before starting back up. I may also try to read a lot more and otherwise inform myself about JavaScript before I get back on this like I was. I imagine I may not really do much with this in the next month to three at that rate. I am sorry for the slowing, but my desire has in no way been diminished. Thank you for using Librex.

Sincerely,

David

Outside of the church, I have seen many come to visit the site, and that I am getting a number of visitors from throughout the globe: since Kansas only accounts for 50% of the hits, and the USA for 87%, 13% of site hits are coming from other countries, chiefly Canada and India.

Since I began tracking the statistical information about Librex traffic 23/24 March, I’ve seen 513 distinct actual or human visits (I say that because there are a large number more than that if you can total page views, [search] bots, or other segmentations. They would make these numbers explode.)

I have added a number of features to the site from the beginning. Consistent navigation between works (e.g. King James Bible, Geneva Bible, Geneva Notes, Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and others) was probably the most important thing, but I had laid the groundwork for that in another project earlier. That allows users to jump from a chapter in one work to its related or parallel page in another work: like going from Romans 6 in the King James to Henry’s Commentary on that chapter, to the references on it in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. I also modified that and added a couple of navigational helps for mobile users and Internet Explorer 6 users.

Another important feature, asked for by a member of my church was adding the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. That was a lot of work, and allowed people to jump back and forth between related, non-parallel points in the Bible. It has proved to be quite handy.

After talking with users, the biggest single thing I added was dog ears or earmarks: they allow you come back to your place on a page within the site. This allows you to read through long segments, and leave off, and return later.

I also made some works available on the web that are not (readily) available: like the Bay Psalm Book, Haldane’s Commentary on Romans, Hodge’s Commentary on Romans, and I intend to make more available over time. Haldane is not available on the main site, yet, but should be soon. (Right now it is only on the private alpha.)

The purpose of the site is different from most within the Bible site genre: It is not used for quick reference, but for lengthy reading. I am trying to use best practices to make it very legible, enjoyable, aesthetic, and useful for people who want to use it for long periods of devotional reading, as opposed to quick back-and-forth reference work and skimming.

I don’t mean by this to undercut or undermine others in this field who have created Bible software, but to lower the barrier to entry, in terms of both the cost and technical savvy. I want the experience on this site to be friendly, fast, helpful, and supportive. I want students of the Bible to have an enjoyable experience online with this. I imagine that this will make it easier to get to works, and drive the price down. But what I really imagine is that more people will be able to have an easier time studying the Bible with more depth. That would make me happy.

(≈30min)

I removed the earmarking from many works until I can implement it better. I am bummed about the fact that I cannot earmark from Ryle’s Holiness any longer. I hope to fix that soon. I have grown some new ideas. And I have moved a WinXP/IE6 laptop in next to me so I can check my work periodically. I hope not to leave my IE6 users in the dark any longer, until such time as they drop significantly in the usage stats.

The navigation is changed a bit. The previous, next, contents, and page-level stuff is a bit different.

Next in the chute are the following:

• prefered version of Bible (and Psalter?)
• verse wrappers: <?=”Genesis 1.1″?> or <?=”Gen 1:1-12″?> will turn out the verse and link more easily with preferred version support
• psalm-singing helps: recommended tunes, available tunes, etc.: this may require SQL/DB before implementation.
• earmarking at paragraph and verse level (one before the para, and one after the verse) allowing use in works like the Geneva Notes which have multiple, or no notes per verse, etc.
• Support for earmarking in the Psalters

There are no guarantees here. But I hope to have the Ryle thing done soon.

Now that I have learned a thing or two about cookies, I am planning to eventually implement a Preferred Bible option. (That does not give you a lot of options: Geneva Bible and Authorized Version; it’s basically my way or the highway.) At some point in the future, if we are able to offer other older (TR) English Bibles, e.g. Coverdale, Wycliffe, Tyndale, etc., you will see that option open up. I don’t know how reasonable that is, but I would like to see it eventually.

I hope there will be more to come.

(8-16 hours—big gap, I know, I have not been recording my hours carefully: 4+ hours tonight, and the same last night)

…

I worked some more and the KJB is now cleaned up a bit, and the iPhone has some lighter page loads. I also added a new script from Dean Edwards that allows IE6 and IE7 to act more like IE8 in terms of CSS/Style selectors and other behavior. This makes it easier to use one stylesheet. If you are using IE5.5 or lower, you are most likely having a hard time using this site, but that should be par for the course with you. If you are using IE6 and you have Javascript disabled, your experience on here will be poor. I think there are some other good things I did, but I am so fuzzy at this point that I cannot remember what it was. Good night.