Promising to fill a gap left by sites like eBible and BibleGateway, a new Bible reading and study site is online, called the YouVersion. It is being created by lifechurch.tv.

Like eBible, the YouVersion offers up a modern feel with highlighting and tagging. Unlike eBible, the YouVersion opens things up a bit by allowing users to attach multi-media content to passages.

The YouVersion blog does a decent job of highlighting new features as they appear.

The Good Stuff

• More Bible is a good thing, however you slice it.
• Attaching links, images, and video—in addition to text notes— to passages is a nice step forward.
• The layout is nice enough and uncluttered.
• Though not available yet, a Groups feature will allow groups (what else?) to study Scripture together.
• Also not available yet, a Favorites feature will allow you to mark Passages to appear in a list of your favorites.
• It nice that they opened the website when the Reader was ready and did not wait for everything to be available, but… (see below).
• Uploading images and videos is restricted to online sharing sites. Good because it probably will filter out a lot of unwelcome nastiness.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

• The Bible Reader always starts with Genesis 1. Likewise, no matter what you’re reading, refreshing the reading page always starts you back at Genesis 1. The last passage you were viewing should be remembered.
• Once you’ve added content, the Reader still shows a “Discover the relevancy… Currently, there is no passage selected” message. Once you select a passage, Community content for that verse is displayed. I would expect that my content is displayed first. Clicking on My Content shows a list of content, with no indication of which is relevant to the current verse. Very unhelpful.
• The Dashboard shows a bunch of stuff but nothing relevant to your own reading and content. The dashboard should first and foremost show what’s relevant to the user, starting with the user’s own work. The Community is secondary, and once groups are available, tertiary.
• There are still some layout bugs. For example, if your browser window isn’t huge, content links wrap back on themselves, creating a strange jumble. There seems to be a blank column at the end of each entry.
• The missing features leave big holes in the YouVersion concept.
• Uploading images and videos is restricted to online sharing sites. Bad because it forces you to use yet another website.
• There needs to be at least an option to render Jesus’ words in red.
• A sans-serif font is not so great for extended reading. An option to switch to a serif font like Georgia would ease reading. See below for a comparison of this.
• Apparently, there is no public API into YouVersion for developers to build on YouVersion. ESV and eBible both have APIs.

Georgia On My Mind

Reading for a while in the YouVersion reading pane is visually tiresome for me, so I opened Firebug and changed the Scripture font from Arial to Georgia. Much better!

Though font preferences differ among readers, but there is some evidence that serif fonts provide superior readability than do their sans-serif cousins for longer passages of text. I mostly agree and feel that YouVersion (and eBible, for that matter) should include an option to change the text font to a modern serif font like Georgia. (Of course, titles and headings can and should remain in sans-serif.)

Below are two clipped screenshots of John 15 in YouVersion. The first is set in Arial, followed by the same text rendered in Georgia.

Sans-serif (Arial) – click for full image

Serif (Georgia) – click for full image

Your mileage may vary of course. Just asking that we have a choice.

Features and Screenshots

YouVersion Dashboard and Profile

The Dashboard displays some welcome messages, a daily reading, recent Community contributions, new users, an entry from their blog, a search box, and some links to various areas of the site (most are “coming soon”). Does not show anything directly relevant to the user. The profile feels perfunctory, but also shows who you’re “following,” who’s “following” you, your contributions, and what you’ve tagged and starred.

YouVersion Bible Reader and Community Content

Though always returning you to Genesis 1, the Bible Reader has a nice enough layout. Clicking on a verse displays community content rather than your own content.

YouVersion My Content and Adding An Image

Clicking “My Content” shows a list of content you’ve added with no indication of which is relevant to this verse. Adding content is pretty simple. Fill in the form and point it to a Flickr, Picasa, or Photobucket image. Pretty much the same for

YouVersion, Shared Content, and Community Bible Study

Making the Bible available to more people and providing them with more tools with which to study it is a great thing. Once it’s completed, I can see some Bible study groups making great use of YouVersion and its community and group features.

The obvious purpose of YouVersion is to apply the latest web technologies to an online Bible study application. Much of the “latest web technologies,” though, is nothing more than hype and fashion. Ajax and Javascript are nice incremental points on the long timeline of technology, but let’s get some perspective. The first post in their blog seems to equate Web 2.0 fashion sense with the invention of the printing press and, presumably, lifechurch.tv with Gutenberg.

Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450. Four years later, he printed the first copy of the Bible using this new moveable type system. This accomplishment began what is known as “The Age of the Printed Book.” Over the following centuries, this technological advancement revolutionized the surrounding culture by making it possible for the Bible to be accessible to nearly everyone.

Currently, we are in the beginning of another revolution that is defined by the ability for almost anyone to publish content and quickly distribute it worldwide using the Internet. This revolution is at the center of what is called “Web 2.0.”

A revolution on par with the printing press? That’s a bit much.

Unfortunately, though lifechurch.tv may be well-intended, I get a sense that something deeper is missing in YouVersion. Maybe that will change as the project nears completion.

Shared Content and Community

The ability to link Scripture to other content and share notes is interesting and will benefit to some Bible study groups and individuals. Tagging and starring passages provide helpful organizational tools that some will find useful. These features can make YouVersion a great asset to study and reading, particularly if the interface is improved to highlight the user’s own work first and by default.

In Summary

LifeChurch has done a decent job with YouVersion, and aside from nagging problems, it is a promising work-in-progress that may be a valuable tool in the future.

However, something is missing. Whether they work the kinks out or not, YouVersion seems to have started with Web 2.0 talking points and worked backwards to work them around the Bible. Tagging? Got it. Starring? Check. Community? Yep. Shared content? Oh, yeah. Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, MySpace? Got it. This Ajax thing? You betcha. DHTML and highlighting? Yes sir. The focus seems to be all that rather than on the Bible itself.

After reading Shawn Anthony’s glowing endorsement and then a slew of excited reviews at Amazon.com, I decided to simply pick up The Shack locally and read it post haste. To my dismay, local stores from Family Christian to Borders had not heard of it and certainly did not stock it. So I ordered it from Amazon and waited.

By the time The Shack arrived I had tempered my eagerness a bit; no little novel is as good as all that. Also, you know how it is when your expectations have been built up too high. The reality is always less than your grand expectations.

The Reality of The Shack

Oddly enough, The Shack is better than those grand expectations. What’s odder still is that I was disappointed in a few respects, and The Shack is still better than my early, grand expectations.

One book that has always amazed me is The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. It presents things in a way that I had never considered, but find fascinating. The Shack has all the wonder of The Great Divorce and two or three times the joy.

It will be tough to think about God in the same way after reading this book.

The Plot

The Shack is a story of a man who meets God. For me to explain more would run the risk of ruining the joy of reading it for yourself, but it is probably safe to quote the back of the book.

Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever.

Read The Shack

The Shack is a must-have, must-read book.

The Shack is written in an engaging, creative style that will move you to tears, cause you to laugh out loud, and make you feel renewed (but a little sad) when you finish it.

There are a several points while reading The Shack where my brow furrowed and the book was looking maybe a bit “out-there,” but it redeemed itself handily in all but a couple spots. And again, it is still a phenomenal book, tiny little warts and all.

Visit The Shack website.

The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books, divided into the Old and New Testaments. Christians believe that both are the Word of God, and Jews believe the same of the Old Testament. It is a narrative of God’s relationship with man. It is filled with wisdom, songs, poetry, history, promises, epic struggles, and, ultimately, the road to salvation from our failures. That’s good stuff. The best stuff.

The Bible Is Really Long

Reading through the Bible can be tough. Worthy, to be sure, but it can be a struggle at times. There are thousands of pages covering a dizzying array of names, laws, history, prophecies, songs, stories, parables, and so on.

I’ve started reading through several times; gotten quite a ways a couple times, not so far other times. The New Testament is easier to read, but refers to the Old Testament enough that you lose a lot of context by beginning with the NT.

A Year-Long Reading Plan

There are plenty of reading plans out there, most focusing on a year, occasionally three years.

The Bible is more easily read offline, but having an online plan is helpful in that there are a wide array of study resources online. So, the plan has 365 days, each listed with a reference to a bit of the Bible. Each Scripture reference is linked to an online site.

BibleYear has a nice plan that links each day to BibleGateway, but I normally use eBible or the NASB study site.

Using jQuery To Manipulate Links

Using static links, I found it tough to choose a Bible site to which to link. eBible has a nice modern interface and has easy parallel reading and other study features. BibleGateway is familiar to many, and has a wide array of commentaries and other study resources. The NASB study site provides word study and translation features, along with parallel reading of the Amplified Bible.

So, with jQuery, a very nice Javascript framework, I hooked it up to link to all three, or open all three in tabs. Also it uses cookies to remember which of the four choices you last picked.

Basically, the links at the top choose which site to use, and click-handlers intercept the clicks on Scripture references and re-route to the selected site (or open all three in new tabs).

Anyway, now I’ve got a more flexibly-linked read the Bible in a year plan. It still begins on January 1st, though. Since it’s almost October, a plan that starts in January isn’t as helpful as it should be. Maybe I’ll update that.

So, Will A Reading Plan Help?

I am pretty sure a reading plan will help me make it all the way through the Bible.

The online study resources — digging a little deeper — will also help, but ultimately, commitment and “just doing it” are more important.

eBiblicious Options

There are several options available to customize the plugin behavior. Four modes are available: Mouseover, Snippet, Link, and Study. The mode controls what replacement text is substituted when a Scripture reference is detected in a post.

Mouseover Mode

Mouseover mode, of course, is in use above. When the reader runs the mouse pointer over the linked Scripture reference, the text pops up. Clicking the link opens the text in eBible’s quickview format. Within the popup is a link to view the text in the eBible study browser.

Snippet Mode

Snippet mode inserts an inline div within the post, as shown below. The div is of a class, which can be restyled by the user.

Link Mode

Link mode create a link to the text in eBible quickview link. This is the basic view that shows the verse, notes that others have attached, topics, and links to bookmark, email, view in the study browser, and to send to a Facebook friend or post in your Facebook profile.

Study Mode

Study mode creates a link to the text in eBible’s study browser, where the verse will be highlighted and displayed in context with the surrounding text. Right-clicking a verse opens a context menu from which you can browse commentaries (most require a subscription, but the King James and Matthew Henry commentaries are free to use. In the screenshot below, the Henry commentary is open to Philippians 4:2-9.

Translation

You can choose which translation is used. I prefer NASB and ESV for their literal but modern translations, but others are available as well. For this plugin, NASB, MSG, KJV, NKJV, ESV, HCSB, NCV, SpaRV, and ItalRV are all supported.

CSS Styling and Other Options

You can also choose whether to include the default CSS stylesheet, which class name with which to mark the references, and the class in which to search for references.

Other options include whether to open links in a new window, which API version to use.

Developer Keys

To use the eBiblicious API, you must get a developer key by registering (for free). This works pretty much like Askimet and the WordPress.com Stats plugins.

What About Scripturizer?

Scripturizer is another good WordPress plugin that marks up Scripture references in posts, linking them to BibleGateway.com. There is nothing wrong with either plugin in this respect; they both work as advertised.

However, I prefer the eBiblicous plugin. Certainly not for the name (yikes), but the pop-up text, flexible link options, and use of eBible.com.

Overall

Overall, I think the it’s a nice plugin that offers a genuine benefit. Of course, more options to allow fine-tuning through the WordPress admin interface would be nice, but that’s just looking a gift horse in the mouth.