Trailblazin Ministries

Bible Study Software: Part 3 (SwordSearcher)

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Wednesday, 02 November 2005

Introduction

Yesterday we took a look at our first software package, e-Sword, which was a freeware application. e-Sword proved to be a very valuable resource at a very minimal fee. Today, we're going to take a look at a low-priced software package from Akamai Software and see if it can hold its own. The application from Akamai Software that we're going to be taking a look at is called SwordSearcher.

To give you a little bit of background about SwordSearcher, it is the product of Brandon Staggs and is a piece of software that he has been working on for some time. I'm not exactly sure when he began work on this software, but the latest release of SwordSearcher (v. 4.7) was recently released in July 2005. Brandon Staggs was gracious enough to donate a full copy of the Deluxe Version of SwordSearcher (v. 4.7.1.4) so that we could review his beautiful software package. You can download a limited evaluation version of SwordSearcher, as well as purchase your own copy for $49.95, at http://www.swordsearcher.com.

On their website, Brandon Staggs says "the purpose of SwordSearcher is to improve and aid Bible study," so we will see if it does just that.

Since I was given the Deluxe Version of SwordSearcher, I'm going to review the application from that standpoint, and not the evaluation version.

Installation

Now, I'll admit upfront that I'm a fan of clean packaging, so when I received my copy of SwordSearcher in the mail, I was a very happy man. The software for SwordSearcher comes in a white DVD case with a printed sheet of paper advertising the software. It was very clean and professional. After opening the case, I was very pleased to see a very bright full color CD staring me right in the face. Anyway, on to the installation.

Being that this is a CD-ROM, my first question would be whether or not it would automatically load upon my inserting the CD into my drive. My question was quickly answered as the CD began to run and the installation prompt came up on the screen so that I could install the software. From that point forward, the install of the software was very easy. I simply followed the prompts (by clicking "Next") and within a matter of minutes SwordSearcher was completely installed and ready to run. Again, I installed this software on the same computer as e-Sword, and the install was problem-free. You could install this software with your eyes closed if you wanted to!

Application Interface

When you open SwordSearcher's application for the very first time, the one thing that you immediately notice is how clean the user interface is! The colors are bright & vivid, and you quickly notice the blue colored tabs that are in the dictionary/topic & commertaries sections. The layout is very similar to that of e-Sword, where it is divided into three sections: 1) Bibles, 2) Dictionaries & Topical References, and 3) Commentaries. Each section is full of tabs to help you quickly get from one book to the other.

Aside from that comparison, SwordSearcher is an application all its own and has several features that make it unique and set it apart from a user interface standpoint. First off, the menu system is very advanced and simple to navigate. It is broken down into sections so that you can quickly find what you're looking for without any trouble. If you're looking for something as far as Bibles, then go to the Bible menu, and so on. Next, there are several buttons that allow you to perform several quick tasks, such as toggling the view of the sections, searching, and going to a specific Scripture. The colored tabs are something all their own, and I'll talk about those later on in the review.

To say the very least, SwordSearcher has a very clean & intuitive layout that is both pleasing to the eye and easy to use. That in & of itself is very hard to achieve in a software application such as this, especially when you consider some companies sacrifice the look of their application to have more functionality.

Bible Text View

The Bible text view of SwordSearcher really proves to be one of the strong points of this software application. Each verse is indexed within the system for fast referencing and searching, and there are quite a few options available for viewing the Bible texts. The default view is the one that I find the most useful because it has a margin with quicklinks. What are the quicklinks? The quicklinks show you very quickly which books & commentaries contain references to that particular verse. This is very useful because all you have to do is click that quicklink and it will instantaneously display that reference for you. Plus, they are color-coded so that you can know whether it is a book or commentary. The margin column is also useful for showing footnotes for each particular verse, as well.

From within the Bible text view, you can also choose whether you want to view the Bible text in paragraph format (which removes the margin column) or view a parallel Bible (comparing one version to another side-by-side). If you're only interested in reading the Bible text, then the paragraph formatting is a good place to start. It makes it a whole lot easier to read the passages without having to look at all of the unnecessary extras. The parallel Bible view is pretty self-explanatory, as it allows you to view two different versions of the Bible side-by-side. Now, it did take me a minute to find this feature, but it is in the Bible menu under the option "Compare."

Overall, the Bible texts portion of the application is great if you make use of the quicklinks & footnotes, but other than that, they really don't do anything spectacular or recreate the wheel. It is solidly put together and easy to use.

Searching in SwordSearcher

Quite frankly, SwordSearcher wouldn't live up to its name if it didn't have a strong search functionality! With that being said, searching in SwordSearcher is made very easy, especially for the novice user. There are quite a few different searches that you can choose from, each allowing you to rapidly find the information that you need.

The most basic of all the searches is the Bible Search. This search functionality allows you to search a particular translation of the Bible for different words or phrases. With the Bible Search, you can choose which range of books you want to search through, as well as decide how you want to search your keywords. The next two searches are quick searches that allow you to search for a keyword or phrase in either the active book or commentary. This comes in handy when you're already in a particular commentary but need to find information on a particular subject, such as faith. These particular searches are useful when you are reading a long commentary or book and need to quickly skip ahead to the portion that you need.

There are also three other searches. The first allows you to search by either topic or verse reference. After selecting your topic or verse, the search will then sort through all of the books that contain information on that particular topic, with links to easily click & access the information. The next is the Open English Strong's Indexer. What is this search? This search allows you to type in an English word and find all of the Greek or Hebrew definitions that are translated as that word, with links to the passage where they are found. The final and most powerful search is the Full Reference Search. This search is what you will want to use if you want to search every single book, commentary & Bible that is found in the application. After entering your search criteria, the search will go through each book individually finding your search criteria, organizing it by book.

As far as the speed of the searches, all of the searches are quick, with the exception of the Full Reference Search. Depending on how complex the search is, it can up to a few minutes before your search results are displayed. I did a search for "faith" and it took more than 2 minutes before displaying the results. Other than that slight downside, the search is very adept and does an excellent job.

What Sets the Software Apart?

So, what is it that sets SwordSearcher apart from the rest of its competitors? To be honest, there isn't much, but what little there is makes it well worth purchasing. As I stated before in the Bible texts section, the quicklinks are shown next to every verse, but this information is also show in another area as well. Remember when I made reference to all the blue highlighted tabs? Well, these highlighted tabs at a glance give you an idea of the number of books & commentaries that contain information on the particular passage that you are viewing. So, even if you choose to have the margin column hidden, these tabs will always be an indication to you whether the information you need is in that book or not.

Another great feature is that all the verses are indexed with the other books in the library. What does this mean for the user? It means that their searches are lightning fast! Since everything is indexed & cross referenced, performing a search will yield results a lot faster than other comparable software applications.

This is not exactly a unique feature, but SwordSearcher's goal is easy access and this feature is proof of that. When viewing a commentary, all of the Bible verses are linked so that all you have to do is click on the verse and it will appear in the Bible text viewer. That isn't the great part. The great part is that if you don't want to go through all of that, all you need to do is hover over the link and it'll display the verse for you as a tooltip, saving you time! This also works when you're in the Bible text viewer and are trying to view the Strong's definition of a word.

Now, these aren't life altering additions to the software, but each little piece does its job to make the user experience more friendly and easy. SwordSearcher's desire is to make it easy to get from here to there, and that's just what they've done with these features!

What Could Be Better?

Well, just like I said with e-Sword, the limitation of freeware & shareware is that it lacks in the department of copyrighted material. That means that it does not contain anywhere near the number of Bible translations and commentaries that a larger software package would contain.

Another thing that could be better is the search. Don't get me wrong, the search is wonderful, but not being able to use the NOT operator makes searching a little more difficult for the more experienced computer user. This is easily overlooked though when you realize that you can still find what you need with the searches very easily.

Although SwordSearcher is geared more towards the casual, novice & intermediate users, it would have been nice for the library to be more extensive. There are nowhere near as many commentaries that come with the software that you can find with other applications such as e-Sword. This isn't necessarily a downfall as you can easily find these resources online & add them to your SwordSearcher installation.

Conclusion

All in all, SwordSearcher is a very solid application and Brandon Staggs did exactly what he set out to do with his software. He wanted to create a lite Bible study program that was easy enough for the novice computer user to use, and he did just that! On his website, Brandon states that he intentionally didn't put a lot of excess works into SwordSearcher because they do nothing for your personal Bible study; his goal was to give you the precise tools that you would need to perform exegesis on the Scriptures and he gives you that with SwordSearcher.

For someone like myself who prefers to use multiple modern translations, this software isn't exactly what I'll need. But if my focus is primarily in the King James translation of the Scriptures, then this program fits the bill perfectly. I will no doubt be using this application in my personal Bible study, and I'm sure that others would be able to benefit from this program just as well! The features that are included in this well crafted piece of software make it well worth the $49.95 that he's asking for; quite honestly, for all his hard work, I'm surprised that he's offering it at such an affordable rate.

Definitely, if this software is in your price range & budget, purchase a copy because I truly believe you'll benefit from having this as your primary Bible study resource. You can purchase your copy from http://www.swordsearcher.com.

Part 1 (Introduction)
Part 2 (e-Sword)
Part 4 (WORDsearch 7)