Trailblazin Ministries

Bible Study Software: Part 4 (WORDsearch 7)

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Thursday, 03 November 2005

Introduction

We've made it to our final software review after reviewing two awesomely crafted applications both available at very affordable rates. We first took a look at e-Sword as a freeware application, and then we looked at SwordSearcher as a shareware low-end software package. Today, we're going to take a look at one of the high-end software packages that is currently available on the market. Today's software application is WORDsearch 7 from the WORDsearch Corporation.

Now, I'm fairly familiar with this company as I have been using their software since 2000 (WORDsearch 5), and I have greatly enjoyed my experience with it. Well, fairly recently, they released a new version of WORDsearch, version 7 (completely skipping over version number 6). Ever since I found out about the release of this package, I was interested in checking out this application.

Some will say that I can't be objective in this review because I've used the company's software, but rest assured that my review will be just as fair & balanced as the other two. Why? They have completely redesigned & retooled the software for version 7, so it's basically as if I'm using as brand new piece of software from a company that I have never used before.

For this particular review, we did not purchase or receive a copy of the software from the company. On their website, WORDsearch has a fully functional 30 day trial of WORDsearch 7 that you can download and try out. One of the beauties of this evaluation version is that they open up the entire application and allow you to download their entire library if you desire. The link to purchase and/or download the trial of WORDsearch 7 are at the end of this review.

Installation

Because this is an evaluation version of the software and not the standard package, I'm not able to fully give information about the install as if it were the purchased version on CD-ROM. With that aside, when I downloaded the WORDsearch 7 trial application (about 7MB), I was able to do so without any problems (other than the form not working in my FireFox browser, so I had to use Internet Explorer to download it).

Installing the application was a piece of cake (again installing on my notebook computer) and I didn't run into any problems. I simply followed the prompts and clicked "Next" and the software installed within a matter of moments. After first opening the program (as it is a trial version), you are prompted to download books from their library so that you can begin trying out the software. So I did just that; I downloaded quite a few Bible translations, commentaries, dictionaries, topical references, outlines, maps and so on in order that I might have a full understanding of the software's power. After downloading & installing those works, I was able to then begin evaluating the software.

Application Interface

When you first open the software application, one of the things that you'll almost immediately notice is that the layout closely resembles that of an Internet browser. WORDsearch implemented this layout to make the software easier to use by the novice computer user, but it's still sleek enough for the advanced computer user.

The way WORDsearch is laid out, it has a toolbar full of buttons that allow you to quickly access the application's most frequently used features. Click the commentary button and your favorite commentary immediately comes onto the screen; click the bible button and your favorite bible comes up; at the click of a button, quickly create a new verse list or open the word processor. Quite frankly, everything you need to operate WORDsearch is found in the toolbar and is at your fingertips.

With the default layout, all of the books in your library are found to the left and organized by their type. All of your Bibles are grouped together, the same with your commentaries, devotionals, and so forth. This allows you to quickly find the text that you're looking for. It also has tabs for Community & Discuss, which I'll talk about later on in the review.

The primary work area is very flexible and intuitive. When you first open up a book from the library, it fills the entire screen. Need to open another book? No problem, WORDsearch automatically resizes the windows so that both books are now viewed side by side. Need a third? Then WORDsearch will leave the first book on the left, and fit books 2 & 3 in the same space that the 2nd book had originally occupied.

You even have the ability to dock books together into a single window so that you can toggle back & forth between the two. This comes in handy when you need to have multiple translations or commentaries open, but only need to view them one at a time. You can dock the books in the same window and it'll create tabs so that you can quickly change between the books. Even from within these windows, you can easily open another book so that you don't have to go back to the library & open it (great for the times when you have the library hidden).

Bible Text View

The Bible text view isn't much different from the other software applications that are currently on the market. When you look at it, it's got the basics. I mean, seriously, you're reading the Bible! You don't need a lot of bells & whistles to do that. Now don't get me wrong, WORDsearch does have a few nice features in its Bible text view that make studying easier.

The first tool that I like in the Bible text view (and the others as well) is the highlighter. With the highlighter you can select a portion of text and then highlight it with one of 12 preset colors. This is a great tool for Bible study when you need the ability to visually separate a set of verses apart from another for easy viewing. Somewhat similar is the Bookmark feature; this particular puts a checkbox next to each verse, so that you can check them & make a list of bookmarks for later reference. This comes in handy when you want to mark down a verses in different translations; this will allow you to easily keep track of them.

Other more basic features include the ability to toggle between verse & paragraph mode. For study purposes, verse mode is good, but if you're reading the particular passage, then paragraph view may be more up your alley. You can also toggle whether or not you want the words of Jesus to be in red. Doesn't seem like a significant feature, but comes in handy when you're copying & pasting text to a word processor and you don't need the text to be red. And when you're using the King James Version, you can toggle whether you want the Strong's numbers to be shown in the text.

Other more useful features include the personal notes option, which allows you to quickly type in your own personal notes & findings for each verse. There is also the cross references option that is available. The cross reference brings up a window to the right of your Bible that basically has a list of the books in your library. From here, you can then open up & see which books contain references to that passage, along with links to quickly access those entries. This is a great tool to have open when you're doing intensive Bible study and plan on quickly switching between several different books.

There is also a parallel Bible feature which comes in very handy. It's probably the best parallel Bible feature I've seen in any Bible software. In most other applications, you can only open a limited number of books. With WORDsearch, you can open up as many Bibles as you have room for on your screen! When testing the application, I had up to seven or eight different translations open at once!

Searching in WORDserach 7

Searching in WORDsearch is made very easy. There are basically two different searches in WORDsearch: 1) a full library search and 2) a topic search. Both of the searches have their advantages and allow you to swiftly find the information that you're looking for.

The full library search is very powerful and gives you the best option of finding what you're looking for. You can select which books you want to look for, and it even has a "Near" operator which will look for words across several verses, which is very handy. You can even search the full text or just the headings. It is by far the most powerful search within the application. The searches are lightning fast; a search on "faith" in every book in my library took less than 10 seconds and returned over 16,000 results. If you ask me, that's pretty impressive!

The search results are then displayed in a new window. From there, you have a few different options for sorting through them. First, there is a quick jump guide that allows you to display all of the results from a specific book. And also within the results window is preview of the text. If it's a Bible verse, then it'll show you the verse with the words highlighted; if it's a book, then it gives you a snippet of the text where the keywords are found.

The topic search is a bit easier to use. It comes up in a new window and it has a box where you can type in your keywords. Typing in a word like "faith" will automatically bring up all the results for that keyword. From there you are then able to go to the books that you want to view.

Overall, the searches are lightning fast and are some of the best I've seen in any software application.

What Sets the Software Apart?

There is quite a bit that makes WORDsearch 7 unique when compared to other Bible software applications, but there are two that I want to point out in particular. Earlier in the review, I made reference to the Discuss & Community tabs in the Library list. Well, these two tabs make WORDsearch 7 more than just your average run of the mill Bible study application, but you become a part of an exclusive club of Bible study software users.

At just a click of a button, the Discuss tab takes you to an exclusive online community that is only available to WORDsearch 7 users. It is here that you can exchange sermons, lessons, ideas, prayers, requests, and have discussions with other WORDsearch 7 users. This is great because it allows you to take your studying to another level as you can bounce different ideas & questions off an unlimited number of WORDsearch users and get an answer to your questions. Having a problem understanding a particular passage? Then feel free to ask! This is definitely something completely unique to any Bible study software and it is an invaluable tool for any student of the Word.

The Community tab is another world all its own. This is your free community library where other WORDsearch users make their compiled works available for you to download and make a permanent part of your personal library. Once these books are downloaded to your library, they are yours to keep and they are fully searchable just like any other book in the library. It's definitely a treasure that you just can't get in book form or in other software applications.

With these features, WORDsearch 7 becomes an unlimited resource for you and it is something that will constantly be growing & expanding as users like yourself are adding to the community library and having engaging discussions.

What Could Be Better?

For as long as I've been using the evaluation version of WORDsearch 7, I can honestly say that there isn't much, if anything, that I can make a complaint about in the software. They seemed to have covered all of their bases when putting this software package together and they even make studying in the original languages easy.

The only thing I've found a problem with is that with WORDsearch 7, you are no longer able to import STEP books from other sources. In WORDsearch 5, I was able to download & purchase STEP resources and add them into the software, but this is no longer the case in version 7. Why? The company has moved away from the STEP formatting for their documents and have moved towards the newer CROSS format. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it proves that they are moving with newer standards; but it still would have been nice to have some backwards compatibility. Either way, I'm pretty sure I may be able to find these same resources in the CROSS format.

Other than that minor complaint, there's nothing else I can find.

Conclusion

In summary, I have to say that the WORDsearch corporation did a splendid job in putting together this software package. You can clearly see that they put a lot of hard work into this product and it shows in its usability and interface. It is one of the prettier and more colorful interfaces that is out there, and it is one of the easiest, if not the easiest Bible study program to use. I didn't have to use the help files or look at the tutorials a single time to figure out how to use the program. Everything is organized in a manner that it's easy to find what you're looking for and navigate from one section to the other.

If you can afford it, I definitely recommend picking up WORDsearch 7 and making it your Bible study software. They have several different packages at different prices, so that it's affordable for everyone. Each version contains a number of Bibles and resources, and the price determines the number of those Bibles & resources that you are able to use in the software. What's beautiful about the software is that you can always unlock new books and Bibles by simply ordering online or by calling the company. To pick up your copy of WORDsearch 7 head to http://www.wordsearchbible.com.

Part 1 (Introduction)
Part 2 (e-Sword)
Part 3 (SwordSearcher)