Tag Archive: Windows Desktop

Top 5 Advantages of Windows Desktop

Posted by on 07/31/2015 in:

windows-advantages

Who doesn’t love a good Top 5 list? I know I do! Here are the top reasons why you should use our new Windows Desktop app alongside your mobile. Ready. Set. Go!

1. Multiple Windows

One limitation of working with the Bible Study app on mobile is that you can only have two resources open at a single time, or three if you count pop-ups. This limitation exists for various reasons, ranging from screen size to processing power. You don’t have this problem with Windows Desktop. Open multiple windows to your heart’s content and resize them however you’d like. The possibilities are endless.

Multiple Windows

Multiple Windows

2. Universal Search

Have you ever wanted to search your entire library for a topic or word? The Resource Guide helps with this to an extent, but it only works with enhanced resources. With the Windows Desktop app you can type anything you want in the search field and you’ll get hits from your entire library. This alone is a time saver or reason to get lost in rabbit trails, you decide.

Universal Search

Universal Search

3. Multitasking

Do you like using Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write your sermons or notes? That’s easy with the Bible Study app on Windows Desktop. If you have multiple monitors, have the app open on one screen and Word open in the other. Don’t have two monitors? Resize your windows and you can still do the same. Try doing that on your phone!

Easy Multitasking

Easy Multitasking

4. More Text on the Screen

My phone has a higher resolution (1440 x 2560) than my computer (1920 x 1080). But given the fact my phone is 5.7″ versus the 15″ screen of my laptop, I can still fit a lot more text on my laptop’s screen than I can on my phone. This means I can study a lot easier than I can on my phone. I can read more with less scrolling, which saves time and effort.

Look how much more text you can fit on a desktop computer versus a tablet (Nexus 10).

Greek-English Interlinear Bible - Android Tablet

Greek-English Interlinear Bible – Android Tablet

Greek-English Interlinear Bible - Windows Desktop

Greek-English Interlinear Bible – Windows Desktop

5. Distraction Free Studying

The refreshed user interface of Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop was designed to get out of the way so you could focus on studying. How often have you tried reading the Bible on your phone only to get distracted by a call, text message, or notification? Happens to me all the time, and sometimes I don’t have the luxury of turning on Airplane mode to keep it from happening. The simple gesture of sitting at a computer often implies that it’s time for serious work, which can make it easier to focus and get your studying done distraction free. Plus, it’s easier to “unplug” your computer from the Internet without feeling like you’re cut off from the world.

What Are Yours?

What are some of your favorite features and tips when using the Windows Desktop app? Leave a comment and share them with us and other Olive Tree users.

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New Commentaries for Windows Desktop

Posted by on 07/27/2015 in:

It doesn’t matter whether you’re someone who feels you can never have enough commentaries or the person who believes that one or two solid commentaries are enough, commentaries are an indispensable part of good Bible study. They help you double check your interpretation and understanding of the Bible, and even help with those difficult passages you just cannot make sense of. The great thing about the Bible Study App is the convenience of carrying around all these commentaries in your pocket.

On this blog we’ve talked a lot lately about all the new titles available with the latest version of our app, and it’s with good reason. As someone who works in Olive Tree’s book formatting department, let me share some inside information with you. These app updates, starting with the release of iOS last summer, have been several years in the making (even before I started working here in the beginning of 2013). A good part of that preparation meant converting our existing titles to work with our new format. With the apps still being in development, it also meant we were pulling double duty on any new titles we released, creating them in both the old and new formats. This was our process until last December when we made the decision to stop creating new titles for our old platform. The decision meant that any new titles released after that point would only work for those users running the latest version of our iOS app (the only app update to be released at that time). This was the case until our Android release last month and Windows Desktop last week. Great titles like the Reformation Study Bible, Tyndale Commentaries, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, and so many others simply weren’t available on these platforms. So, finally having these titles available on these platforms is a big deal.

Now let me share how these new titles have become useful for me. The ability to take the Bible Study App with me wherever I go means I can get a jump start on preparing lessons for the youth group I help lead. This process usually involves checking a few commentaries for anything I might have missed in my own study. It’s great that these new titles are now available on Android, but the commentaries are most valuable to me on Windows Desktop because most of my in-depth studying happens on my laptop. Instead of trying to multitask and thumb out long form notes on my phone, I have more space to work with. I can have my Bible, commentary, and notes open at once, which makes my preparation more efficient. One commentary that I’ve really enjoyed using in Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop is the Tyndale Commentaries. This is a commentary set that I find has a nice balance in what it covers without being overly technical. It’s also one I’ve wanted in Olive Tree for some time, but when we finally released it it was iOS only. As an Android & Windows guy I was left out, unable to use the resources I wanted to use most. Now that they’re available I can study the way I want to, with the resources I prefer.

My Lesson Prep Setup

My Lesson Prep Setup

I’ll admit, there’s nothing spectacular about having a commentary available on your desktop, that’s nothing different from what we’ve already done. What makes it noteworthy is knowing the titles I want to use are now available on all the platforms I use. Not only can I carry them around with me in my pocket, but I can also have them where it’s most valuable to me: on my desktop.

Be sure to grab many of these newly available commentary sets while they’re on sale.

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Maximize Interlinears and Gospel Harmonies on Your Desktop

Posted by on 07/24/2015 in: ,

laptop-nte-harmonies

One of the advantages of using Olive Tree’s Bible app is it’s built for mobility. You can read and study the Bible anywhere. Yet, there are times when you need more screen than your phone or tablet can give you. Lesson and sermon preparation are a couple times that come to mind when having additional screen real estate is of benefit. This is why we made the Bible app for Mac & Windows.

Just like there are different types of study that benefit from using a desktop or laptop computer, there are resources that work particularly well on these platforms. Two resources that take advantage of a computer’s additional screen size are our Greek-English Interlinear Bibles and Harmony of the Gospels. Today we’re going to show you how to maximize your use of these resources on Mac & Windows.

Harmony of the Gospels

Gospel harmonies are a great tool to manage the sometimes confusing chronology of the first four books of the New Testament. Did this event happen in just Matthew, or was it in Mark too? How does John’s gospel fit in with the other three? A gospel harmony can help make sense of those questions. That advantage alone is worth its weight in gold, but Olive Tree makes it possible for you to view these passages side-by-side without the need to jump back & forth. This functionality exists on our mobile platforms, but screen size certainly limits what you can see. For example, if you’re on a phone, you only get a single column of text, at most two if your phone is big enough & you put it in landscape mode. On a tablet you might get all the columns to display side-by-side, but the minute you open Resource Guide you’re left scrolling text again. Is there a better way? Yes! Read it in our desktop app!

If your computer has a high enough resolution, you can easily view all the columns in the Gospel Harmony while still having the Resource Guide open. This means you can easily read the text, pull up your commentaries, maps, and notes without sacrificing any of the text you’re studying. In the screenshots below we have the same passage loaded on an iPad Mini 4, a 10″ Android tablet, and our Mac & Windows apps, all with the Resource Guide open. Not only can you see all the columns on Mac & Windows, but you can read the full passage and then some. You’re not forced to scroll up & down to read & compare the passages because everything is in view. This also means you don’t have to worry about the Resource Guide constantly updating because of your scrolling to view the entirety of the text, they both stay put. That will save you time and effort.

IMG_0320

Harmony of the Gospels - Android Tablet

mac_esv_harmony

Harmony of the Gospels - Windows Desktop

Greek-English Interlinear Bibles

The feature that makes our Greek-English Interlinear Bibles great is the same thing that can make them frustrating to use for some users. Our Interlinear Bibles display multiple lines of information for each verse. You get the Greek text, English glosses, Strong’s numbers, and then the corresponding English translation. That’s a lot of information! On a tablet or phone this means you’ll likely only see a verse or two at a time, unless you make the text extremely small. If you’re studying a longer passage, this of course means lots of scrolling. This is where Mac & Windows again come to the rescue!

Our Greek-English Interlinear Bibles don’t operate any differently on Mac & Windows than they do on mobile, but you can see and read more of the Bible without scrolling. Again, comparing screenshots between platforms, the desktop apps allow you to see nearly 3 times the number of verses than you can see on Android or iOS. Like with the Harmony of the Gospels, you save time and effort by not having to scroll through one or two verses at a time. From there, you can open multiple dictionaries and commentaries, which further maximizes your use of the Interlinear.

IMG_0321

Greek-English Interlinear Bible - Android Tablet

mac_esv_interlinear

Greek-English Interlinear Bible - Windows Desktop

Get Them Now

Now that you see how these resources can help maximize your study time, click here to add them to your Olive Tree digital library today.

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Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop is Here!

Posted by on 07/20/2015 in:

It’s Here! Download Today!

Click here to download Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop!

Note: Your current Windows Desktop app will not automatically update to Bible+ 6.0. You will have to manually download & install it from our website via the link above. This release only works on Windows 7 and higher.

Here’s a quick look at what you can expect with this update.

Look and Feel

One of the first things you’ll notice when you open the new Bible+ app is that it looks different. The look has been updated with a color scheme that better reflects our company’s branding, while flattening the icons for a sleeker look. Even though the app looks different, the way you interact with the app has not changed. This design refresh is meant to get the app out of the way so you can focus more on the content you’re studying.

This design refresh also means many of our resources will look better on your Windows desktop. No longer do you have to manually look up passages because they were in a table that was converted to a graphic. Things like tables now display in the app like they should, enabling us to hyperlink passages within them. Images will flow better with the text, along with many other visual improvements.

Along with the interface refresh we have significantly improved the app’s performance. Scroll through text faster. Navigate menus more efficiently. Watch Resource Guide populate quicker. All around we’ve made the app better to help you study with fewer distractions.

Old Windows Desktop

Bible+ 6.0

New Titles

One of the biggest advantages of the Bible+ 6.0 Update for Windows Desktop is all the new titles you can add to your library. Our old app had significant limitations in its ability to display text, which kept us from creating resources with complex layouts. We now have the ability to display interlinear Bibles, text-wrapped images, and properly-formatted tables. The update also gives us the ability to make our resources more closely resemble what you would find in print.

With this update, you can now enjoy all the same resources that our iOS and Android users have been enjoying, including interlinear Bibles, Gospel harmonies, the BHS with Critical Apparatus, the Reformation Study Bible, and Tyndale Commentaries to name a few.

You will also be able to purchase hundreds of new eBooks that were not available on our old platform. So not only do our books look nicer, but you can build a more robust Bible study library, too.

Bible+ 6.0 with Internlinear

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Coming Soon: Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop

Posted by on 07/14/2015 in:

Last summer we released our big iOS update. Last month we released an even bigger update for Android. Who’s stepping to the plate next? Windows desktop. Later this month we will release Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop.

Like our iOS update, many of the improvements for Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop take place under the hood and will not affect how you use the app. That being said, we didn’t completely ignored how our app looks and functions. Here’s a quick preview of what you can expect with this update.

Look and Feel

One of the first things you’ll notice when you open the new Bible+ app is that it looks different. The look has been updated with a color scheme that better reflects our company’s branding, while flattening the icons for a sleeker look. Even though the app looks different, the way you interact with the app has not changed. This design refresh is meant to get the app out of the way so you can focus on the content you’re studying.

The design refresh also means many of our resources will look better on your Windows desktop. No longer do you have to manually look up passages because they were in a table that was displayed as an image. Tables now properly display in the app as text, enabling us to hyperlink passages within them. Images will flow better with the text, along with many other visual improvements.

Along with the new interface we have significantly improved the app’s performance. Scroll through text faster. Highlight & take notes more efficiently. Watch Resource Guide populate quicker. All around we’ve made the app better so you can study with fewer distractions.

Old Windows Desktop

Old Windows Desktop

Bible+ 6.0

Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop

New Titles

One of the biggest advantages of the Bible+ 6.0 Update for Windows Desktop is all the new titles you can add to your library. Our old app had significant limitations in its ability to display text, which kept us from creating resources with complex layouts. We now have the ability to display interlinear Bibles, text-wrapped images, and properly-formatted tables. The update also gives us the ability to make our resources more closely resemble what you would find in print.

With this update, you can now enjoy all the same resources that our iOS and Android users have been enjoying, including interlinear Bibles, Gospel harmonies, the BHS with Critical Apparatus, the Reformation Study Bible, and Tyndale Commentaries to name a few. If you’ve been using our interlinear Bibles and gospel harmonies on your phone or tablet, just wait until you use them on the desktop!

You will also be able to purchase hundreds of new eBooks that were not available on our old platform. So not only do our books look nicer, but you can build a more robust Bible study library, too.

Bible+ 6.0 with Interlinear

Bible+ 6.0 with Interlinear Bible

Coming July 20th!

Note: Your current Windows Desktop app will not automatically update to this new version. You will have to manually download & install Bible+ 6.0 for Windows Desktop from our website. This release will only work on Windows 7 and higher.

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