Colour me impressed with the ESV Online Edition… I’m still geeking out about it… They have put a lot of effort into the web development of this site.

The site is valid XHTML, they provide various RSS interfaces, including Bible in One Year feeds and various other daily devotionals, a Web service (SOAP and REST/HTTP-GET) interface for doing verse fetches), favelets, A Firefox search plugin, integration with OpenSearch initiatives such as A9.com, Javascript syndication, and even search-by-email! Talk about spreading the Word of God!

I also really enjoyed reading the Technical Introduction to the ESV Online Edition, which included a report of a usability study of their own and other bible search engines, expected behaviour and implemented behaviour, caveats of search ambiguity, how their whole bible is in XML and is transformed into XHTML, what they did for older browsers, popular bible book query patterns, and strangely enough, MySQL database definitions and PHP source code for viewing (not borrowing) of how their search works. I learnt a lot.

Wow… It’s so geeky, it almost makes me proud to be a Christian

Oh, and the translation itself is good too They even have the entire audio version available to listen to, and if you search on something, you can listen to the results too

Posted: 3 years, 5 months ago under Christianity, Internet, Reading, Software, Coding.
Comments: 2