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 😀
“It’s good as reminding me of my duty as a Christian to spread the words of The Good News. I’ve tried to be more active actually, but my other matters sometimes overlap it, even overlook it more often. So forgive me God.”
Thanks for the link.
[…] .gnpcb.org/product/1581346387″>Battlezone Bible, Yeah, it’s cheesy, but it’s an ESV. I love it — best translation ever. Not to mention it fits in my tr […]