The initial release of the word study feature was definitely a minimum viable product release. There were a lot of things I held back on doing because I wanted to get a release out quickly. I also was hoping that getting a minimal release out and using it (and hearing from people using it) would help inform feature and UX decisions. I think it definitely did. Although we don’t really do normal version numbers, you could probably call this release Word Study 2.0—or at least Word Study 1.5.
We’ve also made several quality of life improvements to the omnibar and to search.
Changelog
Word Study Improvements
- When looking at a definition or etymology of a word, you can now click any Strong’s numbers to study that word in a new tab. For example, ágamos is composed of á (meaning “not”) and gámos meaning “marriage.” When you are studying ágamos, clicking on the Strong’s number for either of those two root words will take you to study that word. Screenshot Tweet.
- You can now type a Strong’s number in the Omnibar to study that word. For example, typing G25 in the omnibar will take you study the word “agape.”
- Admittedly, not many people have Strong’s numbers memorized (though I confess I accidentally memorized that one when first making the word study feature), but this seems like it could be handy for when you come across the Strong’s number elsewhere (like another website) and want to study it quickly.
- When you are looking at other places where a word occurs (the occurrences section), the word translated from the Greek/Hebrew word you are studying will be bolded. IE, if you are studying agape and you expand the occurrence in John 3:16, the word “loved” will be bolded.
- Word studies for common words (like “and”) should now be around 30% faster.
Omnibar and Search Improvements
- You can now skip the space between the omnibar shortcode and the address for most things. You can also use a period instead of a space. So for example, instead of typing wcf 3 in the omnibar, you can type wcf3 or wcf.3 and it will figure out what you mean.
- Typing just the omnibar shortcode now takes you to the resource’s table of contents. This is handy if you don’t know exactly what part of a document you’re looking for. So if you want to go to the Westminster Confession and look at the table of contents, you can just type wcf in the omnibar to be taken straight to the confession’s TOC.
- In most situations now, if you type a chapter number that doesn’t exist into the omnibar, you’ll be taken to that resource’s TOC. For example, the WCF has 33 chapters. If you typed wcf 35 or wcf 65536 into the omnibar, you’ll be taken to the WCF’s TOC. Previously typing stuff like that resulted in a sort of bizarre behavior, so this is a bug fix and a usability improvement.
- In most situations now, if you type a chapter number that doesn’t exist into the omnibar, you’ll be taken to that resource’s TOC. For example, the WCF has 33 chapters. If you typed wcf 35 or wcf 65536 into the omnibar, you’ll be taken to the WCF’s TOC. Previously typing stuff like that resulted in a sort of bizarre behavior, so this is a bug fix and a usability improvement.
- The omnibar has become so intelligent at this point, we’re thinking of renaming it. Something related to skies (because it works in the cloud) and nets (because it catches your ideas in a big net of smartness) seems ideal. Let me know if you guys have any ideas.
- Setting search sorting to occurrence now correctly orders on things other than the Bible.
Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue on commentary pages where verse headings were missing and share buttons looked misaligned.
- Fixed a bug that would occur if you searched for something and then narrowed your search to a book of the Bible (without first narrowing your search to a Bible or commentary).
- Fixed a bug that was preventing “references to this” from showing.
- Fixed a production issue that could sometimes cause search filters to become unresponsive.
- Fixed some issues with transliterations of Greek/Hebrew words having funky typography (transliterations are where you spell a non-English word with an English spelling).
- Fixed a spelling error in the info/help section for the Word Study feature—also added a link to a helpful Ligonier article on word studies.