Yesterday, we announced the release of version 8 and I listed some of the major new features. I plan to go into these in more detail in the coming days, but right now I want to focus on the "little things" which were added. I'm talking about those minor features and enhancements which don't usually make headlines, but which often make such a meaningful difference in your day-to-day workflow that they more than justify the cost to upgrade. You may not yet see the value of the INFER command and you may not care about Favorite Workspaces, but I'm willing to bet that everyone will find something in the following list to get excited about.
Entering a Verse in Word Mode: In version 7, when you would enter a word search in verse mode, Accordance would present you with an alert explaining your mistake and asking if you meant to do a word search. You would then click a button and Accordance would instantly change the mode and perform the search. But what if you made the opposite mistake: entering a verse reference in word mode? Accordance would just present you with the word list for that text, but would not give you an easy way to switch to searching by verses. In Accordance 8, as long as you enter a clear verse reference (that is: book name, chapter reference, colon or period, and verse reference), Accordance will automatically switch to verse mode and perform the search.
Finding Exact References in Tools: If you search the Scripture field of an Accordance tool for a Scripture reference such as Genesis 1:26, Accordance will find every reference which includes that verse (such as Genesis 1, Genesis 1-11, even multiple book references like Genesis-Deuteronomy). That's a nice feature when you want it, but what if you want to narrow your search just to include explicit references to Genesis 1:26? Until now, you could do it, but it required a rather awkward workaround. Now you just place the equals sign (=) in front of the reference to find that exact reference. If you select a verse reference in a Bible text and then amplify to a Tool, you can specify that you want to search for that exact reference by holding down the option key.
Open Sesame: Ever tried to open an Accordance resource from the Resource palette, only to get an error message because you had selected some text somewhere and Accordance is trying to search the resource you chose for that selected text? Of course you have! Now Accordance will present you with a new error message which asks if you just want to open the tool rather than search it for the selected text. No muss, no fuss!
Live Grow: When you resize a window, the text in the various panes now rewraps while you drag the resize box. This may seem like a little thing, but it makes it much easier to judge when you have the window at the size you want.
Go To Box Pop-up menu: The Go To Box in the bottom right corner of Accordance Search windows now features a pop-up menu from which you can choose the book you'd like to jump to. This may seem like a little thing, but when you're dealing with an extrabiblical corpus with which you're unfamiliar, it nice to have such a convenient listing of book names.
Go To Box Contextuality: While we're on the subject of the Go To box, another nifty little enhancement is that you can now enter contextual references. If you're in the book of Genesis, and you want to scroll quickly to chapter 10, just tab down to the Go To box (hit tab twice) and type "10." Previously you would have had to type the book name. Again, it's a little thing, but if you're a clumsy typist like me, the fewer the keystrokes the better!
Default Font Size When Printing: All these high-resolution monitors are great, but text on screen just seems to get smaller and smaller. If you're like me, you find yourself viewing text on screen at larger font sizes. But then when I print, I have to bump the text back down to a size more suitable for printing. Accordance 8 now lets you set a default font size for printed text in the Print Settings. Again, it's a little thing, but it enables you to view text on screen at one size and print it at another.
Wider Text and Tool Pop-up Menus: Another minor change, but we've widened the text and tool pop-up menus so that they will no longer clip the module name.
At this point, I'm not anywhere near done, but I'm afraid if I list too many more little enhancements in this post you'll miss something really cool. So enjoy playing with these new enhancements today, and I'll tell you about some more tomorrow!
# posted by David Lang @ 9:34 AM
