Overview
I’ve been a WORDsearch user since 1991, when my very first Bible Study software purchase was an early DOS versions of WS, which I picked up at a CBD Warehouse Sale. Ahh, those were the days… Although I currently also have Logos, QuickVerse, Bibloi, The Word, Bible Analyzer, Bible Explorer, and a few other odds and ends installed on my computer, WORDsearch is still my primary Bible Study program. This is not to say it’s perfect. My familiarity with it tends to make me both a strong advocate for it, and a strong critic of it. As well as I know its flaws, however, this is probably the most important piece of software I own.
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Current Version
The current version (WS9) was released in December, 2009. The prior version (WS8) had been released in November 2007. While WS8 had been a significant functional upgrade from the prior version (WS7), WS9 is more incremental, with the most notable new features involving window management improvements (multiple sync groups, multiple sync modes, dedicated reference target window assignment), and the inclusion of an ANDNOT operator in the search query tool. I have posted a fairly thorough elaboration of WS9 changes here. As of this writing (29 January 2011), the current build number is 9.0.2.109, released on January 18, 2011. This is the third major version of WORDsearch released since the merger of WORDsearch Corp with Epiphany Software in July, 2003 (WORDsearch 7 was released in November 2004).
Background
Prior to the WORDsearch/Epiphany merger, WORDsearch was a mature STEP-based product aimed at preachers, teachers, Bible Study leaders and other non-specialists needing a high-quality viewer and search tool for electronic Bibles and supporting library resources. Epiphany was marketing a low-end but apparently influential Bible Study package called Bible Explorer (BE), which was designed around web browser technology, and Internet standards such as HTML and XML. Bible Explorer is built on top of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer framework.
WS7 appeared to be largely an attempt to port the functionality of legacy WORDsearch onto the Internet standards-based framework of BE – a not entirely successful effort. WS8 was a continuation of that effort, which also took further advantage of the inherent web capabilities of the BE framework to successfully incorporate Internet resources into the main Bible study application. With WS9, WORDsearch seems to be content with what has and hasn’t been brought forward from the STEP versions, and is moving ahead in a different direction.
There still remains important functionality available in earlier, STEP-based versions of WORDsearch that never made its way onto the new platform, mostly related to the unique Ref List objects that were used for all types of Bible viewing, searching, and search results management. I long harbored hopes that the newer WORDsearch Parallel Bible and Verse List window capabilities could be combined or integrated to provide a similar tool, but that seems unfounded at this point. My WORDsearch Versions Functional Comparison page provides a fairly comprehensive look at the differences – from a functional perspective – between the last four major versions (v.5, v.7, v.8, v.9), as well as the current version of Bible Explorer (v.4), which continues to be made available – but which is now free, and serves as a kind of functionally-limited entry-level version of WORDsearch.
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High-Level Assessment
One oft-cited strength of WS9 is in its usability – the interface just lends itself to comfortable productivity. WS9 is also ahead of the pack in terms of integrating user-created content. Verse lists are flexible in their layout, and support annotation smartly, and they integrate better with the rest of the study environment in version 9. Other than the Bible annotation “Notebooks” introduced in version 8, the program does not support user-created “books” (even though pre-Epiphany versions did), but instead focuses user content into HTML documents, which can be created using an integrated text editor, or created in external editors and word processors. It’s not a perfect solution for user-content, but still, WORDsearch is far and away the best program I’m aware of at letting users put the output of Bible Study work (studies, lessons, sermons, and other documentation) at the center of the program, where it belongs. No one else seems to even be taking this aspect of program functionality seriously, which puts WORDsearch in a class by themselves in this area.
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WORDsearch has offered superior searching speed all along, but after Logos improved their searching speed with a new indexing function in their version 4 release last year, WORDsearch responded by introducing an indexer of their own in an interim WS9 maintenance release. Other aspects of the searching technology, however, are far from best-in-class, and I’m not particularly impressed with it. The ability to search user docs from within the program for either words or Bible references is a very neat feature, but the documents must be in HTML format. Without that limitation, this could be a blockbuster application design feature.
To make a generalization, window management capabilities – from linking & syncing, to desktop layout and navigation controls, are in the upper end of the scale within the overall Bible Study software market (at least with the improvements in version 9), though this is a complex area of program design, and any approach is bound to leave somebody grumpy. Improvements could easily be made by extending to all window types the full range of capabilities (e.g. docking) available to most types, and by improving the history navigation controls, which are among the worst I’ve seen. Overall, window management design errs on the side of user flexibility.
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Most of the major English Bible translations are available, along with several more obscure versions. Side-by-side comparisons can be very effectively pursued in several formats (including Greek & Hebrew texts). I have not found a Bible Study program that does as good a job of providing effective means of viewing versions in parallel. This is clearly a strength of WORDsearch. Original language capability is not the primary focus of WORDsearch, but a reasonable collection of lexicons and other original language supports is available for the English-first audience, often accessible via Strong’s tagging. This includes tagged basic and interlinear Greek and Hebrew texts. There is no “analytical” search capability (e.g using lemma, particular forms of words, or morphological constructions), though several interlinears are tagged with morphologies. This will be a limiting factor for many serious Bible students. Another glaring omission is the lack of any LXX.
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The user annotation system for Bibles in excellent; the system for non-Bible books is adequate in basic design, but very poorly implemented in term of how they are stored – the same goes for highlighting capabilities, which would be great to use, but the wise user should have no expectation that his highlighting or annotation work will be available for retrieval at a later date. The built-in text editor is rudimentary, and lacks important features such as auto-save. WORDsearch is competent at exporting text, including offering Turabian-style citation options, but like a lot of products in this arena, it seem more enamored of 90′s-era fads, like one-button copy/pasting to a word processor, than giving users on-the-fly formatting options, which would be much more useful.
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The scope of available books is quite extensive (including very limited 3rd party publishers), though Catholic and Orthodox resources are virtually non-existent except for the Early Church Fathers collection as edited by Schaff, the Collegeville Bible Commentary, and a few Bibles (the RNAB, the NJB, and a version of the Clementine Vulgate based on a butchered text that has been floating around the Internet for years, in which Chpt. 3 of Daniel is cut-off at verse 22, and Chpts. 13 & 14 (Susanna & Bel in Apocrypha-speak) are missing – a version of the Challoner Douay/Rheims was available at one time, but has been pulled from market).
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At a street price of $35 from CBD, the WS9 Thompson Chain-Reference Library is very affordable, and quite well outfitted. It is, without a doubt, one of the very best Bible Study values on the market. You can spend enormous sums for their bigger packages, however.
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Recommendation
Though not without shortcomings, I still find WORDsearch 9 to be an extremely useful program. I’m glad I have alternatives when I need to do analytical or complex searching, but its ease of use alone makes it worth the low entry level cost, and its integration of my own Bible Study documents makes it extremely valuable to me.
Recommended – especially at the lower-priced offerings – for non-scholars looking for a Bible Study program to help produce output, be that in the form of lessons, sermons, articles, handouts, etc.
I have a hard time recommending spending many hundreds of dollars for the premium packages until I see the Bible Study software market moving toward a place where users can expect their investment in electronic books to be resistant to changes in the marketplace. That’s a fancy way of saying that ebook formats need to become portable, if not standardized. Biblical reference works are, without a doubt, far easier to use in electronic format – especially formats that are tightly integrated in an environment like WORDsearch – but you need to weigh the value of that improved study and productivity against the risk of finding yourself, at some point, with an expensive set of ebooks that can no longer be used by whatever the current computerized study programs are on the market at the time. Maybe someone out there will support the CROSS format of ebooks for as long as any hardback copy of the works would be readable, but I have my doubts about that. On the other hand, WORDsearch has just very recently announced an agreement to co-develop their books for the BibleWorks platform, which is great news for both platforms. If these two companies can find a way to work together to combine their strengths somehow, it would be a real blessing to Bible students everywhere, and make WORDsearch a far better long-term risk.
Nevertheless, I think the next version of WORDsearch will be critical in terms of mitigating the risk of CROSS books becoming obsolete in the near future. If WORDsearch can avoid the temptation to try to be all things to all people, fix its few key weaknesses, and extend its market leadership in its strength area of knowledge management, it has the potential to break through in this very competitive market, and become one of those few products that the others need to be measured against. I hope they do.
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Version Compare
Click the link below to open the WORDsearch version comparison chart in a new window.
WORDsearch Versions Functional Comparison
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WS8 Tweaks
Below are some tweaks I’ve employed to improve my WORDsearch working environment. Feel free to use them, modify them, or distribute them. They come without any kind of warranty, though if you email me or leave me a comment here, I will try to answer any questions.
For a description of each download, and instructions for use, click on the green arrow above the download link.
[...] W. Gillis is working on what promises to be an in-depth review of WORDsearch 8. As part of this ongoing project, he has published a very interesting chart [...]
John, thanks for the documentation on color schemes. One question: In everything I’ve seen in drawing programs and online, the S & L numbers in HSL are percentages that do not go above 100. Yet the numbers in the INI file commonly go above 100 for L & S. Can you clarify how to convert a standard HSL number (with the 100-max limit on S & L) into WS format?
Reply to Ken[...] WORDsearch [...]