Tech Forum

Hi everyone,

So I wanted to find a way to have access to the scriptures in pdf format on my iPod Touch that was easy to navigate. I don't have any coding experience and my computer is too old to use the iOS SDK anyway, so I went the webapp route. I don't really have any web development experience either, so I've sort of mashed together a crash course in HTML and CSS and the iUI interface project and this is what I came up with.

Let me quickly run down why I think this is a valuable project and then what the current limitations are:

Value
1. I grew up with the 1981 edition of the triple combination so I am very comfortable with it. It is hard to scan digital scriptures, but these make it very easy to find the verse I am trying to find (I think I can get to some verses faster than search, especially if I don't remember the exact phrasing).
2. These would be useful if you are teaching new members or investigators because you can still find the page number to direct them.
3. I suspect that there are people who simply prefer to read the scriptures this way. It is purely psychological, but I think it sometimes is less powerful to read the scriptures in just computer text format. It will be especially useful if people set page goals for themselves of how much they want to read.

Limitations
1. I'm pretty sure this will only work with Safari and Mobile Safari. It was designed for Mobile Safari. The main problem is that I call the pdf pages with an <img> tag, which I'm pretty sure is non-standard, but Safari handles it well. Any other file type was too big to be practical. I have only tested it on a 5 year old iBook G4 and a 1st Generation iPod Touch.
2. You obviously lose search, cross-reference links, and a hundred other neat features by doing this, but it is another tool for another purpose.
3. I've only done 1st Nephi and a little of 2nd Nephi. I wanted some feedback before going too far.

So I'm wondering if anybody has any thoughts about this. Does it seem like a worthwhile project? My real hope is that it would seem worthwhile and that someone who actually knows what he/she is doing will do it right (like a free native app). I may finish it and then try to use PhoneGap to make it an app, but I haven't really looked into it.

Thanks for the help!
-Scott

I think this would be a worthwhile project. I too prefer the layout of the printed scriptures and find it much easier to find scriptures I am thinking of in this format. My only concern is that the screen size on the iPod touch may be too small to effectively use this layout. I think this would be a great app for the iPad.