Walking it out today

How do you make web text the “Right” size?

Bryan — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:47:00 +0000

You can't tell from bibleicio.us but i've been (re-)learning all the in’s and outs of web design. A lot has changed since the HTML 1.0 days when I got started and while I did geeky backend enterprise database number crunching stuff I lost my edge for the latest greatest in design.

While working on my day job a wonderful fundraising e-store. I've known for a while that my font sizes were different between firefox, ie, and safari. Now my layouts fairly flexible so I haven't worried about it. Now I'm trying to take things up another notch so I went to the web in search of the BEST WAY TO DO THINGS.

Here is what I found and what I decided. I hope it helps those aspiring web designers out there wired Christians and those horrible heathen webmasters as well (sarcasim for the humor impared - just a disclaimer for the bible all the time crowd this is a tech post)

Here's a quick summary of what I know about specifing font-size using CSS.

Problems. Reasons why one size doesn't fit all.

Browser inconsistency.
All of the top browsers Safari, IE 5/6/7, Firefox – not to mention the others Opera, Konqueror, etc, have different default sizes for body and header text
Operating System differences. Mac, Windows, Linux handle fonts differently and make different assumptions about computer screen resolutions.

Windows makes the assumption that users have 96dpi resolution and also has a Large font size setting for 120dpi screens. I used to use the Large Setting but it was auto-scaling all of my graphics while web surfing making for some really jagged and pixilated garbage (especially for graphics as text at small point sizes)

Mac pretends that everything is at 72dpi and converts to the actual screen resolution behind the scenes. Users have an option to set their actual resolution under preferences.
Actual Screen Resolutions are all over the map.Visitors to my side have 50% at 1024X768 with 15-20% on 800X600 and the rest on high resolution some of them wide screen all the way to 1680X1050
Users can change the default font size. Browsers allow users to specify thier preferred size and scale it up or down depending on their preference. Of course how this actually works varies slightly from browser to browser.

CSS Options. Our choices for sorting this out

Points - This is what we think in, use in word processing 10-12pt for body, 9pt for fine print. Problem: you never know what they will be on a given browser, OS
Pixels - Usually the number of dots on screen. (IE7 and opera have a zoom feature). Firefox allows user settings to scale text. Problem: IE Users can’t adjust size for their high-resolution monitors
Percentages - Relative measure to the default font size. Problem: The default font size can be all over the map.
Em and Ex - Relative measure based on the size of the characters of the container element (or the default font). Works very similarly on all browsers. Problem: this can get very confusing with a complex layout and require many more style sheet rules – one to size headers inside a certain div and one to size headers outside the div.
Keywords - xx-small, x-small, small, large, x-large. Relative sizes that the user can scale up or down. Problem: only a few sizes and most of them are too large. "Like being slapped by an eye chart"

Conclusion {font-size: 12px} {font-size:75%}

This is far from the definitive answer as web design has been and is a moving target. But I can say this is what works for me.

Pixels for fixed portions of layouts. If you specify the width in pixels you should probably specify the font in pixels as well. This would be most commonly used in sidebars, headers, ect. This allows tight layouts with the text to match the size of your graphical elements.

Percentages for elastic or fluid portions of layouts. There are other portions of your layout that flex. Elastic layouts use em’s as the measurement to allow adjustment if the user changes their font sizes. Liquid layouts allow users to resize their window and allow for wide screen and narrow window viewing – they generally use floats or percentages to specify widths. Using percentage font sizes for these layouts will give you the most consistency across browsers, allow the user to adjust their font size, and eliminate any confusing inheritance or nesting issues.

Also check out the eye chart method at ALA especially if you are dealing with older browsers.

Bringing the bible up to date - Bible Web Services

Bryan — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:49:00 +0000

Bringing the bible up to date. A Listing of Bible Web Services

Web 2.0 is the rubber meeting the road of all of the "web services" work that has been going on the last decade.

A brief explaination of web services:
A web page/web application is a way for a person to interact with a computer to buy something or search a database, etc.

A web service is a way for one computer to talk to another computer to buy something or search a database, or retrieve information on a particular topic, etc.

Web services got early traction in intranets and "extranets" linking up the computer systems from one company to their suppliers and even wiring together applications between departments in big companies but really didn't make a dent on the internet until recently.

Then came RSS
The syndication technology that allowed people to subscribe to someones blog. So now my blog or news reader can talk to your blog. Google and Amazon were some of the first large companies to start offering an "API" or web service interface to their information. All kinds of startups started offering api's along with actual pages to do things like bookmarking/tagging, photo sharing, calendars, etc.

So what does that mean about the word of God? Sadly, not much.
Almost all of the good Bible websites are still under the come visit my webpage and I'll sell you more "Jesus junk" model. A true bible web service could be a way for the Christian community to extend the reach of the word of God out of the Bible websites where is locked right now.

Fortunatly there are a few notible exceptions -

There are some notable exceptions - the ESV was the first major publisher to offer a web service. You can make 500 requests per day for free or get expanded use for $100 a year.

Several other hobbiest/companies have put together bible web services using public domain translations, such as the old standby KJV or the WEB bible.

Including -
WebserviceX.NET
Biblewebservice
Francis Shanahan's Bible Webservice

The ESV definately sets the bar while Michael Sumerano's Biblewebservice contribution takes a 2nd place.

So what does this mean? Cheap, easy to use bible web services are the necessary plumbing for really cool Web 2.0 applications. Bibleicio.us for instance needs full text searching and proper paragraph breaks and line breaks in it's display. To do that "right" and easily, I should use a web service, or if none is available solve that problem and make it available as a service.

That way the programmers out there could easily do cool things like make a hover over on your blog that poped up the full text of any bible references you post. A web service could allow you to easily switch to different translations/languages.

Putting my money where my mouth is.

I'm a plumbing guy, so I guess I'll start tackling this problem. I want to swich Bibleicious over to use ESV or possibly Sumerano's service (doing SOAP in php will be new territory for me). If I go the ESV route, the next step will be to create a WEB version with the same API so you can easily switch between them. With Sumerano someone needs to pay the bills - so I either need to help him pay for hosting or port his solution over to php so I can host it myself.

Random Update

Bryan — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:42:00 +0000

Just wanted to give a little heart beat as to what is going on.

I am starting up a new local small group on the Holy Spirit, I wrote about in on my church's blog the scoop.

I am helping a friend start up a blog for his ongoing ministry http://www.realdisciple.com/
Exciting coming soon page right now. But expect good things to come.

But you are probably wanting to know what about the future of Web 2.0 Christianity. For bibleicio.us I am going to do the following:

Opensource the current code on sourceforge or somewhere equivalent.
Immediately branch that and start a new version thats a good deal more structured.

I need the following people with the following giftings.

1) People who will make bible tags. required skills Read Bible and surf the web can relate the two. Perhaps some of the one year bible bloggers could step in.

2) A PHP developer who would like to help me on the real version (the current is just an alpha proof of concept)

3) A graphics designer who can help with the extremely minimalist look of the current site.

I really don't want this to just be my pet project. The goal is and will always be to help build a community of wired delicious christians. Thanks for all of you who have stopped by caught the vision and encouraged me.

BTW I do know there are several other similar sites. Does anyone out there know of any that are open source / community developed. We might be better suited to merging our efforts rather than building several semi-functional sites.

Mmm... Delicious Christians

Bryan — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:43:00 +0000

I got a comment from Neil that really encouraged me. He is working on finding and connecting "Delicious Christians" - christians that tag. His note was simple - let me know your thoughts about synergies. I posted back a few rough thoughts and suggested that we blog about it back and forth.

First my goal and I believe Neil's too is to support the body of believers in the online arena.
So building up a network's of Christians such as Delicious Christians and venue's such as Bibleicious are just ways of making opportunities. Opportunities for the Holy Spirit to do what He wants through the lives and thoughts of believers.

Christains who Tag - I'm one and DeliciousChristians is a whole network of them. If you look at my posts, you'll notice that I most often tag for work and there are a lot of links to php and web development topics, things that are not necessarily Christain but a big part of my life. Looking at the overall list I see a strong general bent to spiritual topics with the geek sprinkled in.

What I don't see - myself included are a ton of bible tags. I think this is because as much as we talk about the importance of scripture, in reality it's not the lens that we use to view the world. The challenge I issue to Delicious Christians is simple, try relating everything you view online to scripture and share with us some of those 'links' and see how it changes you and changes others.

Looking at Bibleicious in it's current form things are very impersonal - it's easy to find a verse but not to find one that has a current comment, or get a feeds of the latests commentaries/links. Looking over the path to beta, I had some plans to help address those weaknesses. It appears to me that Delicious Christains solves some of those issues for me.

~~Recruit 20-50 regular users/community members who are intentionally tagging links~~

See my Challenge above and consider yourself hereby recruited ;) But seriously, I see Delicious Christains - those early adopters of tagging, to be the core group. Sharing our interaction with the God of Scripture could (should?) be one of the main ways that we hang out, interact, and learn from each other. Bibleicious should make it fun

We need Profiles, -

User home pages - link to blog, list of bible tags, personal info etc.
List of Users - link to homepages, etc

We need a full tag cloud, -

Delicious Christians is currently a lists of delicious posts by dates (with links by poster). Bibleicious is a list of delicious posts indexed by bible verse

We need a cloud that aggregates all of the tags used by Delicious Christains and/or used in conjunction with the bible verse tags

We need a standard -

Okay this is semi-optional but I've proposed a tagging standard for bible verses Eventually, I hope to get more sophisticated and add folksonomy equivalents. This is what I'm using to drive Bibleicious and I can think of a dozen other reasons why this is a good thing.

What do you think Neil? I want to build the profiles, clouds, and standard that should facilitate all kinds of interactions and feeds. I want those to be sharable (stored on delicious, available via rss,atom,javascript badge, etc.) between bibleicious.com, deliciouschristians.com, and the individuals and their blogs that make up our community.

What do you guys think. If you aren't already a Delicious Christain, you should be. Get saved if you need to and then go bug Neil on his blog or add Indychristian to your network in delicious.

Back from Vacation

Bryan — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 17:34:00 +0000

I just made it back from Vacation. In agreement with my wife, I did not spend any of it blogging. I'll get some pictures up here soon or in one of the other blogs, (We went to the island of Kauai in Hawaii.)

That was in celebration after we finished a few things. As I am now a VLI (Vineyard Leadership Institute) graduate and have completed the re-write of our Church website.

The good news for you is that my focus has shifted back to Bibleicio.us and I only have 2 major projects (not 4 that I'm working on).

Quiet.. Too.. Quiet

Bryan — Mon, 08 May 2006 03:58:00 +0000

It's been quite on my blog - but there has been a lot going on with bibleicio.us.

First off, Tim Bednar is doing some design work for us. Besides the creator of e-church, he has his own web design company, so the site will get a much needed face lift.

The Bibleicio.us community is also growing organtically. I just started a new web group at my church, we started up a blog over at grapepress.wordpress.com Several of them are being introduced to the world of blogging for the first time. I am excited about having some of the same people online and offline to participate in this project.

Techno Babble -

I have started working with a great new php framework called CakePHP . It's like Ruby on Rails but you still get to keep the number one web development language and it's massive online library of example code and scripts - ie php. Several of the things that I'm learning, using there will be a huge help over at Bibleicio.us.

Why Tag the Bible?

Bryan — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 22:39:00 +0000

When emailing back in forth I got this question -

I still can not figure out why I'd spend time tagging the bible?

Good question, there are plenty of online and offline commentaries, software products, studies, etc. For the non-professor, scholar, average joe what value is there in tagging the bible?

Much in every way!

While those discussions of exegesis and hermeneutics are valuable, it's you who has to live out your spirituality.

Instead of describing the bible as a scholarly exercise, try linking biblical truth to your online life such as -

"This happened yesterday to me and I'm blogging about it / I read about it in another blog / I read it on the news / I read an article." ....

"It was good/bad/sad/interesting/hard" ...

"It Reminded me about Psalm X or Proverb B or Book Chapter Q"

"How it's really comforting / challenging / useful / true / difficult "

The Benefit is this: You learn to look to the scriptures to help you understand you're everyday existence - you're relationship with God and his universe.

The Jewish way was to meditate on the scriptures day and night, in the midst of everyday life and use them to frame their perspective of the world around them.

Benefit two - blessing others

Next when someone is reading Psalm X or Proverb B and say's what does this mean? How is this relevant? They have a page full of links including yours that act as examples to help them engage the God of the bible in their everyday life and figure out how that particular scripture is useful.

My hope is that a community tagging the Bible in this way will be transformed by a deeper understanding and engagement of God and the Bible in their everyday life.

The "T" word

Bryan — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:38:00 +0000

I've been adding a few links to bibleicio.us lately and I have been tagging them with the T word.

everything I do so I cringe slightly. First of all, It's such an inclusive word that it's almost not useful for tagging.

Secondly, is the baggage - so many people automatically assume that by using the word "Theology" you are talking about something esoteric, non-practical, and divorced from everyday reality. Since my whole hope is for a community that teaches each other to engage the scriptures deeply and practically that's not the type of perception that I want to promote.

But all I'm really trying to say by tagging something theology is it is a thoughtful discussion about beliefs concerning God. We all believe something, even if we don't think about it our actions demonstrate what we actually believe, practiced theology is identifying and comparing these beliefs with the ideas coming from scripture and scholars of scripture, finding the differences and deciding what to do with them.

Jason Clark has a good post that explains better than I could about why we should bother with the "T" word.

New Thoughts

Bryan — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 07:48:00 +0000

I like new thoughts. The last few days have been full of them.

You could use the fancy word paradigm shift. So here are some for you broken out by categories that may change your mind, maybe even some behavior

Life, Theology - Kingdom of God

My biggest shift came as a result of a Holy Spirit encounter back in 1997 that made me re-think all of the passages of the bible that say the words spirit or breath (that's a good chunk of the bible).

A More recent shift involes a good chunk of the gospels is "The Kingdom of God" A phrase I use to just read over, and go on. Fortunantly for Christendom George Eldon Ladd didn't do the same. He unpacked that phrase and the essence of Jesus's teaching in a way that makes you re-read the gospels.

Basically the Kingdom of God is his active reign or rule.
It is where God's will is active in our hearts, attitudes and morals, in our physical body through healing, in the spirtual relm over demonic forces.

The Good news is that the Kingdom of God is not just a in the future by and by type of thing. It is something that Jesus proclaimed as arriving 2000 years ago. It is something that we as Christians get a taste of right now. You don't have to simply endure to the end and make it to Heaven, God is active and exercising his rulership right now.

But, it's not fully here as the present evil age and the Kingdom of Satan are still here. So there is an overlap and we contantly live in the "now and not yet" Kingdom. That is why all the paradox's - Why we are sinners yet are a new creation. Why there are healings but still people suffer and die. Read about it. Think about it. Tag about it.

Marketing, Economics - longtail

It started with this observation by Clay Shirky - Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality.
It was further clarified in a wired article. When people have freedom of a lot of different choices you don't get a bell curve with a lot of people choosing whats in the middle. Instead there are very clear favorites that quickly slopes down from the toop into the long tail territory that most of the choices live. This explains so much of business and life, why so many things are not equal. It also points out the potential of the long tail as most of the attention so far has been on the hits or favorites.

DESIGN - CSS inspiration

Sorry you just have to look at this one. For those who don't know CSS is a technology that seperates the actual web page text from the colors and look and feel of the website. Why should we care - the CSS Zen Garden gives us over 800 different examples. So now if a few of those web designer's would give me a few stylesheets and graphics for Bibleicio.us

HOME PAGE

New face lift for bibleicious home page no more scary under construction.

NEW PROJECT for Work

Sorry it's hush hush so I can't say anything until its close to being done.

Escape from Court

Bryan — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 21:11:00 +0000

I made it out of the Court today. Fortunately I wasn't one of the parties but one of the Jury. It was a little out of the ordinary as there were 3 parties being represented and 3 lawyers, meaning 3 sets of witnesses and 3 cross-examinations and 3 rebuttals and at least 4 times the amount of work making it a 3 ring circus.

In the end 2 lawyers changed up on the third and booted him out. With him out of the way they made it to a settlement and let me and the rest of the Jury free.

Mind you this took 2 and a half days to accomplish, but I guess Justice was served in this civil case. The Judge Rodgers definitely gets my vote as his jolly attitude, hard-work, and respect for all parties involved was evident.

I'm happy to make it out for a jaunt to Austin with my wife this weekend. We're focusing on thankfulness so I just wanted to be thankful for my trip. Thankful for our court system and Judges like Rodgers. Thankful for our new office we are moving into this weekend.

Confession

Bryan — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 05:00:00 +0000

We're doing a study on prayer in my small group. This last week was on confession, with a little leading from vcc study notes and Psalm 51 we dived right in to discussion.

It was a reminder of my value for brokenness. In a world that chases so far after success and appearance, humility is despised and pride is exonerated. But our savior is the one who died on the cross and washed other's feet. He came to serve and not to be served, Jesus said I only do what I see the father doing - He needed the father's guidance and direction. He knew better than to try and do anything in his own strength. That's what brokenness is: willing to be taught, willing to listen, willing to be wrong, willing to obey God. It is the prerequisite for a clean heart. Another aspect of this is realizing that you can't do things alone.

I came across John 20:23 , I must have overlooked it before. I generally picture forgiveness as a direct transaction between you and God (via Jesus' Blood) or you and another person. But here Jesus gives tied to the gift of the Holy Spirit an authority that was the dominion of only God alone - Forgiveness of sins

Now I realize that I could combine this with the doctrine of apostolic succession and walla we have the Catholic Priest taking confession in a booth and forgiving or not forgiving sins.

But it seems to me that God alone is still the only one who forgives, only now he does it via the Holy Spirit which is in all believers. But it does point to active participation in the forgivness of sins by other christians not the one on one transaction I usually envision.

I'll chew on the full meaning of it for a while but In the meantime I'll start asking God who needs to be forgiven and have forgiveness spoken over them. I'm sure there are plenty of people who need to be told their sins are forgiven.

Bibleicio.us plan - path to Beta

Bryan — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:18:00 +0000

So I've got the alpha, the rough draft version, running over at http://bibleicio.us/bible

So what's next - try using it and try living it. I'm making a general announcement to my Church this week, and I've already spoken to our 20 Somethings group. I'm hopeful that a few of the small groups will take it and run with it, let their group reflections and discussions of the bible spill over into cyberspace.

This is test week for VLI so I won't have as much time to devote to this as I would like. I'm finishing up my required reading on Paul's letters so hopefully I can stop and add a few nuggets to the site while I'm at it. That's what I would reccomend you do to if you are interested, just try putting a few delicious bookmarks in here or there - try making a direct connection to a bible passage in the blogging you are already doing, and tag things you are already reading with specific bible chapters whether the author makes the connection or not.

After trying it out, if you have any thoughts on how things should be changed or improved post a comment on this blog here.

BTW the overall plan is something like this:

Alpha Phase - Proof of Concept
~~Get online Bible working.~~
~~Search and pull in delicious tags for each book and chapter.~~
Start tagging scriptures and get feedback from early users
Beta Phase 1
Recruit 1-3 additional developers - Javascript, php, AJAX, CSS, etc.
Recruit 20-50 regular users/community members who are intentionally tagging links
Focus on the Gospel of Mark, getting 4-10 links for each chapter.
Start to establish community, determine additional features, work through conflict (in love) and develop a moderation system.
Main Page - get rid of coming soon stuff.
Page Layout and Design - CSS master, anyone, anyone, mueller?
About/Help - describe intent, purpose, statement of faith, tagging guidelines,etc
Recent Posts - right now hard to tell if anyone is using it, added to main page
Word/Phrase seach of Bible
Version 1 of Moderation system for links that appear on Bibleicio.us
Bug fixes
Beta Phase2
Solidify site and community norms, add features to enhance community, Improve Bible section of website with better display and more translation options.
Paragraphs and formatting of bible - OSIS support? (would give alternate versions as well)
Alternate Translation - ESV API support
Bibleicious tagging button that prompts and verifies book and chapter when posting to delicious.
Filter by Tags - filter the links by the non scripture reference tags ie sermon, application, blog, etc for a particlar Chapter.
Tag cloud on main page of non scripture reference tags included in bibleicious
User home pages - link to blog list of post, personal info etc.
List of Users - link to homepages, etc
Technocrati style tags - add reference to bible passage and automatically get a link posted on bibleicious.
Adjustments to Moderation system as needed
Bug Fixes
Biblicio.us 1.0 !

That's my brain dump. Let me know what I missed/other great ideas you might have.

Bryan — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 23:38:00 +0000

There is a trap - especially for the bloggers.

It's not having enough time in the closet. If all our thoughts and reflections are in the presense of others our motives get corrupted and our relationship and reward from God gets lost. Mat 6

If all of our "insights" are cashed in to build our blog and online reputation, than we have already recieved our reward. If I really want the Holy Spirit to change me, I have to spend time being gut level honest in the "secret place" with him.

There is always 2 ways to fall of the horse, we can become retreat inward as monks or wear ourselves thin and turn into fakes. Jesus did neither of these, he gave everything he had sharing with others, but then retreated away to pray and reflect and spend time with the Father.

Posting Instructions - Official Abbreviations

Bryan — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:14:00 +0000

Here are the offical instructions for Posting links to Bibleicio.us

Bibleicio.us uses del.icio.us bookmarks. If you don't already have a del.icio.us account register here.

Simply post a link to your del.icio.us favorites and then tag it with the related bible verse.

Tag Format: "first 3 letters for book dot Chapter" so the tag for Genesis, Chapter 1 is Gen.1

Colons and spaces can't be used for tags so we will use periods or dots as seperators instead.

If the book starts with a number include it as well as the first 3 letters so for 1 Corinthians 15 you would tag it 1Cor.15

The only exceptions are Jude which conflicts with Judges and Phillipians and Philemon.
For these:

Jud Judges
Jude Jude
Phil Phillipians
Phm Philemon

These are also the abbreviations used in the bibleicious url so Genesis Chapter 1 is
http://bibleicio.us/bible/Gen/1

Right now you can't tag by verse only chapter. I haven't decided whether to do all Chapter or verse or allow a mix of both.

When you go to that chapter or any verse in that chapter your link will show up on the right. Note that my site uses caching so it might not show up immediately.

The following is a full list of the books of the bible and thier abbreviations

OT
Gen Genesis
Exo Exodus
Lev Leviticus
Num Numbers
Deu Dueteronomy
Jos Joshua
Jud Judges
Rut Ruth
1Sam 1 Samuel
2Sam 2 Samuel
1Kin 1 Kings
2Kin 2 Kings
1Chr 1 Chronicles
2Chr 2 Chronicles
Ezr Ezra
Neh Nehemiah
Est Ester
Job Job
Psa Psalm
Pro Proverbs
Ecc Ecclesiastes
Son Song of Songs (Song of Solomon)
Isa Isaiah
Jer Jeremiah
Lam Lamentations
Eze Ezekial
Dan Daniel
Hos Hosea
Joe Joel
Amo Amos
Oba Obadiah
Jon Jonah
Mic Micah
Nah Nahum
Hab Habakkuk
Zep Zephaniah
Hag Haggai
Zec Zechariah
Mal Malachi

NT
Mat Matthew
Mar Mark
Luk Luke
Joh John
Act Acts
Rom Romans
1Cor 1 Corinthians
2Cor 2 Corinthians
Gal Galatians
Eph Ephesians
Phi Philippians
Col Colossians
1The 1 Thessalonians
2The 2 Thessalonians
1Tim 1 Timothy
2Tim 2 Timothy
Tit Titus
Phm Philemon
Heb Hebrews
Jam James
1Pet 1 Peter
2Pet 2 Peter
1Joh 1 John
2Joh 2 John
3Joh 3 John
Rev Revelations

Sorry no Apocrypha right now, but I do have all of the WEB texts so it would be easy to add Tobit or Baruch if requested.

Bibleicio.us is Alpha!

Bryan — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:58:00 +0000

I had an eventful day.

First off Bibleicio.us is now semi-functional
1) Go to your del.icio.us account and add a tag like so joh.13 .
2) Then go to the page on bibleicio.us -- http://bibleicio.us/bible/joh/13
3) ToDa, your bookmark will show up to the right of the Bible

Yes, its still ugly. I am going to clean up the HTML and then attack it with some CSS.

I'll follow up with a post tommorrow about the official abbreviation system. It will basically be the first 3 letters of the book with a dot seperator and then the chapter. That is nice and easy with just a couple of exceptions like - Judges and Jude and Phillipians and Philemon. Currently the site has weird two letter abbreviations that came from the World English Bible folks, I'm going to standardize them into the 3 letter format and then publish the spec tommorrow so don't go tag wild on the alpha overnight :)

Special thanks to Richard Ericksson for showing me how to quickly add delicious info to my site and introducing me to magpie.

Also, I find I'm playing catchup - Zack already has tagging on his Bible, plus he already knows Greek as well.

Take a look, let me know what you think. What features do you want to see added?
Do you think that chapter tagging is appropriate or should we do verse?

It's always something - Step 1 almost complete

Bryan — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:18:00 +0000

Any project has it's obstacles and this one has to do with configuration issues.

My host is godaddy.com , I've had them for less than a month so this is definately not an endorcement. Unfortunately their apache works a little different than the apache on my laptop and dev server. So I've been learning how to do all kinds of .htaccess magic.

All I wanted is for people to go to http://bibleicio.us/bible/Ge/1/1-12 for Genesis 1:1-12.
Not only could I not set an arbitrary file to be processed by the php engine, I also couldn't get the extra path info. Fortunately godaddy does support mod_rewrite and with a little help from Brian behlendorf I was able to get it working.

Go ahead and try it out. It is very rough and unfinished. You will note that phpScripture won the contest. I did get phpBible working on my laptop, but the xml parsing was so slow it sometimes took more than 30 seconds to execute and the scripts timed out. We definately can't have that on a high volume website so I opted for the simpler of the two.

The space on the right is where all the comments should go. If there are any CSS guru's out there let me know I am going to create classes for everything but I would love a cool layout.

Killing a community one Rant at a time

Bryan — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:07:00 +0000

Last post I talked about a great online community. But let's face it. Conflict will happen no matter how we try to appreciate our diversity.

Initially we will be genuinely thankful for the different perspectives people bring us and grow in our ability to see God and his creation better through their eyes.

But eventually someone will "cross the line" whatever our line is and we will respond. Jon just posted about it. And as Scott pointed out there is a fresh example over at PhilBaker.net. I don't belief it is lack of conflict that should separate us from the world but how we respond in conflict. And it's not easy otherwise it wouldn't be a powerful witness that we are truly Jesus disciples. John 13:34-35.

The problem that is uniquely online is twofold. First there is an attitude that I can do whatever I want because it's not real and I'm not face to face. The problem with this thinking is that there really are real people at the end of all those cable runs. When you are ranting you are not only staking out a stance against a "position" but also against those people who have the position (explicitly or implicate, politely or confrontational). It's easy to forget the people when all you are looking at is a web page.

The second is anonymity - a lack of consequences. Blogging helps a little because those posting (though not commenting) at least have a fixed, semi-permanent presence in the community and there are some consquences to that persona.

For me I dread the can of worms that will be unleashed when Christians start sharing deeply their faith and values on the internet. It's a land mine of conflict from both in and outside the fold. My only answer right now is you need a "healthy, messy, community" - which is acknowledging that conflict will happen but hoping that overall people are much better of for being involved.

I ran across this sig the other day on Slashdot. It gives me a little hope because I think the sentiments could just as easily be applied to Christian Online Community

"The problem with Wikipedia is it is only possible in practice not theory."

Community + Bible + Tags + Blogs = Revival?

Bryan — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 15:43:00 +0000

I talked with pastor Andy today about the Bibleicious project. We talked a lot about online community, what it was and what it wasn't.

We definately agreed that it wasn't a replacement for offline "material" community. But it could/should be an extention of the relationships we have in everyday life. I've happily connected with these other Vineyard Bloggers as I we have something real in common, even though I haven't met or seen most of them. As a group you guys seem connected closely with your church communities and not retreating to some online escapism or alternate "fake" persona. Your posts and blogs are just an extension of your daily reality, projected into a public forum.

So here is the idea. We combine the bible and del.icio.us giving us a new media that uses tags to connect scripture with our online lives - blogs, news, music, art, devotions, etc.
In doing this we start to see the world through the lens of the bible and we start to see the relevancy of the bible to our daily lives.

It's Relevancy that is fueling my passion, because I really think a real community, relating to each other in love, through the scripture, and on the web could demonstrate the reality of the gospel in a powerful and unique way. For people who don't see how the bible is relevant we would give them dozens of real, current, personal examples verse by verse. Then we show them how the verses themselves become links between people- a way of connecting blogs, thoughts, beliefs, and souls. It brings the Ancient Scripture forward and contextualizes it to the coming blog generation, letting them encounter God in the public forum where they naturally do most of their searching and decision makeing.

So I'm busy building the technical arcitecture and will give you updates on that, but my real goal is not another website, but a loving, healthy community that will be a powerful group witness of Jesus to the coming genereations. If you get it drop me a note. If you don't you might want to let me know what or why. I hope to get a proof of concept up and running in the next few weeks

First Steps

Bryan — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 17:13:00 +0000

Last night I spent a lot of time looking at various bible translations, code, and opensource projects.

Step 1 is getting a good bible on the site. I'll be happy to link to gospelcom or anyone one else that's got good content, but no one is really offering true RSS style syndication or a real api so I'm going to have to host it on my site to get the type of seamless user experience I am looking for. It looks like the World English Bible will be the first translation with the launch. After an education in modern XML based bible translation and scholorship. I am in the process of evaluating opensource projects before I start from scratch. Right now there are two front-runners:

phpScripture - (formaly called phpBible) I especially like the way the verses appear as url's in a del.icio.us like fashion, but It loses a lot of the formatting and punctuation.

The other is, oddly enough the new phpBible
phpBible - from the onlineBible project. This is a much more sophisticated project that uses the OSIS format. Though ominously the home page demo isn't working

FYI,
The SWORD project has some great stuff, but unfortunatly their heavy JAVA emphasis doesn't work well with my hosting plans or expertise, so we will stick to PHP. (.NET and PHP are enough without throwing JAVA in the mix)

Dusting off a Dream

Bryan — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:29:00 +0000

Last week I decided to dust off an old dream.

I had first thought of it in 97 or 99. But I just let it sit there in my notebook and in the back of my head. I could say it was because it was ahead of it's time, but it is just as likely that I was "busy" and too intimidated to really pursue it.

Last week it came back. I came across a couple of manefestos by Tim Bednar, One on tagging changing your congregation and the the overall 20 tech trends .

Then God give's me a one-two punch with a quick update from Tim Bulkeley, who as been working on the Postmodern Bible Commentary and also played around with tagging on his BATSIS blog.

I was starting to see everything was in place. Back in the 90's, I wanted to have an online bible that would link to all types of content - reflections, devotions, commentaries, sermons, current events, poetry, art, etc. The problem was, the infrastructure really wasn't in place. But now it's '06 and we have blogs, and we have tagging. Why not roll a website together that used the bible along with del.icio.us tags to do an online blog bible - bibleicious!

Such as site would help us see biblical application and devotion in practive and even help teach us the art of identifying it as such and relating it to chapter and verse. This kind of Living Bible could be a doorway to powerfully communicating the power and relevancy of scriptures to the next generation.

So that's the basic idea. I've got a whole lot more that I'm going to say and do about this. The Why's and the How's