We are excited to announce that an update is available for Study The Word for users on Windows Phone 8 devices. This update provides features such as: inline verse navigation, bookmarks, live-tile support, and in-app purchase options, which include verse of the day and text-to-speech functionality. A lot of under-the-hood work has gone into this release.

Inline Verse Navigation

Prior to this update navigating to a verse would simply place you on a page which contained the verse you were looking for. While this worked, this structure was very rigid and required the user to still ‘find’ the verse on the displayed page. Now, with inline verse navigation, a verse navigated to will always be displayed as the first verse on the page. Display is now more dynamic, and it doesn’t leave the user having to do more work.

Bookmarks

We are extremely proud to introduce one of the most requested features, bookmarks. We wanted to make sure this feature was simple and intuitive. Simply tapping along the left edge of a verse will ‘bookmark’ it, which adds a bar along the left side of the verse, denoting it as bookmarked. An additional tap will remove said bookmark. Simple. Navigating to the main page of the application will show a list of all bookmarks by date. This feature will evolve as time passes and we are able to implement more of the ideas we have in store.

Live Tile Support

Tiles now support Windows Phone 8 flip-tile functionality. A tile will flip to show the last verse you navigated to, or the verse of the day if you have that option enabled. Additionally, tiles now support all three sizes that are available on Windows Phone 8.

In-App Purchase Options

Now, on the Windows Phone 8 platform, Study The Word has a few in-app purchase options. The ‘Verse Of The Day’ option, adds verse of the day functionality, providing a daily, inspirational verse to the application home screen. The ‘Hear The Word’ option, adds text-to-speech functionality, providing a method for verses to be read to you aloud.

What is Study The Word? Study The Word is a simple, but useful, Bible application for Windows Phone. It is designed to be a quick reference to the bible for those looking to partake of the word, on the go.

Features simple navigation, verse text resizing, multiple English versions available via free download, and saves recent history. Due to copyright restrictions, only public domain translations are included. Bible versions like ‘New King James Version’ and ‘New International Version’ are copyrighted works.

An update for Windows Phone 7 devices will be coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!