Accordance Made Easy, Part 3

In the previous section, I explained how the "sole purpose" of the New Window palette is to open a new window containing whatever resource you select. Well, that's not completely true. If you look again at the New Window palette, you'll notice three buttons to the far right which do not open a new window at all. Instead, they add a new "pane" to an existing window. These three buttons are distinguished from the rest by a plus symbol.

In Accordance, you can add panes to a Search window which contain additional translations, reference tools (that is, any resource organized by verse reference, such as a commentary or cross-reference), or even your own User Notes. Here is an example of a Search window with several additional panes:

In this window, I have three parallel Bible texts: the King James, the New American Standard, and the Greek New Testament. I also have Calvin's commentaries, as well as my own Study Notes displayed at the bottom of the window. Imagine the window clutter I would have to deal with if I had opened a separate window for each of these resources! But by viewing them all in the same window, everything is kept neat and tidy. What's more, having opened all these resources as panes within a single window, they automatically scroll together without my having to do anything to synchronize them. Using panes is an incredibly easy way to get more out of your Bible study.

6. The Third Time's a Charm

We have already seen how easy it is to use the Amplify palette to jump right to the pertinent sections of any Accordance module you choose. But there's an even easier way to get more information about a selection of text: simply triple-click on whatever you want to learn more about. Triple-click on a word in a text with Strong's Numbers, and you'll be taken to the entry for that word in the appropriate Greek or Hebrew dictionary. Triple-click on an English word to look it up in your favorite English dictionary. Triple-click on a verse reference to look it up in your favorite commentary. By triple-clicking on the words or verses you're interested in, you can find out more about them without even having to make that short trip to the Amplify palette.

Why must you triple-click instead of just double-clicking? Double-clicking on a word merely selects it, according to standard Mac interface guidelines, so you must triple-click to invoke the various Amplifying shortcuts.

Triple-clicking to amplify to the most obvious resource can be done from any Accordance window. Try it--it's a real timesaver.

7. Sometimes, You Don't Have to Click At All

In Accordance, there are a number of situations where you don't need to click at all; simply passing your cursor over a word or item is enough to get more information about it. The information appears in the Instant Details Box, the plain palette located at the bottom of the screen. Here are a few examples of ways you can get information without a single click:

Pass your cursor over a word in a text with Strong's numbers to see the Greek or Hebrew word which it translates.
Pass your cursor over a word in a grammatically-tagged Greek or Hebrew text to view its lexical form, its full parsing information, and a basic English definition.
Pass your cursor over any hypertexted abbreviation in a Tool window to see what it stands for.
In certain tools with multiple authors, you can pass your cursor over an author's name to get his biographical information and/or his academic credentials.
Pass your cursor over any point in a Map window to get its elevation in meters and feet, as well as its Longitude and Latitude.
Pass your cursor over any point in a Timeline window to see the exact year. (Note: the Timeline feature is currently in development, and won't be released until later this year.)

Right now, I'm using Adobe GoLive to design this web-page and to manage the CMUG web-site, and like most programs from Adobe, it exhibits a complexity which can be absolutely bewildering! Half the screen is taken up with various kinds of palettes, and those palettes are laden with tabs, buttons, and draggable objects, most of which I'll never use. Without the book GoLive for Dummies, I doubt that I would ever have gotten off the ground with this program.

Yet the more I've worked with GoLive, the more I can appreciate what the designers were trying to do. GoLive, like most Adobe products, is literally packed with features, and it has been designed in such a way that those features are rarely more than one or two clicks away. The same can be said for most other high-end programs I've seen, such as PhotoShop, QuarkXPress, Painter, and the like. These are programs designed to be used every day, and rather than make the basic features easily accessible while hiding the more sophisticated tools, the designers of these programs must find a way to make every feature readily available, while at the same time doing their best to ease the new user's learning curve.

I may be biased, but I would say that Accordance is nearly as feature-laden as many of these professional-level programs. And because we too wanted all of the program's features to be readily available, Accordance does have its fair share of palettes and buttons. But as I hope this article has shown, Accordance is quite easy to learn and use once you've gotten a few basic interface concepts down. Once you realize that the ability to search is built right into most Accordance windows, and once you can distinguish between the part of the window which defines a search and the part of the window which displays the results of that search, you're well on your way to figuring out what all those pop-up menus and buttons are for. Likewise, once you learn to distinguish between the New Window and Amplify palettes, you'll know which one to turn to in any given situation. And finally, once you learn to use panes, become accustomed to triple-clicking, and start dragging your cursor over things to find out more about them, you'll begin to see things in the Scriptures that you never knew were there.

By grasping these simple interface concepts, Accordance becomes incredibly easy to use, and more importantly, the Bible becomes more accessible than ever before.


	Accordance Made Easy (Continued) More basic concepts for mastering Accordance Bible Software.

*5. There's Pleasure in Panes* In the previous section, I explained how the "sole purpose" of the New Window palette is to open a new window containing whatever resource you select. Well, that's not completely true. If you look again at the New Window palette, you'll notice three buttons to the far right which do not open a new window at all. Instead, they add a new "pane" to an existing window. These three buttons are distinguished from the rest by a plus symbol. In Accordance, you can add panes to a Search window which contain additional translations, reference tools (that is, any resource organized by verse reference, such as a commentary or cross-reference), or even your own User Notes. Here is an example of a Search window with several additional panes: In this window, I have three parallel Bible texts: the King James, the New American Standard, and the Greek New Testament. I also have Calvin's commentaries, as well as my own Study Notes displayed at the bottom of the window. Imagine the window clutter I would have to deal with if I had opened a separate window for each of these resources! But by viewing them all in the same window, everything is kept neat and tidy. What's more, having opened all these resources as panes within a single window, they automatically scroll together without my having to do anything to synchronize them. Using panes is an incredibly easy way to get more out of your Bible study. *6. The Third Time's a Charm* We have already seen how easy it is to use the Amplify palette to jump right to the pertinent sections of any Accordance module you choose. But there's an even easier way to get more information about a selection of text: simply triple-click on whatever you want to learn more about. Triple-click on a word in a text with Strong's Numbers, and you'll be taken to the entry for that word in the appropriate Greek or Hebrew dictionary. Triple-click on an English word to look it up in your favorite English dictionary. Triple-click on a verse reference to look it up in your favorite commentary. By triple-clicking on the words or verses you're interested in, you can find out more about them without even having to make that short trip to the Amplify palette. Why must you triple-click instead of just double-clicking? Double-clicking on a word merely selects it, according to standard Mac interface guidelines, so you must triple-click to invoke the various Amplifying shortcuts. Triple-clicking to amplify to the most obvious resource can be done from any Accordance window. Try it--it's a real timesaver. *7. Sometimes, You Don't Have to Click At All* In Accordance, there are a number of situations where you don't need to click at all; simply passing your cursor over a word or item is enough to get more information about it. The information appears in the Instant Details Box, the plain palette located at the bottom of the screen. Here are a few examples of ways you can get information without a single click: Pass your cursor over a word in a text with Strong's numbers to see the Greek or Hebrew word which it translates. Pass your cursor over a word in a grammatically-tagged Greek or Hebrew text to view its lexical form, its full parsing information, and a basic English definition. Pass your cursor over any hypertexted abbreviation in a Tool window to see what it stands for. In certain tools with multiple authors, you can pass your cursor over an author's name to get his biographical information and/or his academic credentials. Pass your cursor over any point in a Map window to get its elevation in meters and feet, as well as its Longitude and Latitude. Pass your cursor over any point in a Timeline window to see the exact year. (Note: the Timeline feature is currently in development, and won't be released until later this year.) *Conclusion* Right now, I'm using Adobe GoLive to design this web-page and to manage the CMUG web-site, and like most programs from Adobe, it exhibits a complexity which can be absolutely bewildering! Half the screen is taken up with various kinds of palettes, and those palettes are laden with tabs, buttons, and draggable objects, most of which I'll never use. Without the book GoLive for Dummies, I doubt that I would ever have gotten off the ground with this program. Yet the more I've worked with GoLive, the more I can appreciate what the designers were trying to do. GoLive, like most Adobe products, is literally packed with features, and it has been designed in such a way that those features are rarely more than one or two clicks away. The same can be said for most other high-end programs I've seen, such as PhotoShop, QuarkXPress, Painter, and the like. These are programs designed to be used every day, and rather than make the basic features easily accessible while hiding the more sophisticated tools, the designers of these programs must find a way to make every feature readily available, while at the same time doing their best to ease the new user's learning curve. I may be biased, but I would say that Accordance is nearly as feature-laden as many of these professional-level programs. And because we too wanted all of the program's features to be readily available, Accordance does have its fair share of palettes and buttons. But as I hope this article has shown, Accordance is quite easy to learn and use once you've gotten a few basic interface concepts down. Once you realize that the ability to search is built right into most Accordance windows, and once you can distinguish between the part of the window which defines a search and the part of the window which displays the results of that search, you're well on your way to figuring out what all those pop-up menus and buttons are for. Likewise, once you learn to distinguish between the New Window and Amplify palettes, you'll know which one to turn to in any given situation. And finally, once you learn to use panes, become accustomed to triple-clicking, and start dragging your cursor over things to find out more about them, you'll begin to see things in the Scriptures that you never knew were there. By grasping these simple interface concepts, Accordance becomes incredibly easy to use, and more importantly, the Bible becomes more accessible than ever before.

		David Lang is CMUG's Content Editor. David works as a developer of Accordance Bible Software, and lives in Maitland, Florida with his wife and four children.