Why should Wycliffe create yet another Bible App? One would think that existing Bible Apps could be used. Similar to the challenges with the publication of printed Bibles, there are cultural aspects of a Bible App (color, layout, usability, etc) that can be significant and affect the acceptability of an App within a culture.
There are also substantial technical challenges to overcome:
- Distribute Apps without internet access
- Use microSD, Bluetooth, and Hotspot–think viral!
- Bundle text, audio, and custom font into a single App
- Display complex scripts
- many minority languages need special character support that isn’t supported by the OS
- Support older devices
- Some Bible Apps only support Android 4.0 and up. There are still phone used and sold that are made with older hardware and run Android 2.3.
- Protect sensitive users
- No GPS location captured or network access required
- Search using special character input
- Publish incrementally
Actually, we are not creating another Bible app. Scripture App Builder will be used to generate many Bible apps. Each one will be specific to a language and can be published to an App Store and found when someone is searching for their language!
Note: This was originally included in our Winter 2015 Newsletter. Some of the content was expanded.
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