Very buggy and clunky to use – Verbum Catholic Bible Study Review

These comments apply only to the Verbum iOS app and not to the desktop app. For Catholics, Verbum has the most comprehensive library of Catholic resources. Unfortunately, the app is so buggy and clunky to use that you will quickly become frustrated and give up on the app. What’s the point of having all these Catholic treasures right in your pocket and not to be able take full advantage of them? The search capability is basically useless. This is the main complaint. The Topic Guide isn’t even linked to the Catholic Topical Index. Searching Church Fathers is impossible. Just try to do simple search for what Irenaeus said about Baptism. It can’t be easily done. Everyone to whom I have recommended the app have dropped it when they discover this. Here is partial list of bugs and requested features that I feel would greatly improve the usability of this app. I am using the App Store review process because FaithLife has been unresponsive to requests to fix bugs and improve the app’s functionality. Bugs 1. iOS built in spell checker works for user added note titles but not for the body of the note. Misspelled words are underlined in the title but the misspelled words in the body of the note are ignored. 2. Text selection for highlighting or copying only works intermittently. When it stops working the app must be restarted. 3. I never see any information under the news section on the app’s Home page. It only appears when the device is in airplane mode. 4. An internet connection is required to be able to use the tools and resources. Downloading a resource appears to have no actual benefit when there is poor internet connection. Opening the resource, going to another verse, searching, etc simply doesn’t work. This tells me that the app is still trying to connect to FaithLife servers instead of working locally on the device with the downloaded resources or notes. This applies to viewing and adding user notes too. For mobile devices we need to truly have the ability to work with our downloaded resources and notes offline. 5. Highlighting a resource creates an empty note. When one highlights a reference one does not intend to add a note. All other ebook readers on the market correctly separate these functions. 6. User documents are organized alphabetically when opening from the main menu but are randomly sorted when opened using the add tab feature. 7. The characters of user note titles gets scrambled especially when switching from Verbum to another app then back to Verbum. The only way to fix is to restart Verbum. 8. When viewing a resource (on left side) and document (on right side) in split view and trying to edit a note through the note marker in the resource nothing happens. The corresponding note contained on the right side of the split view doesn’t open up and made ready for editing. Verbum used to function this way. 9. Deleting a note from a document isn’t easy. When trying to slide the note to delete it, one often ends switching tabs instead. 10. When viewing notes in full layout the entire note is not displayed. The entire note is only displayed after opening the note for editing then closing the note. Features 1. Add keyboard shortcuts like every other app for iOS has. 2. Add bulleted and numbered lists for user added notes. 3. Add ability to buy resources within the app instead of having to go to the web page. Other bible study apps have this capability. 4. Add ability to add hyperlinks to resources other than bible verses within user added notes. 5. It would be very useful to be able to search for words, phrases, concepts etc. within a resource from the resource itself and have the items found highlighted. This is similar to searching text in MS Word for example. 6. The look up function should also link to iOS’ built in dictionary, and to all dictionaries that are part of the user’s library in addition to Strong’s reference. It seems like the app defaults to the built-in iOS dictionary when there is no internet connection. 7. There is not an easy way to quickly view all of the highlighted words, sentences or verses in a resource like one can in Kindle or iBooks. A summary of highlighted text should be able to be opened in a tab or split window. 8. Within the Library view there should be a way to filter resources by type like Bibles, Commentaries, Dictionaries, Bible Studies, Church Fathers, eBooks, etc. There should also be a way for the user to create categories, add resources to those categories then filter by categories. 9. Add ability to export user documents, notes, highlights to pdf. 10. Add the ability to search user documents/notes. 11. When clicking on a link, the quick view/pop up window doesn’t display all of the text. One has to jump to the reference to see all the text that is being referenced. The quick view should show all of the linked text. 12. Recently customer service responded to feature request asking that the feature request to be submitted to a specific email not found within the app itself. Why can’t submissions for requesting certain titles be published, new ideas, technical support, typos etc. be built into the app so the process of submission can be streamlined. Again this is another example of how clunky the app really is.
Review by gravste on Verbum Catholic Bible Study.