Accordance 11: Now Available, and First Impressions

Accordance 11 is now available.

I’ve already highlighted some of the new features, as well as posted about the new Collection upgrades.

I plan to write more soon in review of the program upgrade. For now, I point you to this excellent post from Accordance, describing the “Top 11 Features of Accordance 11.”

Okay, okay–I’ll post a couple more quick looks inside now, too. The overall layout of the program hasn’t changed as much as Accordance did when going from version 9 to 10. But there are two major new features that immediately make themselves indispensable, and better aid the user in accessing resources:

1. Info Pane

With a Bible text open, click on the familiar “Add Parallel” button and select the top “Info Pane” option. You then see this (click or open in new tab to enlarge image):

Commentaries, cross-references, thematic topics, and critical apparatuses from your library all show up instantly. And–this is especially cool–by hovering over the book cover of a commentary or apparatus, you can see the content. The Instant Details in the image above (the pane at the bottom) shows the contents of the BHS apparatus for Exodus 20:1, just by my hovering the cursor over the apparatus image in the Info Pane.

2. Research

I thought Accordance 10’s “Search All” feature was fine–it wasn’t perfect, but it still very quickly helped you comb through all your resources at once for a given search. But the Research Tab is now faster (no idea how they did that), and the search results are (a) more clearly organized and (b) easier to work through. It looks like this when I look up Bonhoeffer:

I’ll post more again soon. I’m already making regular use of the new features above in my weekly sermon preparation.

Thanks to OakTree Software, which allowed me to beta test Accordance 11 and has given me a review copy. More to come.