Release Notes

Mar 13, 2021

• Added a "randomize" option in the manual review to allow for more effective learning
• Added a "Random Order Review" option in the menu which counts as a normal review but randomizes the order of the verses

Mar 1, 2021

• Fixed a bug related to using alternate prompts
• Made several instructor-oriented changes to editing verses, allowing better viewing of the text of the verse in various contexts

Jan 24, 2021

• Added an option to view your honor roll entries (simply showing how many reviews per 7-day period during the school year)

Jan 4, 2021

• Added a leader board option based on review count (last 7 days) rather than score (score is dependent on how many verses you have in your review and if you are reviewing regularly then you will have fewer verses and therefore a lower score)

Dec 22, 2020

• Fixed the high scores listing

Dec 14, 2020

• Fixed the timer that shows if you try to review again too soon after the previous review
• Changed the minimum hint level that will still allow you to mark a verse as complete during a review. (If you are showing too much hint then you will have to review again on that verse.)

September 22, 2014

• Made MANY changes to provide PHP 5.5 compatibility. Problems should be expected when so many changes are made, but please just report them as usual to the author.

May 26, 2014

• Fixed several minor bugs which never showed themselves to a user. Shy bugs. Now fixed.

May 19, 2014

• Got a rough start on allowing you to choose which verses you want with "Manual Review". It won't look pretty for a while yet, but at least you can choose the verses.

May 16, 2014

• Added 2 new options in the "Preferences" page:
  • What type of high score list you like (either normal or unique users)
  • How many rows of high scores you want to be listed (defaults to 10)

May 12, 2014

• Show an informational tip below the status line letting you know how often you have reviewed this verse. Just for fun.
• Working on allowing android devices to use by-heart.org -- it involves working with some of the internals, so if you end up seeing any difficulties please contact me asap. In other words, I may have broken something so if you see a problem let me know so I can fix it.

April 26, 2014

• Added a quick display of statistics at the bottom of the screen when you are scheduling verses. Now you can see how many verses, passages, freetexts, etc. you are working with. Just for fun.

April 21, 2014

• Fixed a bug with scoring passages after a reload. Before it was counting all passages and freetexts (not verses) as already reviewed after a reload and was only giving half credit for the score.
• The scoreboard only flashes every 2500 instead of every 500 now. It was a little over the top before... I may eventually change it to every 5000 or so - feedback welcome.

April 17, 2014

• There is a new menu option "Manual Review". It will allow you to review everything that is active in your schedule, but you won't be able to save anything.
  • This would be useful for studying for a test or just on a day when you have some extra time and want to review all or part of your verses
  • Since nothing gets saved you can feel free to just press page-down or click on next to go to the verses you want to review if you don't want to review all of them.

April 14, 2014

• Playing around with a new type of high score reporting. Instead of just reporting the top 10 scores now we report the top 10 unique users -- so if someone has a bunch of top scores they will only be reported once. Then off to the side there will be something like "+3" to indicate that this user would have been reported 3 more times except they had already been reported.
  • Eventually you will be able to choose what type of reporting you like (either unique users with the +x or the traditional way of reporting it, allowing repeated users in the top 10) but for now everybody is stuck with the new type of reporting...
  • Let me know what you think of this new way of reporting...
  • Good idea, Joshua.

March 27, 2014

• Allow combining of passages as well as verses (appropriately splits and recombines)
• Fixed errors with passage references when combining non-sequential verses

March 25, 2014

• Fixed the max score displayed for passages and freetexts

December 21, 2013

• Added the capability of ignoring the reference for a verse or passage:
  • When scheduling verses or passages, click on a verse and click on "edit item" - check the "Ignore errors while typing References for this verse/passage" option and press save
  • Now when you review this verse and come to the end of the verse instead of expecting you to type the reference it will just automatically be placed there as if you had read it.
• When combining verses into passages, now your review history for the least-reviewed verse will follow the passage rather than starting the passage as if you had never reviewed it.

October 9, 2013

• Fixed an error where the timer (if you try to review too soon) wasn't counting down accurately.

July 11, 2013

• Passages & individual verses are brought in according to the order they are in the Bible rather than all passages (in a relatively random order) followed by all individual verses.

June 28, 2013

• Fixed a bug related to review load. It may take some time to even out, but eventually you should find the number of verses you review each day becoming more and more even.

June 24, 2013

• Happy Birthday to my mom and brother!
• For the rest of you, this release allows you to import verses into the database yourselves for most versions. This means if you want to memorize a verse that I haven't put into the database it will get imported automatically and you can start right away rather than waiting for me to copy/paste it into place. THANK YOU to www.biblegateway.com for making this capability possible!
  • Unfortunately Biblica (the owners of NIV) will not allow us to import the verses automatically. It's curious because Biblegateway does all the work - all they have to do is give permission - but they still won't allow us. Every other publisher of all the other translations we use allowed it immediately, but Biblica has chosen not to allow us. (To be clear, this permission is not permission to USE the NIV -- we already have permission for this -- this is just permission to automatically import verses rather than having to type them in by hand.)

June 19, 2013

• Fixed a couple "off-by-one" errors which were causing too many interval repetitions. It wasn't a big deal (it just meant you reviewed an extra time or two before you "graduated" to the next interval) but now it's fixed. The next time you review you may find several verses "graduate" to get you back in sync...

June 7, 2013

• NEW LOGO! Created by our own, Christopher Bowers!
• Fixed a couple minor bugs related to learning mode (showed the wrong step number, sometimes did an extra step). I think learning mode is pretty close to finalized now.

June 6, 2013

• Made a small change to learning mode. Now if you are prompted to do a "quick repeat" because you made a mistake in learning mode, you will be able to choose EITHER to do a quick repeat at the same hint level OR to just go on to the next step. This is important because a typo shouldn't cause you to have to redo the verse, and yet before your only choice was to redo it or cancel learning mode altogether.

June 5, 2013

• Fixed the fatal error related in "View History". I was spelling the timezone wrong. BLECH!
  • This also made it so your email reminders were not sent - that should be fixed now too.

June 4, 2013

• Continuing to clean up little bugs related to learning mode. (I'm looking for ideas how to accomplish the same task without having it be so intrusive - ideas?)
• Added support to go back to original menus rather than the themed menus (see preferences)
• Changed the preferences tab organization a bit (created an "advanced" tab and moved several items there)

June 1, 2013

• Fixed several bugs related to Learning Mode
  • References couldn't be typed in. Oops!
  • Rounding errors in score.
  • Quick Repeat mode was never activated.
  • The correct button wasn't getting the focus sometimes (like "next verse" or "save review")
• Added a button under the Hint-Box to allow you to manually enter learning mode whenever you want
• User preferences now has a special tab just for Learning Mode. Probably you want to just leave it with the defaults, but it's there if you want to experiment with it.

May 31, 2013

• Working hard on a new "learning mode" and "re-learning mode". You may get some surprises. Feel free to write me if something looks totally wrong.
  • "Learning Mode" is what happens the first few times you learn a verse. It will ask you if you want to follow the recommended steps. If you cancel then it will act as normal. If you choose to follow the recommended steps then it will give you a decreasing hint and walk you through the verse several times.
  • "Re-Learning Mode" is what happens if you make several mistakes on a verse. Again it will prompt you and you can cancel, but if you choose the recommended steps then it will walk you through repeating the verse several times with various hint levels just to make sure you've really got the verse.
  • In "Preferences" the screen has been divided up into "tabs" now. The second tab is "Learning Mode" and it allows you to change how often "Learning mode" comes up and how many mistakes you can make before "Re-learning mode" comes up and etc. You can even turn them both off, but I don't recommend this...
  • Known problem: Right now if you have a prompt of the reference then even if you type it correctly it gets recorded as a "space". This may cause relearn mode to come up accidentally - just press "cancel" if it does...
  • Known problem: Learning mode doesn't seem to come up consistently on new verses. I'll keep working on that...

May 28, 2013

• Menus were supposed to be colored in a two-tone way using the themes, but lots of the color schemes weren't working. I've changed it to be a more standard color scheme (but still using themes). If you don't like the menus being colored according to the theme, let me know. Maybe I'll change it back if enough people ask.
• In "Schedule Verses" there were several pages with no menus. I think I've fixed all those.
• In "Schedule Verses" if you copied your scheduled verses in from an already prepared list that worked great in the very beginning. But if you did a bunch of reviews and THEN copied them in then it totally messed up your schedule. Now you can only copy new verses from a list if there are no other verses in your schedule.
• In certain situations you can get an "empty" review session. I put some explanatory text to help the user in these situations. (Hint: keep adding new verses every 4-5 days and you'll never run into this situation.)
• There was a problem with the database which made it hard to appoint "group administrators" to be able to add prompts or free texts for that group. That's been fixed.
• There were several problems with adding new verses to the database from BibleGateway or Crossway. They've been fixed.

May 27, 2013

• Menus are now colored/styled according to the theme you have chosen. Don't like the colors? Change 'em!
• Within 'Schedule Verses' you may now 'edit item' and adjust the prompts individually. This is a powerful feature and worth exploring.
• Within 'High Scores' you may now choose a verse from anywhere in your schedule rather than just the verse you are currently reviewing. And you can do this at any time rather than only during verse review.
• Within 'High Scores' a tie is now reported appropriately rather than randomly assigning one as one place and one as the place behind.

May 20, 2013

• Added a progress message to let you know when your review is being saved. This should prevent people pressing "Save Review" twice because they think it didn't "take" the first time.
• Got rid of a couple unnecessary error messages having to do with unstable data.

May 15, 2013

• Fixed bug where verses with apostrophes got the "REFERENCE: " displayed in the middle of the reference instead of the beginning of the reference.

May 13, 2013

• By-Heart is now official! You can go to http://www.by-heart.org rather than going to the funny QDK address. Do note the dash between by and heart -- somebody beat me to the name www.byheart.org and won't give it to me (won't even sell it!) even though they aren't using it... :-(
• I think I've finally got that bug fixed with the numbers being ignored. It was a doozy!
• When you save your review it will take you to the "View Review History" page so you can look immediately and make sure it saved.
• When scheduling verses you can now use commas in addition to semi-colons to separate references
• When scheduling verses there is now a concept of a "passage" (multiple verses which will be kept together as if they were a single verse) and "Free Text" (something besides a Bible verse that you want to memorize - like the books of the Bible or the dates on the history of the world timeline, etc.) If you want to combine existing verses in your schedule, just go into schedule verses, select the verses you want to combine, and click on "Combine."
• When you get to the reference during a review it will prompt you for the reference by putting the text "REFERENCE:" there. (This is still in beta and may come up at the wrong time -- if it does please send me an email and tell me which verse it occurred on)
• I think I've fixed at least one of the bugs that was causing the "unstable data" error. Please continue to report these to me (along with anything special that you may have done -- did you press ESCAPE during your review, did you press RETURN or SPACE or did you pass this verse and then come back to it -- that kind of thing) whenever the error occurs.
• Fixed bug with loading a new theme requiring a refresh. Now when you save your new theme it will show immediately.
• On the user preferences page I added a button you can press if your review gets "stuck". It will clean up the saved state and let you start from scratch again...

May 6, 2013

• Make the "since" date "sticky" so the last value you use will always be populated the next time you go into the form

May 3, 2013

• Added 3 new "Verses" to help memorize review points. Schedule new verses. Choose "Non-biblical" as your "version". Add "Misc 1:1" for the 10 dates from the timeline, add "Misc 1:2" for the books of the Old Testament, add "Misc 1:3" for the books of the New Testament. (For now you will have to remember those "references" -- I'll fix that later so you won't have to enter those references.)
• Optimized the race for smaller screens. Unfortunately you still need a minimum of 1200 pixels width
• Made the speed of the computer car and the smoothness of the user's care configurable through "Preferences"

May 1, 2013

• Start Your Engines!
• Scoreboard has been reformatted to fit on two lines with a box around it
• Some small bug fixes related to saving review sessions
• Fixed a couple minor bugs related to first-time signup (and particularly the first review after signing up)

April 29, 2013

• Added a title and cute little icon to the tab in the browser.

April 28, 2013

• Changed the menu structure, moved most menu items to being dialog boxes on the current screen rather than separate pages
• added theme support (see "Preferences")
• added capability of over-riding fireworks display with your own moving gifs (just enter the link) or to get rid of it entirely (see "Preferences")

April 25, 2013

• Added a navigation menu in the "View History" and "Preferences" and "Copyright" pages. The help still needs some work on both of them.
• Fixed the problem with apostrophes separating "words". I think. If the problem still happens, tell me what verse you're working on.
• Got rid of inadvertent space between top menu and pull-down - it made it hard to select from the pull-down menu
• Made it so the leaderboards always give at least one score from the current user so you know your own standing

April 24, 2013

• Added capability of saving your state each time you go from one verse to another. Now you can quit in the middle and pick up where you were later.
• Worked at making the save process more robust to prevent errors causing review sessions to not be saved.
• Got rid of the review count message when you save. Some people didn't like that number.
• Added capability of getting verses from lots more translations via BibleGateWay.com
• If your prompt has shown the reference then you get no points for typing the reference.
• When typing the reference you are now expected to type the entire numbers rather than just the first number (chance for more points!)

April 20, 2013

April 20, 2013

• Provided a new "summary" view when looking at review history - less confusing.

April 19, 2013

• Don't forget to send me (by email) your ideas for prompts for each verse. Just think - you'll be famous for decades to come as the author of the prompts!
• Simple leaderboard for the current verse and for an entire review session
• FIREWORKS! Look for 'em!
• Menu option added to view copyright statements

April 18, 2013

• When you get to the end of a verse you are automatically moved to the "next verse" button so you can just press ENTER to go to the next verse.
• Changed color of flashing score to green
• Added a link to view review history (see in the Options menu)
• Whole new look to the main review page. NOTE that keys 1-9 do NOT activate hints anymore. You must use the new buttons.
• Perhaps fixed the double-login problem. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU STILL HAVE TO LOG IN TWICE!
• Added display of release notes (you're looking at it!)
• Fixed sending of email reminders for first-time recipients

Roadmap for future changes to ByHeart

Bugs

• When verse is changed without finishing the current one during game mode it messes up the display
• When learning mode comes up while you have the race up, must stop the stoplight countdown until dialog closed
• If in learning mode, cancel the race
• If any hint, cancel the race (or at least don't ever save that race)
• For head-to-head, load a new race on each new verse (maybe each new rep?)
• Numbers on references often don't respond correctly - they just get ignored. If you still run into this problem, let me know!
• Quotes in freetext mess things up. (Maybe in verses as well?)
• You can't delete free texts that you added even though you just added it - it says you don't have privilege
• ViewHist doesn't properly report passages and freetexts
• Personal best in the scorebox doesn't show passages correctly
• History times are recorded in local time instead of gmt and then converted
• Going to quick-review mode should be by percent rather than (or in addition to?) absolute number of errors. If you are on a 5-word verse as compared to being on a 100-word passage...
• In user preferences the car-speed sliders are not intuitive - if you go too fast then it goes back to the default, but it's a funny range there. It should be a checkbox instead.

Important

• Allow changing of email address and/or password
• Allow learning mode to be adjusted (most important to turn it off) for a specific item even if by the config it should still be in learning mode.
• Option to be reminded of username and/or reset password if you forgot
• Add link to full wiki help system from menu
• Automatically import verses that don't exist in the database if someone schedules it.
• Ask Biblica again if they will give permission for NIV2011 from BibleGateway
• Implement the option to not require reference to be typed (or at least treat it differently from an error perspective from the verse text itself)
• Allow option to enter your own prompts or choose a particular prompt for a particular verse (i.e., don't use the prior verse if you're at the start of a passage or something)
• Do a repetitive review automatically to help people learn it (go through 5 times the first time with lowering levels of hint, then the next day 3 times - something like that)
• On the View History, (1) Change the title to "Review History" and (2) Report on the quality of the review (average accuracy and average time)
• When combining verses into passages, keep review history of the least reviewed item rather than starting from scratch again.

Fun

• Start Your Engines!
  • Report who wins
  • Make the computer speed a configurable preference (as well as user-car smoothness vs speed)
  • Allow to save the timings from a particular race and race against your friends
• Create the concept of "coins" or something based on the number and quality of reviews and number of verses learned and etc.>
  • Allow users to "buy" new vehicles for the race or "pimp your ride"
  • Allow parents/teachers to input rewards that you can "buy" with a certain number of coins (trip to go get ice cream with Dad, Mom will make favorite meal, get out of doing dishes for a night, etc.)
• Implement some kind of messaging/chat capability (maybe batch email to a whole group?)
• Leaderboard (partially completed)
  • Allow a faster time on review to get some bonus points
  • Allow setting up of a test online (special review session per group)
  • Show leaderboard on its own menu with per-group options
  • Allow entering a reference and getting the high scores for that verse, regardless of whether you are currently reviewing that verse or not
• Get a nice-looking graphic to pretty up the front screen and headers. (Do you have an idea?)
• Style the rest of the screens with the jquery-ui themes already available
• Allow sharing of top scores on FB or G+
• Allow a preference to use the previously styled menus rather than the new, themed menus.

Later

• Develop an adaptor to download the verses directly into your brain
• Allow editing of scheduled verses (without deleting and re-adding)
• Put in an option to "give me a new verse right now" (next on schedule)
• Allow users to set up their own review intervals
• Allow passages to be added rather than individual verses
• Allow reference entry to be disabled by preference (or perhaps per verse?)
• Allow full-word typing mode if people prefer to type the whole word
• Allow people to choose group membership so as to facilitate other teachers using by-heart without my administrative work
• Allow groups to be edited via UI and not just mysql
• Show a summary of verses/passages/freetexts and how many in each interval when scheduling verses
• When reviewing a verse have an info box telling how many times you've reviewed it and which interval you are using
• If prompted to enter quick-review mode because of mistakes, add an option that is "cancel learning mode and go to the next verse" and clarify the current to be "cancel learning mode but stay on this verse"
• Differentiate between errors on the reference and other errors in the verse in terms of whether someone goes to learning mode or not
• When reviewing, give some indication of how many times you've reviewed it, when the last time you reviewed it, how often you are reviewing it, how long until the interval changes, etc.