In my review of Logos 4 for Christian Computing Magazine, I was critical of the move away from the traditional Reverse Interlinear. In 4.0 they replaced them with a new format. As you can see below there is a big difference.

You will notice in the above screen shots, the new Reverse Interlinear are displayed in a small window at the very bottom of the screen and far away from the text. The nice thing about this is that when you clicked on a word above the same word in the Interlinear was also highlighted. So despite being far apart you could still easily follow which word above was being referenced below. However, I still like the older version with all the information together in a larger window and accessible at a glance. I say that because in the new way there are only a handful of words on the screen. But in the old way you could see many.

You might, from reading this, think that the above screen shot is of the old Reverse Interlinear. But it is actually of the newest format which is available in the latest beta version from Logos 4.0 (Logos 4.0c beta 1).

In the newest version of the Reverse Interlinear, Logos has made them customizable. Notice below the Display drop down box. Click the different elements you wish to display in your new Reverse Interlinear. I love this. I don’t like having the transliterated versions of the words. I also do not use Strong’s Numbers. So removing those three elements is a big help. Finally, if you want to go back to the simple display of the text, just click on the Default button at the bottom of the menu.

This will not be available publicly until version 4.0c is released. If you don’t mind running beta software, you can get it now by downloading the beta update.

In my recent review of Logos 4, I gave it a mixed review. I called it “worth adding to your arsenal” but also said that it was “missing a few of the previous version’s functionality.”

t it is getting better. I just installed the latest beta version of Logos 4.0a which is available for download now. In it there are many new features. Let me mention a few:

First, there is a new ability to change the background color of the open resources. You can see this is the screenshot below.

Also, notice that in the drop down there is the option to show Bible Text Only. The screenshot shows this. It removes all the extraneous things to get at just the text. No titles or footnotes.

Another new feature is the ability to customize the Ribbon on the Logos 4 Home page.

One of the most criticized features was the ribbon. Users said it was too big and they wanted to be able to remove things. For example, it contains the above “Choose preferred Bible” feature. I like to do that because I go back and forth between the ESV and HCSB as my preferred Bible. But I don’t like using lectionaries very much. So I removed the lectionary and the recent reading lists. The way to do this is click the customize button on the bottom left of the Home Page as seen to the left.

I also have to say that there are a bunch of things that Logos 4 does that Logos 3 could not do. In a recent Logos 4 forum post, Philip Spitzer – one of the more advanced users – lists some of them. You can see from his list there are quite a few things. Click the link to read more about these, but here are some he mentions.

Sympathetic Highlighting
Savable Guides
Customizable Guides
Syncing
Multi-monitor Layout
Reading Lists

Another advanced user and Logos MVP, Thomas Black added Automatic Updating. I would add the ability to put notes on a Guide.

The single greatest improvement in the beta is performance. Logos 4 is not nearly as sluggish in version 4.0a beta 3 as it was in the pure 4.0 release or even the current public 4.0 SR7 release (SR stands for Service Release, I believe). Sadly, the Notes feature is still very sluggish. But the rest of the beta is much better in the performance department.

Is Logos 4 where it needs to be yet? No. This is just a beta release. When they get all of this functionality and more into a public release, then I will be even more impressed. But I wanted to give credit where credit is due. And they have improved it greatly. At this rate, by mid 2010 Logos 4 should be the great software that 3.0 was.

I have been very critical in the Logos forums and in my review of Logos when it was first released due to the speed. The primary place this showed up for me was …

1. When searching in certain ways it was not as fast as they claimed
2. Moving between tabs was very slow
3. Scrolling was not smooth – and still is not as smooth as it should be
4. Typing notes at first seemed fast but if you type more than about 6-8 words it would slow down so far that you could not use the notes feature.

But now that I am using the 2nd beta of Logos 4.0a (available here) and it is much faster in most of those situations.  Here is a screen shot of a basic search for the phrase “two walk together”.

The reason I used that phrase to test it was that some in the Logos forums were noticing that this search took as much as 6 seconds to perform. But mine as you can see is less than a quarter of a second.

Moving between tabs and scrolling is much faster. Now it is not instant as it is in Logos 3, but they are taking steps in the right direction.

Sadly, the notes problem is still there. So, hopefully that will be fixed soon. And another annoyance I have is the black title bar as seen below:

Notice there are no icons for minimize, maximize, or close in the upper right corner.  Here is how it should look:

The first screen grab is taken when the window is maximized. It looks like this almost all the time. I say almost because once I saw it display correctly in a maximized state. But the window looks normal when it is open but not to full screen maximization.