Releasing PencilBible 2.0

What is Pencil Bible (PB)?

Pencil Bible's vision is to the be number on Bible app for tablets.

Since launching in March 2022, PB has been downloaded 50,000 times! A few weeks ago, when you searched Bible on the iPad App Store, PB was ranked #2 with near-zero marketing. Crazy.

We've since dropped a few spots due to a 3.3 rating. V1 was tough to use for many people. It was buggy, slow, and the code was so messy. V2 also seemed like it an empty promise due to delay after delay (sorry Erin) folks weren't happy about that.

Instead of sending through any bug fixes for V1, we decided to focus solely on V2 and a bug-freeish app.

What was wrong with V1?

Losing Annotations
Annotations are the drawings Users make in PB.

Annotations are what make PB unique. Users were drawing their hearts out only to find their Annotations missing. What good is note taking if the notes won't show up next Sunday?

Pencil vs Touch
Palm Rejections
When you're writing on a piece of paper your palm is typically touching the paper/screen at all times.

You adjust your hand while writing and your palm is lifted and shifted as you go. Sometimes you pick up the pencil/pen when you hand moves and sometimes you don't. V1 was not really good at determining when to draw and when not to draw.

This caused Annotations to stop mid-stroke or not draw at all. No bueno.

Scrolling vs Drawing
Typical drawing/note-taking apps scroll when you use your finger and draw when you touch the screen with a stylus.

Our Annotation logic was created in React Native. My knowledge of the native ScrollView was limited/non-existent. This made is difficult to achieve this simple feature that 100% of our Users expected. So, we settled for a hacky band-aid.

We'll stop there as those were the two main issues. The list of bugs was much longer

V2 is finally here!

Since launching V1 in March 2022, V2 has been the top priority. This week, we finally released a new and much improved update to PB.

Instead of creating and managing our own Annotation system like we did in V1, we were graced with the release of React Native Skia. This library has been a life saver in so many ways.

• Simplified SVGs
• A more intuitive drawing and Canvas system
• The enabling of Pencil vs Touch which allows us to support palm rejection
• Android tablet support (coming soon)
• Easier Shapes
• Easier to Erase your Annotations

Skia has transformed Pencil Bible into a professional and user-friendly piece of software.

There is still plenty of work to do in PB's mission To help people discover God's word in creative, new, and wonderful ways.

TTP