The Bookshelf lists all installed works, sorted by category and language. It also has a category called "Bookmarks". This is where you can store and access your own bookmarks.
To open a work from the bookshelf for reading, simply double-click with the on the desired category (Bibles, Commentaries, Lexicons, Books, Devotionals or Glossaries) to display its contents. Then just double-click on one of the works to open it for reading. A read window will appear in the Desk area.
If you are reading a certain work, and want to open another work at the passage you are reading, you can use a shortcut. Simply click with the on the verse/passage reference (pointer changes to hand) and drag it to the Bookshelf. Drop it on the work you want to open, and it will be opened for reading at the specified location. You can also drag a verse reference into an existing read window, then it will jump to the specified location.
If you click with the mouse button on the symbol of a work, you will see a menu with additional entries that are relevant for this work. opens a window with lots of interesting information about the selected work. opens a small dialog for encrypted documents, where you can enter the unlock key to access the work. For additional information on locked works, please see the Locked Modules page on the Crosswire Bible Society web site.
You can search in a work by clicking with the mouse button on its symbol and selecting . By pressing Shift and clicking on other works you can select more than one. Then follow the same procedure to open the search dialog. You will be searching in all of these documents. A complete description of the operation of the search features can be found on the Searching in Works section.
Drag & Drop Works Here
Click with the mouse button on the bookmark category of the bookshelf and select to create a new bookmark subfolder. You can use normal drag & drop functions to drag verse references from read windows or search results to the bookmark folder, and to rearrange bookmarks between folders.
You can also import bookmarks from other people or export bookmarks to share them. To do this, open the of the bookmark folder as described above, and select . This will bring up a dialog box for you to save the bookmark collection. You can import bookmarks in a similar way.
You can also click with the on folders and bookmarks to change their names and descriptions.
This little window in the lower left corner of the BibleTime window is purely passive. Whenever your mouse cursor is located over some text with additional information (e.g., Strong's numbers), then this additional information will be displayed in the Mag, and not in the text itself. Just try it out.
The Desk is where the real work with BibleTime takes place. Here you can open works from the Bookshelf, read them, search in them, and even save your annotations in the personal commentary module (see below).
As we have already seen, you can open works for reading simply by clicking on their symbol in the Bookshelf. A read window will open in the Desk's area. Every read window has a toolbar. There you can find tools to navigate in the work that this read window is connected to, as well as history buttons like the ones that you know from your browser.
The currently active window can be auto scrolled up or down. Start scrolling by press Shift+Down. You can increase the scrolling speed by pressing Shift+Down multiple times. To pause scrolling press Space. To start scrolling again at the previous speed press Space again. To slow down scrolling or scroll the other direction press Shift+Up one or more times. Pressing any other key or changing the active window will stop the scrolling.
Of course, you can open multiple works at the same time. There are several possibilities for arranging the read windows on the desk. Please have a look at the entry in the main menu. There you can see that you can either control the placement of the read windows completely yourself, or have BibleTime handle the placement automatically. To achieve this, you have to select one of the automatic placement modes available at → . Just try it out, it's simple and works.
To be able to store your own comments about parts of the Bible, you have install a certain work from the library of the Crosswire Bible Society. This work is called "Personal commentary".
Open the personal commentary by clicking on its symbol in the Bookshelf with a mouse button. You can edit this commentary by just clicking on any verse. A dialog opens which allows you to add or edit text for that verse.
If is deactivated, please check if you have write permission for the files of the personal commentary.
Drag & drop works here. Drop a verse reference and the text of the verse will be inserted.