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After making many changes I'm now calling it Version 3. Instead of a long list of items the App now only shows one item or article at a time. The chosen item is displayed and the previous item is hidden. Some functions in the Sidebar are now just icons: Calendar, Note Taker, Task List, show Bible and Daily Dose readings. Users can also save the desired Font size (Small, Medium or Large) and the number of columns used in the Table of Contents TOC, either two or three. LOTS of small changes have been done over the last week. Here are a couple of pics. As you can see, there are a number of changes to the Filter Bar at the top of the page and also to the optional Sidebar. Clicking on the bottom left button displays the Sidebar. As you scroll the page it will disappear while the TOP button on the right side appears. Single click the TOP button to move to the top of the Table of Contents. Click it again to move to the top of the page. Here is a link to the page.  
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After 5 months of creating the Useful Info web page from scratch and adding to it almost every day, there started to be some performance issues. Around Sept 6th I noticed on my Android phone that Google Chrome was VERY slow when using the page, even scrolling was slow. That doesn't really make sense as there is no programming in the background once the page has loaded. Using a Chrome based browser on my PC was fine. Using the Firefox browser on my PC and phone worked just fine. I assume that a Chrome update is the problem. But while waiting I decided to go back to a product called Feather Wiki. It is a very small web app that allows users to create their own Wikis or a file with lots of pages, links between pages, general formatting, etc. After about 5 hours I had been able to copy over almost all of the Useful Info articles. I doubt I will do the Bible because it would be around 1,200 pages, one per chapter. But that may change. The file is 4 megabytes instead of 11 for the home grown format. It contains just basic organization by category pages with associated pages linked to them. It also has a Search box that will at least display matching articles that contain a word or phrase you look for. Here is the opening page. The page is linked here.  The category pages are the same as in the larger Useful Information web page. Clicking on one will show its related articles. I could have just left the page with only Sub Pages at the bottom but I like a two column list. So, that is what you see at the top of each major category page.  Clicking on an article looks like this. Notice the article title is the first thing displayed. If you want to see the Search box, just scroll down the page a little bit. At the bottom of each article are <--Previous, Next --> buttons that will take you alphabetically through each group of articles.  Scrolling down to see the Search box and entering the word "life" we see this small list.  Clicking on the "Habits" entry displays that page.  Above the article title is a breadcrumb area that shows where you are in the page. In this case, I can click on "Useful Info (Lite)" to see the Home page or "More Info" to see that category page as shown below.   On a PC or a device with a wide screen, you will see a sidebar as shown below. It displays a list of pages and the one you are reading is highlighted.  Lastly, on a PC, you can easily do a File, Save and use the file locally. Since it is a single file it 'should' work on mobile devices even without a good connection, after loading it the first time.
I hope you and others find this information of use. Amen!
* September updates * - Now calling it Version 3. Instead of a long list of items the App now only shows one item or article at a time. The chosen item is displayed and the previous item is hidden. Some functions in the Sidebar are now just icons: Calendar, Note Taker, Task List, show Bible and Daily Dose readings. Users can also save the desired Font size (Small, Medium or Large) and the number of columns used in the Table of Contents TOC, either two or three. LOTS of small changes have been done over the last week. - Added a small task list manager that can be used to track prayer requests or anything you like - In the Full version there is now a 180 day New Testament reading plan. There are 3 ways to view it and the chapters to read have a different background color. Just click on Today's Reading. (see below)
* July / August updates * - Made some cosmetic changes: Background color, opening Message of the day window, etc. - Difference between the Full and the Lite versions: The Full version of Useful Info contains an internal Bible while the Lite version does not. The Lite version links to a Bible and displays it. It is 5mb in size while the Full version is 11mb.
- Keyword searching and startup Message window: In order to search more fully the items on this page, searching by Keywords has been added. Simply checkmark the "Keywords Active" box or choose a word from the "Keywords search" list. Searching on Jesus normally shows just 15 item names that match. But, adding Jesus as a keyword will display 63 items that contain that word. This feature can be turned on or off at any time. When launching this web page, users will now see the startup window with a verse spoken by Jesus and a quote from someone in the Christian community. Click New to see more quotes or Close to remove the window. To redisplay the last quotes just click on the word Message in the Sidebar. See below for an example. The page is linked here. There are links to the Lite version (w/o a built in Bible) and the Full version at the top of this page. * Late August update - Partial vs All items views * For first time users, they will only see a Partial list of items (about half). This can be changed to All whenever the opening Message is displayed. Just click the middle button to switch to/from the two views.  * June 24th update - new Sidebar* I had the idea to create a Sidebar with all the functions that were only available at the top of the Useful Information web page. So when users are reading they can jump around different groups, search for text in the Table of Contents, display Help, etc. Below is a picture describing the Sidebar. The page can be accessed here  The web page now looks like this. The Sidebar turns blue, just like the Table of Contents whenever a single Group is chosen and/or some Filter text is being searched for via the text input area or the drop down Suggestions lists. If the Easter group is clicked on, it will change color to red and the East items / articles are all that are displayed in the Table of Contents and down below it.  If I also choose Jesus from the drop down list (either atop the Sidebar or below the Filter bar), we see this change. The articles below are only filtered by the Easter group but the Table of Contents only shows entries with Jesus in their name. It also shows in blue the number of matches and the filter text.  If I now select ALL then all matching items from the Table of Contents are shown. Select any item to read it. Note: sometimes an item name will spread over to the second column.  Selecting the "X" symbol near the top of the Sidebar or "CLEAR Filter" button near the top of the web page will display either ALL items or the items in the selected group.
I hope these additions to the program will make it easier to use. Amen. * NEWEST CHANGES * I have add another Group called Basic Christianity and the ability to set the base font size from Medium to either Small or Large. Also added is a dropdown list of suggested words for filtering the Table of Contents or the All Items table. The Useful Info web page mentioned in the previous couple of posts has been updated once more. I decided to add another post with more detailed instructions on how to use the page. The page contains a Table of Contents at the top that is divided into 8 groups. These groups are: Basic Christianity, Bible, Easter, Future, Hard Questions, News, Slides and More. I started out with one list that was sorted but soon realized that a lot more items would be added. So, I then created these groups that are color coded. Later on, I grouped all the similar colored items into separate groups as shown below. Double underlined items have been added in the last week or two.  Useful Info - Table of Contents In order to keep track of which items have been read, each item has a checkbox in front of it. Your favorite mobile phone or PC browser will remember which items are checked every time the page is visited. There is also a button below the list that allows users to quickly either: 1) check all items or 2) uncheck all items. When clicked, users will have to click on OK to make those changes. Clicking on any item will jump to the start of it for reading. If "He is Risen" is clicked, we will see this text.  Displaying an item to read At the bottom right side, there is now a circular button with the word "top" in it. Clicking or tapping on this button will go back to the top of the page. Any time the page is scrolled downward, that button will appear. All of these items (articles) are in one web page, but by using the Table of Contents and the "top" button, it gives the appearance of accessing multiple pages. A quick way to see a shorter Table of Contents is to click or tap on a group name in the Filter Tab buttons at the top of the page. If we click on "Easter" the Table of Contents now appears as below.  After selecting the button "Easter" in the Filter Bar When only one group is shown, the background color changes to blue. Clicking or tapping on "All" will display All groups again. The other way to search / filter items is by their names. The "Filter by item name" input field allows users to enter a few letters or a word. For each letter entered, only the matching items will be displayed. Pressing backspace will reverse the amount of items displayed until all are shown again. Users can also click / tap the "clear filter" button to redisplay all items. Below, the word "bible" has been entered as a filter and the results are shown. Whenever text has been entered into the Filter field, the background color of the Table of Contents will turn blue. This lets users know that what is displayed is a partial list. In order to redisplay all items, click or tap on "clear filter." If the background is still blue then also click on "All" to display all groups.  After entering "bible" in the Filter by Item name text box. Finally, for searching through the items, both choosing a group and entered filter text can be used at the same time. Below, after filtering on the word "bible", I also clicked on the group "Bible" at the top.  These items are filtered by both the group "Bible" and the word "bible" It is hoped that by having both of these search / filter methods users will not be overwhelmed with the number of items. As I am led, more items will be added. Keeping this to one web page means users can save it to their PC for use offline. On mobile devices, there is additional security when using a local web page and some of the programming behind the searching does not work. If I can find a way around that, I will update the page accordingly. Update: 5/22/26 - A new group called Slides is where some slideshows are found. I have endeavored to make the font sizes change appropriately when going from a PC to a Mobile device and switching from Portrait to Landscape modes. There are a lot of variables here. If you find some text is not readable on your device feel free to email me and let me know. Below are two pics from one slideshow. There are left / right arrows either side of each slide and dots below that both work to navigate. On PCs users can drag their mouse left/right. On swipe left/right works on Mobile devices.   There is a link called "List of Updates" above the Table of Contents. Clicking / tapping on this will jump to a list of recent program changes.  The List of recent programming changes This describes the current functional usage of this webpage. As more items come to my attention, I will add them into the appropriate group and under Latest Updates. Currently, there are 109 items available for reading. I pray that many of them will be useful to you in your study of God's Word and help you apply it to the world we live in. All while we wait on the world to come. Update: at the bottom of the page is a table of all items that can be searched and sorted by item title, category or date added. This is a lot more flexible than the static list I was updating before. A link called "All Items" at the top of the page will also take you here. See the table below.  After using the Useful Info page for a while I noticed a few things that bugged me, so I experimented with some other formats and made a big change to a Table of Contents led page. Clicking / Tapping on any item scrolls to it. Then viewers can return to the top of the page by clicking / tapping on the top button in the bottom right corner. I hope this format is even easier to use. The web address is the same. Useful Information (April 8th) I have updated this page again and put a filter bar at the top. So you can filter on any of the colored sections or tap All to show all items. (April 19th) A few more articles have been added plus a link to a Bible and another to Daily Readings. There are checkboxes now so readers can mark off the items they have read.  Changes as of April 19th  Some Useful Info - as of April 8th 2026  After clicking / tapping on News in the filter bar.  Location of the 'top' button |
AuthorHas over 40 years experience in Information Technology and, more importantly, 30 plus years as a believer in and follower of Jesus Christ. Archives
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