The milestones for OpenLP keep on coming. Today we reached 200 Facebook fans! Excitement is building for the release of version 2.0, and version 1 has been receiving some nice improvements over the last few months. There have also been some comments about users leaving high priced software and coming to OpenLP. With the economic situation today more and more churches are turning to OpenLP because of cost. After turning to OpenLP many are being pleasantly surprised at how well it competes and in many cases performs better than its high priced alternatives.

Well folks, we've reached another milestone with OpenLP 2.0 - revision 700. And not only have we reached a big revision, the Bibles plugin is now better than before!

The importer has been reworked, both interface-wise and code-wise. It features a Wizard style interface, well known in computer interfaces these days, making it faster and easier to use the importer. The code has been changed fairly dramatically now as well, to facilitate a pluggable import system, where developers can easily add new importers with little hacking.

A few days ago, sjpslabbert asked the question in a forum post how many people are using OpenLP? As I said in the reply, it's close to impossible to answer that question. All we know is that we average 100 downloads a day, there were over 16000 downloads of version 1.0.1, this site has over 2500 registered users and we are approaching 200 fans on facebook.

What we don't know is how many of those downloads are new users who go on to use OpenLP regularly.

Yet another bugfix release. This one, however, pulls in a fix for a bug in an external component use to import CSV bibles, and does some fancy footwork around PowerPoint (again).

Here's a complete list of fixes:

OpenLP 2.0 is moving along nicely at this stage, and we're probably not too far off an initial unstable release, but before we get there we are in need of one thing in particular: people with Macs.

Currently most of our developers are using Linux, and we have plenty access to Windows XP, Vista and 7, but we don't have anyone at a developer level on Mac OS X. The only problem with this is that we can't test out OpenLP on Mac OS X, nor can we package it for Mac OS X.

If you have a Mac and you have some development experience, and are willing to help us out with getting OpenLP up and running and packaging it for Mac OS X, please get into contact with us, either through the IRC channel or by private messaging me on the site.

OpenLP has hit another milestone with 100 Facebook fans! This is yet another sign of OpenLP's growing popularity. 2009 has been a great year for OpenLP. Version 1 has seen updates and is better than ever and version 2 is coming along nicely with many of the frequently requested new features and an overall improved look and feel. As more and more churches move to using media to enhance their worship experiences it only stands to reason that the popularity of OpenLP will continue to increase. What will 2010 bring to OpenLP world? A release of 2.0? 200 fans on Facebook? 500? perhaps even 1,000 Facebook fans? Whatever happens it is great to see that OpenLP is gaining in popularity and also helping Christians all over the world worship Him more effectively.

If you're not already a fan, why don't you head over to our Facebook Page and become a fan! Don't forget to follow OpenLP on Twitter, and add the RSS feed to your aggregator! We also have a group on Facebook, and a group on LinkedIn.

V1.2.3 is mainly a bug fix release, with 1 or 2 small enhancements.

At last, after five hours of labour, the new mother was resting with her newborn son gently nursing while her husband was taking care of the last few things after the birth. It hadn't been an easy day and she was glad that it was over.

In the last few weeks a number of requested features have been added to the 2.x code base.

Hmmmm... things have been quiet around here. I see the last blog post was exactly a month ago... Don't worry, we haven't stopped working on OpenLP!

In fact, we've been hard at work on things like video and transitions (the two most-requested features). So, to allay your fears, here's a screenshot of the latest revision of OpenLP.