I am returning to the States in less than a week after a year in Japan, and I think a major release of Jisho is a perfect way to commemorate my return. Today I would like to announce the release of Jisho 3.0!

Jisho 3.0 doesn’t look too different on the outside, beyond the nice shiny toolbar icons. But on the inside it is a completely different animal. With Jisho 2.1 I pretty much rebuilt Jisho except for one major component. I left the database alone (minus updating data of course).

Today marks the day that I can say that this is no longer true. I’ve rewritten the database portion completely. From scratch. With this comes a lot of advantages: speed, accuracy, multiple parts of speech.

The prior releases’ speed wasn’t as fast as I would have liked it, so I made it a major focus in this release. I am please with the results and hope that you are too. Most queries (on the exact setting) come up instantly or close enough to it. Moreover, more searches now yield more results. Giving you more data, faster.

Another great feature, many thanks to Sugisaki-san for making this a reality, is a *complete* localization into Japanese. That is the parts of speech are all now translated into Japanese and are looked up on the fly. Pretty incredible stuff.

Here’s a list of all the changes:

• Completely rewritten the database
• Increased the amount of data in the database
• Improved accuracy
• Instant Search Results (for Exact setting)
• Displays multiple parts of speech
• Complete Japanese localization
• Icons for the Smaller / Bigger buttons

On top of all this - Jisho 3.0 is a free upgrade for existing users. If you have Jisho installed already you can update from within Jisho by going to Jisho -> Check for updates. Give Jisho a whirl and support its development by purchasing your copy today!

Hi Folks,

As mentioned in the last past we are currently looking for people who could help translate Jisho into several different languages.

We are currently looking for people to help translate Jisho into the following languages:

- French
- German
- Russian

If you speak any of these languages and have 10 minutes to spare, please lend us your tongue and help us make Jisho even better!

But my language isn’t on the list!
Don’t worry you can still contact us and help translate Jisho into your native tongue. We just wanted to start out with the currently support search languages - but if you can speak anything from Arabic to Zulu please get in touch.

Thanks for all your support, and together we can make Jisho even better.

I’m hard at work on the next release of Jisho and am getting quite excited about the progress made so far. The major feature for this release is a completely rewritten database interface and more importantly a completely new database structure. The searching code is also being made completely self contained, allowing it to be more portable…

The major issue this new database corrects is how Jisho restricted readings of kanji and such. As you can see the development version is *much* improved in those regards. Many thanks go to Lauren, Judit, and Daniel for bringing this issue to my attention.

You can see the differences in the following screenshots. Perhaps it is not the best word to demonstrate with, but it is an excellent example of the profound difference.

Current

Development

The version shown above is obviously not complete yet as you’ll notice it lacks a part of speech. I’m working on that, but it is going to be localizable and awesome. If you are interested in helping localize Jisho, please contact me (leave a comment, email etc).

We have signed up to donate as many copies of Jisho and Byoyomi as needed for the PMC challenge, for research and treatment of cancer. The idea is simple: people buy software bundles (auction or otherwise) and all proceeds, minus eBay fees etc go to charity to help fight cancer i.e. I nor Seth (the guy organizing this) makes a dime.

There is a lot of really great software and donors on the list (we are towards the middle). When the auctions start it will be a good time to get that software you’ve been craving for a while and help raise money to fight cancer!

You can get more information on the PMC Software page.

3 Years ago marks the release of Jisho 1.0. To celebrate this, I am offering up Jisho for 50% off at Maczot for 24 hours! So if you want a discount in the next 24 hours - check out the link above and buy today! Of course you can always purchase at the regular price at our store as well.

Thank you everybody for your support throughout the years and here’s to 3 more years!