Hi everybody,

(I know this is not the Anki forum, but I feel this is the right place since there are lots of power users here)

Don't get me wrong, I believe Anki is a great tool, incredibly flexible and powerful. The creator has my utmost respect. Anki has been indispensable for my studies.

However, I am just no longer happy with it, and I think it got worse with v2. This is not about the functionality, but about the user experience, which in my opinion isn't as good as it should be for such an important tool. A few points, all very subjective, and there are dozens more:

- The UI is ugly. Unfortunately that's the price to for platform independence.
- The UI is unintuitive. You make me search and clicks through tons of screens and tabs before I find what I need.
- Syncing across devices (and in general) is annoying, especially when there are conflicts.
- Managing/Searching decks and notes is powerful and flexible, but again the user experience is bad and unintuitive.

Every time I am using Anki for something other than reviewing I am cringing, but there isn't any alternative that comes even close to what Anki has to offer. Since I don't have any other projects going on right now I have decided to spend the next few weeks building my own SRS, completely cloud-based, with a web interface (to use from my Mac/PC) and native applications for iPhone/iPad (sorry, I don't have an Android).

I am mainly planning to build this for myself, it will be the SRS I've always wanted. Still, I would like to know what your current pain points with Anki are (if there are any), so that I can possibly incorporate some things people wish for. I don't want to make any money with this, so of course if will be free for everyone to use.

Thanks, I hope I can get some feedback.

Actually I like Anki 2 more than Anki 1 and the syncing functions are excellent. But I am on your side. If you build something simpler I may switch.

Aside from some sync bugs and some problems with the undo feature, Anki 1.2 was perfect, but now it's officially gone. I enumerated my main issues with Anki2 here:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid176759

The most troublesome point is the new browser that jumbles all the decks together in one big mess, but apparently there's a plug-in to get around that. Honestly, I think it would be a colossal undertaking to come close to all the stuff Anki has, and I don't think I'll ever defect to another SRS, but I wish you the best of luck.

ThomasB, sounds good. I'm kind of dissatisfied with the new Anki version for the same reasons you listed up. I'm on Win7/Android JB btw.

Thanks for the replies so far.

JimmySeal Wrote:Honestly, I think it would be a colossal undertaking to come close to all the stuff Anki has, and I don't think I'll ever defect to another SRS, but I wish you the best of luck.

I totally agree, and I'm not planning to do that, it would probably take forever. However, I do believe the 80/20 rules applies here, 80% of the value of Anki is concentrated in 20% of the features. How often do you really change your lapse options? How many people use Latex in their cards? Who cares much about the editing fonts? Do you need video support? Do you need hint fields or selective card generation? If I can build a beautiful tool that that coves 80% of my use cases then I am happy, and I can always extend it later.

JimmySeal Wrote:Aside from some sync bugs and some problems with the undo feature, Anki 1.2 was perfect, but now it's officially gone. I enumerated my main issues with Anki2 here:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid176759

The most troublesome point is the new browser that jumbles all the decks together in one big mess, but apparently there's a plug-in to get around that. Honestly, I think it would be a colossal undertaking to come close to all the stuff Anki has, and I don't think I'll ever defect to another SRS, but I wish you the best of luck.

For users that prefer sacrificing form and function for simplicity and neatness, I'd rather have a stripped down Anki with near to 0 features.

My ideal SRS will have most of the functionality of git.

Ideally, you could use libgit to keep track of all the edits that happen to all cards. This would also give you the ability to do distributed editing of decks, the same way git gives you the ability to do distributed editing of source code. The ability to easily collaborate on decks would be amazing.

You could also use git to track review history for cards, but I don't think this would be as useful.

To be honest, I think distributed/collaborative editing of decks would be a killer feature for an SRS, but other than that I'm actually really happy with Anki 2.

I made the switch last night. I felt the same way you do, but I'm already getting warmed up to it. Found several useful features (one of them being the lapse settings, which should be different depending on the deck - older decks you no longer add much to, like Rtk, don't need ten million learning stages for failed cards - I set mine to 20% of the current delay instead).

Another is the hint feature. I'm gonna leave the reading in as a hint for new sentences, for about a week or so, from now on. That way, when necessary, I can use them without failing the card, but I don't have to use them for everything. I don't know how to set the "type" of a note yet though, to make sure I'm putting the hints in for only the new cards. I do wish it would also allow for audio to be used as a hint. Oh well, can't have everything.

I'm sure I'm also going to have fun with the clozed delete plugin. Then there's the plugin which automatically gives you information about each Kanji in the sentence, at the bottom of the card. No more having to search for writing order, Heisig keyword, or whatever else you wish to add to it (readings, etc.).

partner55083777 Wrote:My ideal SRS will have most of the functionality of git.

Ideally, you could use libgit to keep track of all the edits that happen to all cards. This would also give you the ability to do distributed editing of decks, the same way git gives you the ability to do distributed editing of source code. The ability to easily collaborate on decks would be amazing.

You could also use git to track review history for cards, but I don't think this would be as useful.

To be honest, I think distributed/collaborative editing of decks would be a killer feature for an SRS, but other than that I'm actually really happy with Anki 2.

Great idea, I'll need to think about this a bit. Please keep ideas like that coming.

ThomasB Wrote:I totally agree, and I'm not planning to do that, it would probably take forever. However, I do believe the 80/20 rules applies here, 80% of the value of Anki is concentrated in 20% of the features. How often do you really change your lapse options? How many people use Latex in their cards? Who cares much about the editing fonts? Do you need video support? Do you need hint fields or selective card generation? If I can build a beautiful tool that that coves 80% of my use cases then I am happy, and I can always extend it later.

Being able to customise cards helps alot to me, because 12pt black text on white background is both painful and hard to read (albinism + low vision).

Without that I would never switch from Anki.a
Also, the video feature on Anki doesn't work properly anyway.

overall I'm getting used to Anki 2 now... I'm sure that I'm just overlooking this though, but does anyone know how to sort the cards in Anki 2 from "time created"? I'd like to suspend some cards until later with it if I could... It was easy to do in Anki 1.

Stian Wrote:Being able to customise cards helps alot to me, because 12pt black text on white background is both painful and hard to read (albinism + low vision).

Yeah, but editing fonts are not for customizing cards, they are for customizing the fonts in the edit dialog. What you are talking about are templates, which I agree are a must-have.

Ah, I see, but being able to adjust the font size in the edit fields also makes it easier to edit/create new cards, and it doesn't seem like a feature that would require 40 days and 40 nights to create...

EDIT^: To see the creation date, just right click on the field with the "due date", "front", etc. and check "time created" (or something along those lines).

Hashiriya Wrote:overall I'm getting used to Anki 2 now... I'm sure that I'm just overlooking this though, but does anyone know how to sort the cards in Anki 2 from "time created"? I'd like to suspend some cards until later with it if I could... It was easy to do in Anki 1.

[Late edit]
Figured it out.

Go to the Browser.
Right click over the name of any column (like "due" for instance), in the table that lists your notes.
In the popup that shows up, check "created".
Use the new, "created" column to sort by it, in asc. or desc. order, just like in Anki 1.

ThomasB Wrote:This is not about the functionality, but about the user experience, which in my opinion isn't as good as it should be for such an important tool.

If your problem is primarily the UI, perhaps write a new front end for libanki (libanki = backend library for database, scheduling, etc; ankiqt = desktop anki's Qt based user interface for libanki). That way you retain compatibility with all existing decks and most plugins. After all, that's the entire point of the unix model.

Better yet, if your problem is only part(s) of the UI, write a plugin that replaces those parts. That way it'd be easier to convince people to try out your new UI changes, and if it turns out to be more popular, it could replace those parts in the standard version. Remember, Anki Desktop is open source and Mr. Elmes isn't unreasonable.

partner55083777 Wrote:Ideally, you could use libgit to keep track of all the edits that happen to all cards. This would also give you the ability to do distributed editing of decks, the same way git gives you the ability to do distributed editing of source code. The ability to easily collaborate on decks would be amazing.

I've also thought about this. However, you can implement it as a plugin (particularly easy now that Anki 2 has a single fact database and globally unique ids).

@Stansfield123 Thanks for the help! I'll check it out soon.

For me, a rival to Anki would need to have an equivalent to some of the language-specific plugins that Anki has available -- a way to automatically get the pinyin when you plug in a Chinese sentence, a way to automatically get furigana for the kanji, a way to get Google Text To Speech or similar automatically generated audio. Anki's strength isn't just Anki itself, but the strength of its plugins.

I think Anki 2 looks a lot better and clean than Anki 1.2.

Additionally why is nobody mentioning Supermemo 15 or Mnemosyne or Susuru?

[Zgarbas]

Tatoeba sentence support! The Tatoeba plugin is what I miss the most from anki 1.

ryuudou Wrote:Additionally why is nobody mentioning Supermemo 15 or Mnemosyne or Susuru?

The only thing better in SM15 from Anki is scheduling (although the improvement is relatively small). The UI is atrocious and unless you have a decent pre-made collection to work with (unlikely), you spend to much time on adding items than you would ever wanted to. For this reason alone*, I switched some time ago from SM15 to Anki. Looking back on those days when I was adding my RTK items to SM's collection, I think it was a heroic effort.

*EDIT: Actually, that is worth expanding on. The deal breaker was open architecture of Anki. That feature contributes to better UI (or User Experience in general) as it allows 3rd party plugins. These days I routinely use Yomichan and "Fill Audio Field". Any lack of these and I'm back to SM.

Didn't we see almost this same topic like half a week ago?

Yes, Anki 2 has a horrible UI. It is however is expandable via Plugins. I'm sure you could write an extensive plugin to replace it. Then you could show it to the Anki team and they might have something that could become the improved UI for everyone to use. Why build your own when you could build upon Anki? (Actually I seem to be repeating overture2112 here.)

Daichi Wrote:Didn't we see almost this same topic like half a week ago?

Yep. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10426

vix86 Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:Didn't we see almost this same topic like half a week ago?

Yep. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10426

Just shows that Anki 2 isn't exactly a roaring success.

That there are people that don't like it doesn't surprise me. If you look around enough you'll find people that don't like something at all. As universally liked that Anki 1 was, I'm sure there were people that didn't like it for the same reasons that many don't like Anki 2.

You can't make everyone happy, and considering the Google group for Anki 2 isn't flooded with people complaining about how bad Anki 2 is; I'm keen to think that the naysayers make up a very small minority of the user base.

Daichi Wrote:Didn't we see almost this same topic like half a week ago?

There's a subtle yet big difference between the two topics. The other post was seeking a replacement for Anki. This post is about creating a replacement.

That reminds me of a quote by Pablo Picasso. "Do not seek-find!"
The differences between 'seek' and 'find' are even more subtle than the difference between these two posts.

hahaha