I have to admit, I'm pretty excited about the forthcoming iPhone release. I can not help to realize it's apparent suitability for learning Japanese.

It has a full web browser that (I hope) will support the AJAX interface of this site, which, if the original statement that no third-party applications will be allowed would be an amazing way to study on-the-go.

It also has the iPod capabilities which would allow one to load Pimsleur lessons and japanesepod101.com podcasts onto it for mobile studying.

Finally, it has multi-touch support which could make drawing kanji with your finger easy. If all of this works, I think the iPhone, coupled with this site, could make the perfect Japanese study tool.

*oh, and for the kanji drawing, it would be cool to have a blank dual-bisected (is that the proper term?) box when reviewing so that one could draw the kanji and compare one's answer to the proper drawing. I know this is probably a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it would be awesome.

Any thoughts?

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If you could actually use a small pen to write your emails, like on the DS, that would be awesome! I don't think it would be practical to write kanji with your fingers... the screen might be a little small.

I haven't heard yet of a "mini" version of Safari, so I don't know if it will support Ajax or not. Ajax really isn't anything fancy. It's only a HTTP request. But Ajax is nearly always used to continue to update content on the page AFTER it has loaded. The problem with those "mini"-browsers is that they don't like the page to be too dynamic, I suppose it's more of an issue of memory and cpu power in the mobiles.

snozle Wrote:oh, and for the kanji drawing, it would be cool to have a blank dual-bisected (is that the proper term?) box when reviewing so that one could draw the kanji and compare one's answer to the proper drawing. I know this is probably a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it would be awesome.

I have a tablet pc, and I just have OneNote in another window and I'll write the kanji in that: I'm sure that you could do something similar in iPhone.

The iPhone won't affect me much though: I refuse to sell my soul to get one and the price of admission otherwise is ridiculously high.

????? Wrote:If you could actually use a small pen to write your emails, like on the DS, that would be awesome! I don't think it would be practical to write kanji with your fingers... the screen might be a little small.

There is no stylus like the DS; instead you type on a touch-screen with your fingers. It has a built-in error correction because errors are inherent in a system without tactile buttons; supposedly it's pretty good. As for the screen size, it is 3.5 inches diagonally with a resolution of 320x480.

????? Wrote:I haven't heard yet of a "mini" version of Safari, so I don't know if it will support Ajax or not. Ajax really isn't anything fancy. It's only a HTTP request. But Ajax is nearly always used to continue to update content on the page AFTER it has loaded. The problem with those "mini"-browsers is that they don't like the page to be too dynamic, I suppose it's more of an issue of memory and cpu power in the mobiles.

From what I understand, the Safari browser is meant to be like it's older brother in every way. They bill it as a "full-featured Safari web-browser." I'm not sure whether this would include advanced support for dynamic pages, but I hope so. The cool thing is that when you load a page it displays the entire page shrunk to the screen size, but with maintained proportions. You then spread your fingers to enlarge and pinch them to shrink the page. You can see the browser in action here

I'll hopefully be getting it the day it comes out, which should be anywhere between June 11-20th. I've been saving, lol. If you would like, I can offer as much feedback as necessary.

On a side note, I use an external editor to fill in forms and it seems to lose the formatting of your name written in Katakana.

Well, I finally got the iPhone. I only had to wait in line for 5 hours to get one ;-) .

Anyway, I fired up Safari and decided to make a video showing how it works for this site.

iPhone RvTK

This was literally my first time accessing the site via the iPhone and, as you can see, it was pretty intuitive. I only reviewed one card, I'll be sure to make another video when I'm not running off to work.

This looked pretty nice. How much do you have to pay for the internet connection on the iPhone?

Holy crap: the iPhone's out? Where the hell have I been? How much of your soul, er, I mean, how long is the contract you had to make?

On topic, the actual utility of the device for RvTK is questionable: you're not actually writing on the thing, but are still dependent on hard media (what horror, I know). So, while it's great to access the site on the go, it's somewhat sad that the touchscreen isn't being used for writing kanji, which would seem to be the most natural use of the damn thing.

But I digress: there'll be plenty of time to fix that later. Awesome tech.

the data plan is $20 per month but I don't know if its mandatory. It has wifi so you don't really need it. I'm posting this via the phone by the way.

Megaqwerty Wrote:Holy crap: the iPhone's out? Where the hell have I been? How much of your soul, er, I mean, how long is the contract you had to make?

2-years, ugh, I know. But it works out perfectly for me because in 2 years I hope to be spending a year abroad in Japan! So the contract should expire at exactly the right time.

Megaqwerty Wrote:On topic, the actual utility of the device for RvTK is questionable: you're not actually writing on the thing, but are still dependent on hard media (what horror, I know). So, while it's great to access the site on the go, it's somewhat sad that the touchscreen isn't being used for writing kanji, which would seem to be the most natural use of the damn thing.

But I digress: there'll be plenty of time to fix that later. Awesome tech.

I know, earlier in the thread I postulated that a small area for writing the kanji on-screen would be incredibly useful. It's still great to be able to review without lugging my laptop around everywhere.

This brings me to another topic. Apple holds that the only way to develop apps for the iphone is via the web. There are already some creative uses of this that can be seen here. This one in particular is a good demonstration of what can be done. The screen is designed to fit on the iPhone without resizing, which, as you saw in my video, could get annoying. Someone out there with better skills at web development than I could theoretically create a proxy that makes only the review portion of the site accessible. This would make it a lot easier as you would probably only be using it to review. One screen could be used to display the bar graph of expired cards (flipping the device to a horizontal position to fit it) then another screen to review (in it's portrait position).

snozle Wrote:Finally, it has multi-touch support which could make drawing kanji with your finger easy. If all of this works, I think the iPhone, coupled with this site, could make the perfect Japanese study tool.

*oh, and for the kanji drawing, it would be cool to have a blank dual-bisected (is that the proper term?) box when reviewing so that one could draw the kanji and compare one's answer to the proper drawing. I know this is probably a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it would be awesome.

Any thoughts?

Go here:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=489

I actually made the same suggestion a while ago about a writing area in the quizzes.
Basically, everyone laughed at me and said "Use paper and pencil". So maybe
try using a kanji notebook while reviewing and see how it goes.

Admittedly, a scratchpad would be somewhat useless on an iPhone: the thing requires that you use skin (preferably skin that is alive, I suppose). Ergo, that means no gloves, no styli, which is somewhat of a detriment, unless you regularly do calligraphy with your fingers.

Well I often write kanji in the air with my fingers. So writing with my skin on a iPhone wouldn't be much different if the lag isn't too bad.

I like to scribble kanji with the stylus in pictochat on the DS when I'm reviewing. Saves ink/paper, is convenient, and something about it is very pleasing. Would be nice on the iPhone since I assume it's hard to draw any crowded kanji with a finger on the screen...

Snozle wrote:

"Well, I finally got the iPhone. I only had to wait in line for 5 hours to get one ;-) .

Anyway, I fired up Safari and decided to make a video showing how it works for this site."

Thank you for the illustrative demo! That's some remarkable little phone. It is great to see that this site will work on it.

radical_tyro Wrote:Would be nice on the iPhone since I assume it's hard to draw any crowded kanji with a finger on the screen...

The iPhone's screen is quite large (many times more so than the box they give you in Pictochat) so room isn't a concern: it's the accuracy of my finger, or rather, the complete and utter lack thereof, that scares me.

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snozle Wrote:Anyway, I fired up Safari and decided to make a video showing how it works for this site.

That's very cool, snozle, thanks for sharing! I'm glad I made those boxes clickable and those big buttons on the homepage now, they really fit well with how you use the iPhone.

I wonder why they didn't add a stylus, if only for handwriting recognition, I guess Apple want to be "different" and not make it look like a PDA. So yeah, you might be able to trace a kanji with your fingers, but I wonder what kind of coordinates the browser actually receives via the mouse position events. If it's jittery it wouldn't work so well.

I can see that a scratchpad would make sense here, but it would need a specific implementation to be done well, for example, once you check your answer, it should show both your writing and the correct answer side by side, and not just flip the card over.

I wonder if this works on the iPhone:

http://chasen.org/~taku/software/ajax/hwr/

It's a handwritten kanji lookup done with ajax. How well can you draw kanji with your finger on the drawing area?

Apple Wrote:Safari on iPhone does not support:

* window.showModalDialog()
* Mouse-over events
* Hover styles
* Tool tips
* Java applets
* Flash
* Plug-in installation
* Custom x.509 certificates

from here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html

Handwriting recognition couldn't be supported on the iPhone because the only way the user can interact with webpages are with single clicks. All other gestures are reserved for things like zoom, etc.

akrodha Wrote:

Apple Wrote:Safari on iPhone does not support: ...

from here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html

I've read that page before but it still seemed possible to me. It only needs mouse down, mouse move, and mouse up events. These aren't listed as being unsupported. I don't have an iPhone myself to try, but I guess I can believe that the iPhone gesture mechanism would override any such webpage functionality.

But isn't that gesture used for flicking a page to scroll?

EDIT: Ha. I should read posts in their entirety. Yeah, I think the iPhone would override those events. Strange that they're not explicitly listed as unsupported, though.

I just bought a SonyEricsson W950i, a nice smartphone which is a cheap alternative for the iPhone (still not available here in most European countries). I manage to access the internet but unfortunately the phone does not display kanji (neither does the mini browser I installed on it: Opera Mini). So far I only found this solution: the trial works but unfortunately this piece of software is quite expensive (50€/68$). I did not come across any other solution so far.