* Simple
* Understandable
* Beautiful
* Short
* Colorful
etc.

I'm a big fan of simplicity but also options. I use the corePlus vocab deck, and I love how there's tons of information available to me if I want it, but I often get rid of most of it in the template. Normally I stick with the kanji/word, pronunciation (kana), an example sentence, plus the audio.

I would eventually like to add a bit of subtle color to my decks, maybe a nice background image. But I wouldn't want something too distracting. I just haven't done that yet....

I think short cards are good, otherwise you probably won't be able to remember everything on there (and it might as well be separate cards). I guess if you want to save an entire article for review later though for reading, that wouldn't be too bad since you aren't producing anything.

There are so many things to think about...my thoughts are pretty generic about it right now. Maybe I should think some more

ya I like my core6k deck a lot... the biggest reason:

I dont have to make any cards!

my format is 3-step:
(front) word in kanji
(back) word in kana, audio, sample sentence (mouseover) english definition

i generally try to avoid the english unless necessary, and the jpnese sample sentence usually conveys the meaning well enough to serve as a definition.

seriously, I spent 2 years poring over difficult-to-read monolingual definitions for my new cards... and while I'm not saying that was time wasted, this is MUCH easier.

core is also awesome because you know all those words are super user-friendly. before I would learn new words and most of the time my jpnese friends would either never have heard of the word before or laugh and say I sounded like a college professor.

My current best card style:




*The WHOLE question part is in different color (CHERRY PURPLE) than the answer part (3rd row)

* The subject of the card is in the first row, in BOLD. (and purple of course, as it is a part of the question)
* The real question part (the more specifying) part is in the 2nd row and is in ITALIC. + (CHERRY PURPLE) oc.



*Then the 3rd row is for the answer
*In the 3rd row, which is basically the answer row, I used cloze deletion for the main keyword and the font for that row is different again ( LIGHT BLUE)

...Then I cloze delete a certain word ( the keyword)
And in the answer field of the card the whole font color is different again (LIGHT PURPLE)

jettyke Wrote:* Simple
* Understandable
* Beautiful
* Short
* Colorful
etc.

Simple is the best, you can learn new things, you can memorize most, you can understand most of it, when it's simple. Then slowly you will be able to read/understand more and more.

ta12121 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:* Simple
* Understandable
* Beautiful
* Short
* Colorful
etc.

Simple is the best, you can learn new things, you can memorize most, you can understand most of it, when it's simple. Then slowly you will be able to read/understand more and more.

Yeah, dam I just realized that even after going through cards to modify and edit them, I still had lots of useless superfluous information in some of them.

Would you say that reviewing a card is totally useless if you don't understand that card completely when first reading it?

No! I've often learned to really appreciate cards later that I didn't fully get at first. I think you just need to get meanings and readings for all words involved... leave the grammar to sort itself out.

I think it's nice to challenge yourself a bit ;D

dtcamero Wrote:No! I've often learned to really appreciate cards later that I didn't fully get at first. I think you just need to get meanings and readings for all words involved... leave the grammar to sort itself out.

I think it's nice to challenge yourself a bit ;D

I also think that it is good not to have all knowns and only 1 or 2 unknowns on a card.

Theory: You can learn facts on cards quickly, when there is only 1 unknown item. But by following this approach, you could unknowingly develop a "safety-zone." 1 or 2 new words per sentence, 1 or 2 definitions and so on, but no more than that. We are talking about flashcards, but that could also lead to the same effect, when it comes to reading actual texts. You feel comfortable within the SRS environment. In real texts there is always more than one unknown word, grammar, ... unless you select the text specifically with the i+1 approach in mind.

KO.2001 contains many unknown words in every other sentence right from the get go. But it does not cost much time to look up words, add definitions to the cards, to work it all out and then review the cards. And here is my perfect card in which I put a lot of thought into before I started creating the deck:



It contains everything I need to know. At first I have to look at the definitions while I review cards. But I don't need to read or even look at the translations on the back, to understand the sentence after I have seen it once. I also don't have to look at the definitions on the front more than once or twice for the reading of a word. And when a words reading is known to me, I simply blank out the reading in white. I also define words that I have learned on other cards that contain it, in Japanese, with the original reading of the word blanked out. It only takes seconds to do it.

By doing this instead of following an i+1 approach, and this has done wonders for my overall understanding of written text. I don't understand everything I read, but I keep reading everything I can find. Even things that are way above my "level," and I will continue to do so, because this approach works for me.

They'd be similar to what I posted in the pitch thread.



Most of my cards have Tanaka corpus sentences, which aren't ideal for being quickly shown the usage of the word (often too long-winded). These short 大辞林 style examples with the － in place of the word make it easy to skim-read, and often contain collocations. I don't have the pitch code for most of my cards either, but I do have audio. Ideally, there'd be a collapsible J-J definition that expands when tapping the translation (at the moment mine auto-lookup in 大辞林 with a tap on the hiragana) and audio for the examples that plays when they're tapped.

Basically, I'd like a simple format suited to speed reviewing, but with as much easily-accessible additional information about the word as possible.

Edit: I just managed to use the Overwrite Fields plugin to reformat the Tanaka sentences 大辞林-style and saved over 4MB by cutting the English

My cards are short sentences with Kanji on the front and the Kanji+Furigana on the back. Everything else is hidden so that I can only see after clicking for edit mode; English translation, definitions, additional example sentence, etc.

Most recently I've learned that shorter sentences seem to be more effective, something I should have known from the beginning. I also use two or three short sentences with the same target word.

dtcamero Wrote:(back) word in kana, audio, sample sentence (mouseover) english definition

i generally try to avoid the english unless necessary, and the jpnese sample sentence usually conveys the meaning well enough to serve as a definition.

Right now I hide the english definition, but if I click for edit mode I can see it there. Are you saying that you can hover over the word and get English? If so, how do you get that function?

jettyke Wrote:My current best card style:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8818/56544115.jpg

Beautiful cards, dtcamero. How do you get the Japanese buttons?

foodcubes Wrote:How do you get the Japanese buttons?

Set you anki language to japanese

foodcubes Wrote:Right now I hide the english definition, but if I click for edit mode I can see it there. Are you saying that you can hover over the word and get English? If so, how do you get that function?

ok my core6000 template is kind of unnecessarily complicated... but this is how it works right now:

question:
<br><span style="font-family: Mincho; font-size: 40px; color: #000000; white-space: pre-wrap;">【 {{Vocabulary - Kanji}} 】</span><br>

answer:
<br><span style="font-family: Meiryo UI; font-size: 30px; color: #000000; white-space: pre-wrap;">[{{Vocabulary - Kana}}]

{{^Reading}}
{{Expression}}
{{/Reading}} {{Reading}}
{{Sentence - Audio}}
</span><br>

* <span style="color:white"; onmouseover="this.style.color='black'"
onmouseout="this.style.color='white'">( {{text:Vocabulary - English}} )</span> *


so the first 2 span styles just control the non-field text's appearance.

the ^reading stuff etc basically makes the expression show with furigana if I've been free enough to click the 'expression' field for each card and make them convert. otherwise the furigana-less expression field shows (which is the J-example sentence)

the last span style says that if the english term definition is moused-over, it shows in black... otherwise it stays white (invisible)

the joys of html dorkery ;D

img:

jettyke Wrote:

foodcubes Wrote:How do you get the Japanese buttons?

Set you anki language to japanese

dtcamero Wrote:ok my core6000 template is kind of unnecessarily complicated... but this is how it works right now:

Thanks and Thanks!

@dtcamero

Not sure if you're aware, but you can use "regenerate Readings" in the card browser, you don't have click in each expresion field.

CJ

How to create a small amount of smart cards in a small timeframe?

cjon256 Wrote:@dtcamero

Not sure if you're aware, but you can use "regenerate Readings" in the card browser, you don't have click in each expresion field.

CJ

hey thanks!!

My ideal srs cards would be read to me by a young Japanese female of breeding age.

jettyke Wrote:How to create a small amount of smart cards in a small timeframe?

I agree+easy of adding monolingual look-ups in an automated fashion+reading in the meaning field(not just reading field, since it makes it twice as fast).

ta12121 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:How to create a small amount of smart cards in a small timeframe?

I agree+easy of adding monolingual look-ups in an automated fashion+reading in the meaning field(not just reading field, since it makes it twice as fast).

how do you do it automatically?

I have those
"Vocab Sanseido J-J 　Goo Dict J-J 　Goo Dict E-J" links in the lower part of my cards but I have to click on the links and then wait until my browser loads to show me the definition so it's very 面倒くさい

jettyke Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:How to create a small amount of smart cards in a small timeframe?

I agree+easy of adding monolingual look-ups in an automated fashion+reading in the meaning field(not just reading field, since it makes it twice as fast).

how do you do it automatically?

I have those
"Vocab Sanseido J-J 　Goo Dict J-J 　Goo Dict E-J" links in the lower part of my cards but I have to click on the links and then wait until my browser loads to show me the definition so it's very 面倒くさい

rikaisama adds monlinigual cards to my deck but I still have to look up vocab I don't know into my meaning section. I also have to copy it to the front/it generates the readings and I copy that back to the meaning field. It takes time but I've found out it works well actually. It keeps my mind in Japanese.

I would love to be able to do this with sentences but I still need to find ways of doing that well/fast.

I've wanted to do a cloze deletion type in the missing word card, but i would like to have one card with just one word (or grammar point .etc) missing and when that gets easy to move onto the same sentance with more blanked out. I think i saw a if-then card template but without the correct name of what im looking for i thought id ask in here, so if someone knows id really appreciate it.
i have mostly audio/pic/kanji sentance> kanji and english with definitions all in same colour and bad font.... nothign imaginative or wonderful i recently started a subs2srs deck which i think is really futuristic im comparison to what i was doing.!

that mouseover could be helpful too, possibly using it as a hint system on the question.
if there are any other card tweaks itll be good to have a place with them together

In the interest of distracting myself from actually learning Japanese, I thought I'd see if I can pretty up some decks to make the hours of staring at them more enjoyable. I suspected that the Anki HTML renderer can also use Javascript and CSS3 (it's a QWebPage, right?), so I thought I'd give it a shot, and it works! You can even use jQuery!

I borrowed the effect from this site and made it generate a fancy background of colourful bubbles for each card:


The possibilities are almost endless. If it can be done in a web page, you can do it in Anki as well.

Oh, and this will most likely not work on a phone, where I do 99% of my reviews anyway. I'll give that a try on ankidroid soon.

If you want to add scripts and CSS, just dump the files in the media directory and include them as you normally would on a web page. E.g.,

Code:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/style.css"/>
<script src="js/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/script.js"></script>

Ignore my exotic desktop... Irrelevant.
The evolution of each of my heisig cards. My deck is very comprehensive in terms of information, but not too much is shown by default. I have a system of javascript hooks such that when you click on (or tap) certain parts of the card, depending on the card's current state, interesting things happen.

The format is clearly visible, so I won't waste any time explaining that.

While in a questioning mode, tapping the keyword recolors the index number above to something far more visible, as a primary hint. Tapping this index number, irrespective of visibility, redirects you to the koohii page for said kanji. Alternatively, tapping the space directly below the keyword reveals the previously invisible "story" field which ideally contains a personal story or reminder. While and only while the story is visible, tapping the keyword adds yet more information: stroke count and various other meanings of the kanji.

The answer page consists of the Keyword, a large version of the kanji in KanjiStrokeOrders, a small version of the kanji in a standard screen font, the index of the kanji, and the frequency of the kanji rated in gold stars between 0 (not much) and 5 (often used).

While in answer mode, tapping the keyword appends the same information as in the question mode, but straight away. Tapping the large kanji at first does nothing. Tapping the small version of the kanji prepends the On-Yomi and appends the Kun-Yomi, and recolors all three fields to a slightly more visible color. Tapping the small index below replaces it with the story field and also recolors it to more visible and slightly larger. While and only while the story field is visible in place of the index, tapping the large kanji results in a new field appearing just above the story, with the top RevTK story of that particular kanji. Tapping the gold star rating of the card results in the stars momentarily (~2 secs) being replaced by a frequency index (1-2000) or N/A for those above 2000, before reverting to the stars, because they look nicer.

Fields not (yet?) accessible from the card itself include Lesson number, a "primitives" field for primitive meaning / primitive composition (which I neglected to ever fill in) jouyou level, JLPT level, and the second most popular RevTK story for the kanji.

Only cards with the tag "active" are ever reviewed or added, so add this tag as you go along. Only cards with the tag "new" appear in the new pile, so shift this along as you go too. Obviously this is my system, so feel free to change that.

I like to think my cards are simple, despite behaving like swiss army knives and having code that looks like an ascii noodle soup. Note that the cards work fine on ankidroid and ankimobile, which is where I mainly use them, hence my accidental use of "tap" in place of "click".

Should you like to use my deck for it's styles, code, fields, or just about anything, I have uploaded it to my dropbox at the meager cost of something in the realm of 22mb. Enjoy!

The ideal card for me in Japanese was modeled after the cards that were working perfectly when I taught myself Hindi:
_______________________________________________________________
Front:
Sentence with Kanji (no furigana). Since Hindi uses an alphabet, I just put the sentence here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back:
same sentence from front, but for each unknown word, the definition is in square brackets behind it. Also, all kanji have their kana in brackets behind them.

Then the literal translation of the the sentence. [If the actual translation differs, I put it in brackets]
______________________________________________________________________

I copied all sentences that I deemed suitable into the SRS field, regardless of how many unknowns there were (sometimes 1, sometimes none but I like the particular phrase, and sometimes 5-6). To pass a card, I have to be able to read it aloud correctly, write it correctly, and understand the meaning of all words and the overall sentence.

It's been working great for me.