Improving the scratchpad in AnkiMobile is on the todo list, but in the mean time if the brush stroke is the main issue, you can adjust this by editing the scratchpad plugin. You should be able to adjust the brush stroke size by increasing 2 in the following line:

this.lw = 2 // linewidth

Note you'll need to embed the scratchpad again after you make the change.

Anki mobile is fantastic. Best $25 I spent in the service of improving my japanese vocabulary. Many of other apps were fine for casual use, but Anki feels like a tool. It has great support for japanese specifics like furigana. You can turn off all the UI chrome and navigate using tap regions if you want to place the focus on content:



The app has spoiled me to the point that I only use desktop anki for adding new cards and resetting leeches.

Best of luck on the 2.0 release Damien. If you need a beta tester for iPhone / new iPad let me know (particularly if you want someone to hammer on CSS layouts -- I'm itching to try some nice CSS layouts with subs2srs decks).

Thanks! I'm planning to put a call out for beta testers on the Anki forums in June, so please let me know then.

@mtwebb Wow.

I kindly suggest the developer of Anki to incorporate a UI like the one @mtwebb is using by default. Anki is a really powerful application but for those out there spoiled by today's UI standards it's just ugly, both visually and sometimes practically, as in I always disliked having so many features that I will not, ever use. Sorry about the rant. Seriously, @resolve, if you make Anki look as good as that right out of the box you would make a ton of people happier and attract more attention by opening up to a larger number of users that are not computer programmers (semi-pun) to that great piece of engineering that you have pulled out.

Hiding all the chrome by default would make it very hard for new users to navigate the app. As for the card content, while I do think it's pretty, asking me to make Anki look like that is a bit like seeing a pretty Word document and asking the Word folks to make documents you receive look like that out of the box - not practical, as a fundamental part of cards/documents is that they have user-defined styling.

caivano Wrote:It's not a bug but it's a pretty big annoyance. I get out of sync about twice a week, every week. It's mostly because the desktop automatically syncs when closing, but the iPhone never closes so never syncs automatically.

I had this issue before and so turned off the automatic syncing in the desktop program, too. Having to always sync before starting to review prompts me to sync from my phone first if I'd forgotten to do it before. Not an elegant solution, but it works for me.

Resolve, have you pondered over offering temporary discounts on Anki and getting it in sites like Lifehacker or other sites that list app deals?

I knew about this kind of offers via Lifehacker app deals. Knowing the effect sites like Lifehacker have on the websites they feature, I guess it must be similar with app deals. You could get tons of people buying Anki Mobile in a short time.

AnkiMobile currently assumes you're familiar with the desktop version and can't be used standalone. While I warn about this in the app description, when I've decreased the price in the past as an experiment, it increased the number of people buying the app on a whim despite no previous experience with Anki, and in turn it caused an increase in negative reviews. For that reason, I won't be dropping the price again until the app is usable even by someone with no experience with the desktop.

mtwebb Wrote:Anki mobile is fantastic. Best $25 I spent in the service of improving my japanese vocabulary. Many of other apps were fine for casual use, but Anki feels like a tool. It has great support for japanese specifics like furigana. You can turn off all the UI chrome and navigate using tap regions if you want to place the focus on content:

[snip]Lovely image[/snip]

The app has spoiled me to the point that I only use desktop anki for adding new cards and resetting leeches.

Best of luck on the 2.0 release Damien. If you need a beta tester for iPhone / new iPad let me know (particularly if you want someone to hammer on CSS layouts -- I'm itching to try some nice CSS layouts with subs2srs decks).

Mtwebb, would you mind posting a link to or messaging me a copy of your current deck? I absolutely love that model!

One small addition to your amazing program, resolve:
I notice that ankidroid has the ability to use a japanese interface... I love using the J-interface from the anki desktop program as it is pretty thorough, and assume ankidroid works the same way. I've been using ankimobile everyday for years now and (other than the quickbar shifting right) the only issue I have with it is that there is all that english I have to wade through to get to my japanese study. Do you think we could get a japanese interface in ankimobile 2.0??
cheers,

Not on first release, sorry. It is on the todo, but other things are taking priority at the moment.

mtwebb Wrote:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/875047/anki-jukugo-small.PNG

How do you get the keyword-on-top-of-the-kanji formatting? It looks handy...

Sorry if this is a newbie-ish question:
Is the anki iPhone app meant to be used together with the desktop app? Is it possible to only review with the iPhone app and not use the desktop one at all?
Thanks!

This is covered in the app description on the app store.

Good luck with the next release resolve. I don't use my Japanese iPhone anymore since I moved back to the US- I use the desktop version and AnkiDroid.

However, without the iPhone version I purchased when it was first released, I doubt I would have passed N2. I spent hours and hours studying on my commutes. My only regret at that time was that it didn't come out sooner!

Thanks for everything you've done- absolutely money well spent. Anki seems to be more popular than it was a couple years ago- I hope that continues. Any progress on getting it into schools (I think that was something you were looking into in the past?)

Thanks for the kind words! I'm still focused on individual users at this stage, but there are some teachers who use it in a school setting such as http://teachingwithanki.blogspot.com/

anritsi Wrote:

mtwebb Wrote:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/875047/anki-jukugo-small.PNG

How do you get the keyword-on-top-of-the-kanji formatting? It looks handy...

The same way that you add furigana to words:

(1) Add open and close brackets after a kanji or kanji compound
(2) Type in the desired text in the bracket (if you want an English keyword rather than furigana, then the only difference is that you need to type the text in English)

If everything is done correctly, then your keyword should appear in small text above the kanji!