I think it's worth noting that it should be pretty easy to make a GreaseMonkey script for this and no need to edit the site at all.  I think many would feel pressured to see that number (myself included) and it could be bad for their experience, instead of good.

One reason that this wouldn't work for me:

It takes time to write the characters. How could this differentiate between an easy to write yet hard to remember character, and one you know extremely well, but takes a very long time to put down on paper?

Of course, the interface doesn't differentiate between the little step in your head of recognition->writing.

Also, memory doesn't always work in these discrete little units. For example, you could only remember part of a character, write down some primitives, and while in the process of doing so remember the rest of it.

Last edited by playadom (2008 June 18, 4:19 pm)

Complications aside, it would actually be useful to have this added into the interface.

I just read that article, it kind of makes sense, as I'd imagine it would rewire your information somewhere else, but the thing is I find that if I dig for a very long time, I'll usually never forget it if I find it (at least for awhile)

Glad my little scripts serve as inspiration.

I'll send you a revised version by email, just some remarks.

The counter is immediately reset after you flip the card. I think it would be better if the time was halted while you're checking the answer, and reset after you press the 'Yes'-'No' buttons.

You don't need to change the 'fSubmit' function. The 'fFlip' function is called twice, once when a new card comes up, and once when the 'Show' button is pushed. Check the faceup variable to see which state you're in, reset if false, halt if true.

Displaying time in 'mm:ss' format would be nicer. There's no format function as such in JavaScript, but some basic arithmetics will get you there quickly.

The line where you push a div element into your timer paragraph is superfluous, as both in resetTime and increaseTime you overwrite the whole paragraph contents with something else. If you want a div instead of a paragraph, put 'div' in createElement. If you want to give it an id, assign it to timer.id. If you want a div inside a p, create a timerParagraph object first and make that the parent of your timer object. None of this is needed however for this script to work.