I am not learning Chinese myself, but found a Chinese learning resource on my rss reader and thought it would be useful for some of you.

From an article on Newswiretoday:

Nciku is an online Chinese-English dictionary platform with many unique search options and various features, the latest of which is Sentence Mode, an intuitive tool that takes searching for characters to a whole new level.

(...)

urthermore, clicking on a character within the word will take you to an nciku search for that character, and hovering your mouse over the word will also give you a brief definition. And to take the feature one step further, if a definition for that character doesn't exist, clicking on it will segment that character into its component characters. And as is the typical nciku format, there is also an audio icon provided at the end of the sentence or word that will play the entire phrase using the text-to-speech function.


Sentence Mode is just the latest in innovative features by nciku. Previously creating buzz was the handwriting recognition tool, which allows users to write strokes with a mouse and instantly bring up similar or related characters, along with the pinyin and definition of each character or word. Not just for those who are at the advanced level, the handwriting tool is ideal for even the most beginner level users struggling to learn characters.