On the profile page (among others) the footer (home |  This website uses the JMDICT and KANJIDIC files. |  0.039 sec) gets mangled by/runs into/over/under the ads in the side column (Firefox).

ファブリス wrote:

jorgebucaran wrote:

Question: In one article from April you mentioned that while reviewing you could click on a snapshot which would bring up a small dialog letting you read the Kanji's story right in there. Is this currently implemented? How do I see that?

Yeah it was broken but I did some plumbing just now, try again with the "S" key (may need to refresh the javascripts with a full page refresh). It will remain a hidden feature for now, as the display is a little buggy in IE6 and Opera. It seems to work fine in Firefox, Chrome and Safari. After editing and clicking "Save" or "Cancel" also in Opera you ahve to click somewhere else to be able to use S to close the window (otherwise use the close button).

I think it will remain a hidden feature for the production update, because I'm not sure yet where it is going functionality wise. It's more of something I made for proof of concept and testing framework features.

Thanks, works wonderfully. This tool is my favorite new thing about the new site.

Bug: Can't find the insta-learn button. Also, can't tell the difference between the new site and the old one.

Just throwing out ideas.:

1) Make a new logo.
2) The links at the top (Learn More, Members, Donate, Forums) should be top-aligned to the tabs. (Home, Study, Manage, Review, ...).

Another crazy idea:

Instead of (2), why don't you remove the "Reviewing the Kanji" title and put there the "Learn More, Members, Donate, Forums" links instead, top-aligned with the Signed-in <username> Sign Out block. Then add a new block section / strip in top where you'd put the title, and in there you could do many things, like if you make it really big you could use a jquery script like (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicinde … glider.htm) or (http://jqueryfordesigners.com/demo/slider-gallery.html) to create a slide show with the features of the page.

Also check this plugin, maybe it will give you other ideas (http://www.hotajax.org/demo/jquery/Slid … index.html).

Nice to be able to review the failed kanjis :-)

Some suggestions:
* "My Stories" should have the date of last review on one line, as before, then I can avoid much of the scrolling. For instance: 2009-06-01 04:54:55. And I do not like the black frame and heading: All black parts should be made some shade of yellow to fit in with the colour scheme.

* It should be customizable how many cards I view at a time, both in the list to the left an the one to the right when I view my failed kanjis.
The same also with http://test.koohii.com/index_staging_no … shcardlist

* Could it be able to download my list of stories for the flashcards in one go, as txt for example? As of now I have to go through each of the pages on the list and copy-paste the list from each page individually.

* The grey coloured ribbon (http://test.koohii.com/index_staging_no … t=framenum) does not fit in with the yellow theme, using some shade of yellow there too would be better.

* Nice to be able to view all seven compartments in the review, could it be an option to make this the default view?

* I got timed out very often, don't know why, but the new function to reconnect is just great :-)

* On My Profile I can change my timezone, but I can not change when the next day/change is done (updating of new cards to review etc.). Perhaps this could be seperated from the timezone? As of now I am using the timezone to handle that, but then the clock/date is wrong.

* About the report- and voting-function for stories
I think the "Report"-function is being abused. Reporting Heisig stories is all ok, but I do not think it should be used to just show your dislike. Voting + is enough, we do not need a "voting -" in addition to that.
And: If someone reports my story, and I then change it, it will still be reported although I changed what they (possibly) did not like. If you report a story you should give a reason, and if you change your story totally you should be able to erase such (now obsolete) messages.
What about a button "restart story from scratch" or something similar? If my story is new, the old voting would not be valid any more either. But if someone voted for it, it perhaps should still be preserved and make me able to make a second one, thus letting others (that voted for it) still be able to read that story. What do you think?
I think I read something about this being scheduled for changes also?

Last edited by axelb (2009 June 01, 6:23 am)

DrWarrior12 wrote:

Comment: I'm wondering what others think about the old pie chart vs. the new percentage bar on the Summary page. I think I like the pie chart a bit more, opinions?

I wanted to remove the Google Charts dependency, and thought the Pie chart was a bit silly considering it's just a X vs Y chart. Then again it may have been an excuse to play with html/css. In the future even if I use a pie chart it will be SVG like the Review Graph page.

1)  I'm not sure I understand the intended workflow for restudying, and there seem to be some confusing nomenclature issues...
What used to be 'failed' are now in a 'restudy' list.  Okay.  When I click on a kanji in this list to restudy, the button suggests I can 'add to the restudied list.'  Okay, so there's a distinction between the 'restudy' list and the 'restudied' list.  But when I click it, it doesn't take the kanji off the 'restudy' list, and I have the same amount to restudy.  Instead, it creates a new list of 'learned' kanji with a separate 'review' button and 'clear' link.  It also leaves me on the same kanji page, so to study a different kanji, I have to use the short list in the sidebar (one extra click) or the detailed list (two+ extra clicks). 

Moreover, the 'learned' / 'restudied list' also appears to be referred to as the 'relearned kanji list' and the 'relearned kanji selection' in the confirmation message after clearing the list.

So anyhow, after I click 'add to the restudied list' on a kanji page, I still have to 'Review' it from the 'Study' page before I can actually review it on the Review page.

Suggestions: 
> call the step-up list the 'learned list' everywhere
> when you add a 'restudy' kanji to the 'learned' list, remove it from the 'restudy' list.
> when you add a kanji to the 'learned' list, go to the next kanji in the 'restudy' list (if the added kanji was a 'restudy' kanji) or the next kanji numerically (if the added kanji was a new kanji - see below).
> change the button on the study kanji page to say 'add to the learned list'
> change the language on the confirmation page when you clear the 'learned' list
> create a way to review the 'learned' list from the review page (even to incorporate into the standard review from the '## due cards' button)
> allow adding individual kanji from the study page.  (for instance, I have never added kanji 1900 to my stack. If I 'study' that kanji, there should be a button for 'add to 'learned list'.  This would be a nice implementation of the new custom selection functionality (which I love).

2)  It would be great if the 'restudy' kanji list would remember how you last sorted it (I always want it sorted a different way than the default) - at least during a single session.  Even better if the sidebar 10 kanji sort the same way for the course of the session.

Thanks again for all your hard work!

Last edited by aboros (2009 June 01, 10:02 am)

@ Zarxrax: This functionality is available in the old and new site. I use it occasionally. Make sure you wait until the page completely loads before touching the search box or it wont work.

I am reading your feedback and creating a to-do list of fixes/tweaks for the Production release. The production release (the TEST site replacing definitely kanji.koohii.com) is tentatively planned for the weekend of 13-14 May. I'll try to address as many fixes as I can.

ファブリス wrote:

The fullscreen mode removes all the unneeded layout, and may fit and resize better on the iPhone, and if not, I'm pretty sure it can be finetuned to display really nicely.

Yes, I agree it would be very nice if the fullscreen mode could be tweaked for the small smartphone screens.

Ok, here's a shot of the fullscreen mode:



Currently there is a lot of empty vertical space between the card and the buttons. This makes it necessary to zoom out in order to see everything, and then the buttons end up very small.

And for some reason the three buttons display stacked on top of each other in two rows.
A single row of buttons -- either vertical or horizontal -- with larger buttons and/or plenty of space between the buttons would be best for the touchscreen.

Another observation:

I removed card 10 from my stack to test the custom feature.  On the home page, it now says 'Lesson 1 of 56, 15 kanji to go.'  At worst it should say '1 of 56, 1 kanji to go.'  At best, the lessons that are complete should be lit up on the progress chart, and only those that have missing kanji are greyed (with a notation of how many kanji are missing).  (Now I'm thinking wacky:  you could slowly change color from grey to yellow depending on how many of the lesson are complete - or you could make it a bar graph that starts all grey and climbs to all yellow as you study more kanji).

Also, it would be good to be able to see a list of kanji not yet added all in one place - right now there's no way to tell, that #10 is missing without reading the detailed kanji list and looking for gaps manually.  (I really like that I can fill all the gaps between 1 and 100 by typing 1-100 in the custom add box, and the site is smart enough to know which I've already added, but add the ones I haven't.  But it would be good to be able to identify these kanji before I add them - maybe on the study page somehow?).

I really admire the huge effort in the new design and new backend.  Thank you again!

@DavidZ: thank you, I need to find the iPhone emulator somewhere that I could run on the MacBook, then I can add the meta tags for iPhone. It will be very difficult to test otherwise. I understand it has a specific resolution, but it tries to zoom the page to fit within the dimensions. The fullscreen page would need specific adjustments, eg. moving the right side boxes somewhere else so that it can be zoomed where the flashcard fills in most of the space and the buttons would be larger. Buttons on two rows is a Safari display bug I will look at it.

I fixed the 404 Page Not Found and 500 Internal Server error pages yesterday on the test site, but they won't work on the main koohii.com, not until there is some kind of website there. As for using koohii.com without subdomain... the plan is to move the kanji.koohii.com to a "reviewingthekanji" dot com domain once I have figured how to do this without breaking the site's ranking in Google search, as well as the site tracking software.