The squigs are now showing up in the tone color and not black. So if the character is 1st tone, the squig will be red for example.

Is this a bug? it's kind of annoying.

No it's not a bug, it may be alpha though...
But if you use tone colors, why would you think it's annoying? I think the idea behing tone colors is that you somehow automatically learn the color of a character and therefore know the tone, so if you write a character in the right color it should help you remembering it...

It shows me the tone before I have a chance to guess it.

Plus the colors are kind of distracting.

Actually it wasn't asking me for tones at all, so something seems to be broken.

It got fixed when I refreshed the site and only study tones though.

It only shows squigs in tone colour when you know the tone already. If the tone comes up for review, the squigs colour will be black and you will have to answer the tone after the writing.

This was in alpha for a long time and I never got enough feedback on it, so I released in hopes of getting more input. Like Neil describes, it doesn't do it if it's going to ask you for the tone then.

Those who use tone colors, what do you think: helps, or hurts?

I would like to use it, but only with custom tone colors (some day in the future...)

I like it, kind of like Skritter paint by the numbers. Took me a while thought to figure out WHY I was painting with colors though...I'm a bit slow!

I first thought the color scheme was depending on the level of difficulty to learn one character. Ex : if I always draw a character very badly, it would show in red, if it´s almost perfet, in green...

But then, my question is : what colour for what tone ?

Same as nicogo, I'm not sure which is what. I also thought it was difficulty or how bad you wrote it last time, if red, then last time I got it wrong, if yellow, last time I got it so so etc...

I find the color quite distracting, although might be useful once I get used to it. My eyes aren't really associating tone color with character yet though, as I don't know for sure which ones are what.

I wrote a feedback already, but maybe others want to comment.
Yes it only colours it when the tone is not prompted so you kind of learn the tone colour while writing. I am getting used to it a little now after a while. But I think overall I still prefer using the time while drawing to already think again which tone it was. No matter if prompted or not. If I start writing it is given away often. I'd have to start think of tone first, then start writing. This is counterintuitive as the tone is usually prompted last, so I usually think while writing or directly after finishing. Even if it does not prompt tone, I only look at the result side once I am finished recalling.

I would not like to switch off tone colours completely though as I used them in my Mnemonics sometimes and like to display them on the definition panel.

my initial reaction to this was that it was very annoying and wouldn't help. after using it for a few days it's grown on me, but i'm still not 100% sure that i like it. if its an easy enough thing to change could we be given the option of tone colored words and tone colored strokes/characters as different settings?

I 100% liked reading the pinyin with colors for tones, but i'm not sure that i always want to see tones when i'm writing the characters.

I agree that after a while it sort of 'grows on you'. However, I still find it a pity the the idea of having custom colors was never implemented.

Marc

The custom colors are still technically on the list, but every time I think about them I'm torn about whether they are more complexity than they're worth, so I don't do them. The colors are actually one of the harder features to be consistent about, requiring a bunch of code everywhere.

The feedback I've gotten isn't very conclusive, but it does seem that more people like it than don't, by a slight margin. Perhaps a poll is in order, although it won't be interesting to most users.

I used to use tone colors, but turned them off a few months ago because the colored squigs were so distracting.

Polls results indicate that it's better this way, so I think we'll leave it as is.

Thanks, me like it too and have been using it in alpha for a while now.

I am a little late to the conversation. But I would like to throw in my vote for custom colors. I know there is somewhat of a standard set, but it helps people to use what works best for their brain. It really does make a noticeable difference.