Ok, so previously there was "My Words" and the queue.
Having two lists seems reasonable to me - a list of words I have started learning and a list of interesting words I've come across that I will start learning at some point in the future. As far as I could see the only issue with the way it worked was that there was apparently no way of choosing _which_ words to add from the queue to My Words. I was hoping that this was what the new UI would fix.

As of today, I now have multiple sections in my "Old Queue" list, which have been arbitrarily named:
Old Words (1)
Old Words (2)
Old Words (3)
Old Words (4)
February 20th, 2011
February 23rd, 2011
February 24th, 2011
February 26th, 2011
February 28th, 2011
April 23rd, 2011
May 19th, 2011
May 30th, 2011


These lists contain a mixture of words that I've already started learning and ones that I haven't.

I see there is now an empty "Miscellaneous" list. Ok, I thought, I just have to go through each section and manually add all the words I've already learned into the Miscellaneous list, and then use that list to study.
But once I got to 200 items, I was told that I couldn't add any more items to that section. Is there a reason for this limit?

Thanks,

Justin

I think that misc. is a list and you need to add your words in to sections in it; once these are 200 words in the first section you need to make a new one within that list to add more words.

Scott: could the "quick add box" be added to the "description" tab of the Miscellaneous list? This would speed things up a lot. It would keep the best feature of the queue, keeping everything on one page. For me, this is a must...

Would it also be possible (haven't tested this out yet - this is based on what you said previously) for the MBDG link to go to the Miscellaneous list instead of its own list? I use this feature a lot, but it needs to go to the same list so items add to practice in order, and keep edits in one place.

Many thanks!

I was trying to have the list generated from the queue be in order of when they were originally put in, but unfortunately the data that we have available is more off than I thought.

I think though that I could generate for you a list of the words that were not yet added from the queue. If this is a common issue for people I can make that generally available. I'll need to work on that and get back to you.

The 200 word limit has always been around (was actually 100 before) to keep the list sections manageable by the system. As spills42 mentioned you should be able to make a new section from the popup, by selecting it from the section drop down, though that ought to be automatic once the given section is full. I'll add that to my list of tweaks to make it more straightforward. As with any new system, there are things still to be ironed out, but I'm hoping in the end once things settle down you'll find this works better than the old system did.

@Byzanti: We've got a link to the quick add box on the vocab nav here (click "Quick Add"):

http://www.skritter.com/vocab

That should be more convenient even than putting the button in the misc box, though I don't think it would hurt to have it there too.

As for having sources go into the same list, it was you who mentioned that before on the forum when I was talking about this system a while back, right? It's not a functionality we've got going now, but while designing the system I made sure that it wouldn't be hard to add it later on; basically I would only have to add the front end controls for it. I'll talk with Nick and George about doing this, see if we can put it in.

Scott, I was happy to spot that! And it's definitely a move in the right direction. But when you're adding and editing loads of words at once, having the functions on two separate pages (or 3 really, since the quick add box is half way down the vocab page and another pop up window away) isn't convenient. I'd rather just bookmark the Miscellaneous list page and be done with it. I hope you add it!

I'm also thinking this would be a good addition to all lists. It's quicker than clicking 'content, section, edit, adding' when you only want to add a word or two and don't care about structure. The effort going into adding/editing lists up to now is why I've rarely used them, and have added almost everything via the queue.

That's what I meant by adding the best feature of the queue into lists. Convenience, and speed (well, other than the clicking 'next 10' bit!).

Thanks again

My topic title might be "not really used to the new interface..."

I've got some miscellaneous points of feedback related to the new design (on-topic) but also to lists generally (somewhat off-topic):

1) somewhere along the line (maybe not this redesign effort) the font, specifically to *bold* was modified; the more prominent *bold* makes mnemonics much easier to read - thank you
2) in the word popup the pencil icon needs a tooltip
3) someone else mentioned the need for a tooltip on the ban icon, too
4) the redesigned popup is great - more information (mitigating the need for a dictionary lookup) and more useful layout generally; since I use a small screen I wonder if a wider, shorter display is possible or desirable?
5) in the popup's list of "words that use the character" the plus and check are not clearly distinguishable - they used to be red/green, right? the color differentiation was useful
6) Maybe I don't understand the intention of the "Old Queue" but I think it is a transitional step, intended to save things added in the past to the queue in a list form that can still be studied but also organized like other lists. Assuming this, I tried to move everything to another list (check all, move to list) and got a Google error 414.
7) I can move several at a time but they stay in the "Old Queue". It seems like I should move then delete them, but the only way to delete them is remember which ones they are, go to "edit this list" and delete from there. But maybe this is all transitional and it doesn't make sense to design the interface around this.

Thanks to all of you guys for continuing to improve Skritter.

Agree on the redesigned popup. It's suave!

Thanks Byzanti, we appreciate your comments! Nick and I are focused on fixing the Old Queue list and a few other lingering bugs right now, but once Tuesday comes around the three of us will all get together and discuss at length all these suggestions and comments on how to improve on all the changes to the system, and then I'll work on implementing these changes over the next week. Lots to do, so most important things are getting done first.

@sarac: I'll work on that bug shortly, and actually you touch on a point that we discussed when we were originally designing this. We were considering having a 'Move to list' option as well as an 'Add to list' option in that drop down, as you describe, but we weren't sure that was necessary, or if many people would find it helpful. We wanted more feedback from you guys on the system as it is now before going ahead and implementing anything additional. What are other peoples' thoughts?

The pop-up is really quite awesome. One thing I'd like to see that I think was there before was the ability to click on a drop-down list to view more example sentences for words not currently under study. The expanded list of "words using this character" is quite spectacular and runs quickly and smoothly, but as I find new words, I sometimes would like to see used in more than one sentence. I've been just checking out the jisho.org or mdbg links to see those examples now, which is actually fine, but since you asked...

Also, let me resurrect this nagging problem even though it was thoroughly poo-pooed once. The popup menu shows each word item (writing, definition, reading, and tone) with several stats, including when it's next due. I sometimes find one that is not due for example for another 17 months, yet I've managed to forget it. I really *really* want to be able to do a one-click reset to 6 days for these items so I can get retested and re-learn these words at more frequent intervals. Lately, I've been starring them and marking them wrong, which accomplishes the same purpose but costs a lot more time and inconvenience. Maybe once you get all the kinks and requests worked out with this new interface, you'll reconsider this request??? Pretty please???

jcdoss, you can click the pencil icon to get that sentence list back. The idea is to "edit" (pencil) which sentence you've chosen. Hmm. I wonder if that is confusing for others as well?

We considered the request to have manual reset on scheduling in the word popup and decided against it--too much complexity for the use case. I think you'll just have to use the other methods, like starring them, to focus on those ones that you realize you've forgotten. Sorry!

You make me sad. So be it! Come, Patsy!

NONE SHALL PASS!! I mean, ahem...

@sarac I fixed the bug, you should be fine adding large numbers of words from one list to another.

@scott I think I am a little confused about what the Old Queue is.

[Edited] The email says "We have auto-generated a list of all the 6312 words you have ever added to your queue." Are the "Old Words" sections all the items that were actually studied? Or could the sections with date titles contain already-studied items as well?

Another question has to do with the list display. In the past, it would show a word's W T P D with a gray background if the item was in the Queue. Now it still shows some items with a gray background - how is that determined exactly? If I go to the popup for one of the gray words, it says "Status: In My Words" even though I've never actually studied the item and it's not scheduled.

I also had a problem working with one of the "Old Words" sections in my Old Queue list. I selected one of the words, then went to "Word Actions" and selected "Add to List". This did nothing, but in my console I saw a JavaScript error

listsect:30 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined

This is repeated every time I select "Add to List" from the drop-down. This is on Chrome 14.0.835.94, Windows XP Home.

James

The old queue was supposed to have the words separated, organizing by when you added them (and putting the ones we don't have enough info on at the beginning) but the heuristic wasn't good enough, so far more made it into the "Old Words" sections than should have. Nick and I have figured out a better way to organize these words, and Nick is implementing it so you'll get a new list where the words are clearly delineated between what you added and what you had in the queue to add.

What you see in the progress charts and in the word popups are bugs not handling the lingering data about what words you have in your queue. I'm fixing it so that it will consider those words 'not added' yet instead of in your words, and they show up as not having been added in those charts. Once the data has been completely migrated then that data will probably be removed, but first we have to make sure everything is moved over properly. I'll have an update soon that will fix the progress charts and word popups though.

As for the "Old Words" section that's causing you trouble, I can't seem to reproduce the error on the first section, at least on Chrome 12. Which section in particular is causing you trouble? Are you selecting all the words?

@scott OK, makes sense.

Here's the problematic section:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/listsect?list=112813563&sect=0

I'm selecting just 合抱之木生于毫末 and then hitting "Add To List".

James

@james - I'm just curious; what does that phrase mean? Something about tree-hugging??

@junglegirl - It's part of a famous quote　from the Tao Te Ching:

合抱之木，生于毫末
九层之台，起于累土
千里之行，始于足下

Roughly,

Huge tree was born a sprout
Nine-story tower, start by piling earth
Thousand-li journey, start by putting a foot down

James

Hey James, I still couldn't reproduce the problem, even upgrading my stable version to 13 (browsers, they grow so fast these days). It could be something to do with the cache? Try clearing it to make sure you've got the latest version of all the code. Are there any other browsers that are causing you trouble? It could be that it's because you're on the beta version of Chrome but that's highly unlikely; I'm much more prone to think it's something on our end than Google's.

@scott - I cleared the cache, still getting it in Chrome 14. Firefox 5.0 works fine.

@james - So I was way off. Makes sense now, thanks!

jww1066, I'm on Chrome 14 and I can't reproduce it either. Are there any Chrome extensions you could try temporarily disabling?

@nick - I disabled all extensions, emptied the cache, and tried again. Same result.

Maybe we're misunderstanding the exact action in question. Can you send me a screenshot?

@nick I sent them to your Skritter email address.