Generally I like it and it works. Here are a few notes:
1) When a prompt comes up "click to focus" is written across the screen. What does that mean?
2) Although it appears that my cursor is in the box where I need to type, typing does nothing. I must click my cursor on that same spot and then type.
3) Entering tone numbers is fine. However, the display shows a tiny gray tone number (too small to really see) and the tone mark - redundant.
4) Once I finish typing and see the result, the click anywhere to advance does not work, I must click on "next" to advance.

As others have commented, putting down the pen to type at the keyboard is cumbersome. While it is not consistent with SRS and the mixing of various types of practice is effective I wonder about pinyin-only practice. Sometimes doing something a little different is a welcome change, and it would sidestep the keyboard transition issue.

Good work!

You say "it is not consistent with SRS", but so what? The scheduled times provided by SRS systems are only estimates anyway.

I have a similar problem with Anki. I study Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, and Spanish; for Chinese I type the pinyin in using the normal Windows keyboard layout, for Russian I type use the Russian Windows keyboard layout, and for Portuguese and Spanish I type using the Windows International keyboard layout. That means that if I were to mix all those languages in one deck, I would constantly have to switch input methods.

Instead, I separate the decks so I can stick to a single input method while I'm studying each deck. This makes my reviews much more efficient than if I were constantly changing input methods.

I thought that the Skritter guys had some mechanism in the scheduler that was grouping all the readings together, to avoid this exact problem.

James

"Click to focus" means Flash doesn't have your cursor focus, which is why typing does nothing until you click on the flash, thus giving it focus.

Going to have to wait until Nick returns to address those, sarac, but thanks for the tips! It's definitely going to be seeing some major improvements before we officially release it.

Maybe with the new practice page, it could made simple to choose what parts you study...

Nick couldn't get the grouping mechanism built before he left, but that's something that he'll be working on when he gets back.

Here's another issue I'm running into a lot. When the word is long, the pinyin input field grows to a certain point, then stops; this means that you have to type the last part blindly. For example, try it with 一日不見如隔三秋.

Maybe it could wrap to two or more lines when the input gets long, rather than cutting it off at one line.

James

8 characters? This is only a word if you're German. In English, it's a short story or a novella.

There are plenty of 成语 which are 8 characters. I guess it's arguable whether you could call it a "word" but it's perfectly reasonable to want to study it like one.

加油 jww1066, I think it's awesome you are studying long strings like that.

It's an idiomatic phrase from the Mandarin Idioms list: http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjW_4AMDA

I have been studying with Skritter for a while (I got up to 1,400 characters before I nuked everything and started over) but my Chinese reading skills are still pretty basic. I think that's because I studied the characters in isolation rather than in context. So now I'm trying to learn more phrases and complete sentences made up of all the characters I supposedly know.

James

Yeah I find I really need to see things in context as well. So outside of Skritter, I do reading practice on stuff like Slow Chinese, Harry Potter 6, and random text messages I get on my phone.

I'm just about at 1150 characters on Skritter now, really hoping to get to 1500 soon!

@nicki: I hadn't heard about Slow Chinese, thanks for the tip.

To learn longer phrases and full sentences I find Anki very useful, particularly if you use the Mandarin toolkit and/or the pinyin plugin.

James

I use grading buttons and they don't show up on the pinyin practice - maybe you only want right/wrong results there so the toggling of the "correct" button is sufficient?
There's another thing I've noticed which doesn't interfere with my practice but may not be how you intended it to work. After I enter the pinyin, hit return and it is checked/scored, I have found that I can delete that first answer, type in another answer which is checked and the viewer shows that only that second entry/score is kept.

Another problem: if you see the pinyin prompt and click "show", it shows the pinyin but doesn't mark the item as wrong (it stays green).

James

It would also be useful if (like Anki) it highlighted exactly where you got the pinyin wrong. For example, if you messed up the tone on the third syllable, maybe it could highlight just the third syllable.

James

Yes, I will do more work to get the show and correct buttons to work. I can't easily support grading buttons on these, though, because it's really complicated which character subprompts get graded how. You'll be able to use the grading indicators in the prompt for the word-level reading item (not working yet).

I will fix the rest of the stuff mentioned here, like the long words, the highlighting of errors, the grouping by prompt type, the next clicks, and the keyboard shortcuts.

Retyping the pinyin grading you from scratch and the little tone numbers are by design. I need more feedback about the tone numbers, though. My hypothesis is that by having them in there, it will reduce keyboard confusion that you'd get from backspacing to correct mistaken characters that are no longer there because of tone mark conversion (happened to me with other pinyin typing schemes). But that could be just me. Their formatting is open to suggestion.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: the best way to go to the next prompt is to hit enter again after it's graded your submission.

Thanks for your responses, Nick. I did find the enter again method, that's good.

I understand what you write about the little tone numbers and the notion of reducing "keyboard confusion". I don't have any trouble if I'm entering something using the main keyboard - it is intuitive and/or displayed well. I don't know if it would be as easy for me without those tiny tone numbers, cannot say.

However, using arrow keys is a mistake. Maybe you don't intend that they be used but it seems like they work - the cursor moves - but deleting and typing after moving back and forth with arrows invariably (for me) makes a mess.

Ah, yes; I need to do some more work on the logic that tries to keep invalid syllables from being entered so that you can type in the middle of the word.

I've made about half the changes to this. Still a lot left to do. While I work on that, I want to ask if anyone has any good ideas for keyboard shortcuts for going back to the last prompt. The normal shortcut, left arrow, doesn't work because it moves the cursor left in the text field. (I could disable that ability, I guess...)

What would be a natural key to press, in your mind? Suggestions welcome.

@nick - I just ran into a problem with 几, which has "ji3, ji1" as its pinyin. No matter what I type in the pinyin prompt, Skritter marks it wrong. Maybe this is because of the comma?

I think it worked if you typed ji1 or ji3 but not trying both. I've just finished the logic for letting you type the alternative pinyins for characters like this if you want, and it grades everything appropriately. Complexity subdued for you! Upload later today.

@nick awesome

Reading prompt grouping is in. I haven't been able to heavily test it as I don't have many reading prompts due at the moment, so let me know how it works. It should shoot for 5-10 reading prompts in a row when it does one, if there are that many available.

I've also made it so that the left and right arrows still function for back and next while in reading prompt. This is kind of a consistency decision and kind of a lazy one--I haven't been able to get the pinyin validation to work right when you're typing in the middle of a word, only at the end, so I want to discourage moving the cursor back to do edits. ;)

I'm also playing with the way multiple sounds are queued up, such that queued character sounds clear out a lot faster, and so that the syllables you type will play as you type them (easier to know if you made any typos). I need to tweak it a bit so the last syllable of a multiple-character word on writing/tone practice doesn't get crowded out as much by the following word pronunciation, but other than that I think it's better than the old way. What do others think?

The sounds' syllables came so quickly (as I typed) that it surprised me. I like it.

Some grouping yes, but not quite. I started with about 350 in my queue and plenty of reading ones in the mix. Early on I got 5 reading prompts (RP) in a row, then a handful of others, then 1RP, then others, 1 RP, others... 5 more RP, others, 1 RP...

Since, at least for me, I really like the reading practice but I dislike the interruption of reaching for the keyboard and either awkwardly typing with the pen in my hand or putting down the pen to type - I still think a dedicated reading practice is not a bad idea. Sure, that is another mode/switch/screen issue so it doesn't fit smoothly into the whole picture.

I guess that's a challenge with developing a system with user-suggested as you are: rather than having the whole thing mapped out with a design that nicely integrates everything you have been so responsive to users' wishes that you're mangling the existing system to suit changes. That's hard.

I see the grouping wasn't working well. I've improved it a lot just now, but it's a tricky thing and sometimes it won't be able to pull a very long string of reading prompts.

In the new practice page navigation, we may make it easier to select which parts are going to be studied as you go to practice, which would take some hassle out of your sails.

If we did a big design according to what we think would be good and didn't respond to feedback, we'd have a very bogus Skritter. Very few are the things that we get right or even good on the first try. User feedback makes all the difference!

@nick The error highlighting is great! Thanks a lot!

I also noticed that you made it shrink down so that even my crazy long phrases fit on the screen, which works for me.

I have to admit I still am not seeing any grouping at all. The viewer says that my next 10 items are P T T P T T C P T C.

James

Hmm. I think the grouping works well when you have a bunch of items, but when it starts adding new reading items, there's really only one reading that's near due at a time: the new one. So it doesn't have much to cluster with. I will think more on how to better handle it.