Just a feature request. I thought it might be cool if you got a "learnt a new character; now at x total" every time you remember a new character over the 12-hour threshold, in the same way you get "5 minutes down" notifications.

Hey, this sounds like a great idea! Very easy to implement; let's try it. Learn some stuff and tell me what you think.

Do you get "5 minutes down" notifications?

The second notification, "new tone learned", appears while I'm already writing the next character - somewhat distracting. I'd personally prefer not to have that second notification at all.

(BTW: I also don't know what a "5 minutes down" notification is.)

At one point Nick enabled "5 minutes down" notifications, but then seemingly as people disliked them took them away. It was at the same time as enabling sounds, so I figured perhaps they were enabled if you also had sounds enabled. Perhaps not. Either way, I too get only this one, and not others. My personal preference is to go without, it's a bit of 'something else to read' fluff when writing.

I think I agree with Byzanti that too much "something else to read" fluff toning in and out should be avoided. I really like Skritter´s comparatively clean and simple layout, it is relaxing.

On the other hand it is encouraging to see that you learn something new. On the other hand again - I also forget characters, and would prefer not to see that extra information. So, I haven´t quite made up my mind on that one.

When I started to think about these things I noticed some other "fluff" appearing:

When I am asked for a definition, a message "Do you know the definition" tones in and then out again. But at the same time a message "Click to show definition" appears. The toning message could be skipped here for a more peaceful layout.

Also, when I am asked for the tone, there is a message "Draw or type the tone". One idea could be to show this message the first 10 or 100 times or so. After that it should be known to all what to do when the tone symbols appear.

Tove: Perhaps the big difference is that those at the bottom are in green, and we've learnt to phase them out. They're not at the top, IE where you're looking a) you start writing the character, b) reading the character prompts on the right to start a character. Most of all however they're not in large red lettering, the same type, size and place used for "Code Update: Refresh" and "Server Error"...

It's still fluff though...

I'm afraid I'm going to be controversial and say the complete opposite. The more stuff you can give me the better; I like it when it says "5 minutes down" and stuff. If you ask me it should have high-scores and little explosions like an old arcade game :-P I can imagine this would be unpopular, though.

edit: I've just tried it out with the new notifications and the new reading system. I love both; thumbs up from me! If the notifications could be toggled in settings then everyone would be happy, I think.

Well, if I made it part of the Sound FX setting, and gave it a sound effect like the other practice time notifications, it might help along the pro/against fluff divide, but it would make even less sense than that setting does now. I don't want to add another setting. Hmm.

If I made these +1 notifications smaller, like the text on the drop-down progress bar when a word is added, would it be less of a problem?

I can think about ways to remove excess prompting (like "click to show definition" or "Do you know the definition?") after it's clear that people know how it works.

Adding a sound effect to it sounds good. It may make less sense, but it would certainly be consistent with the other prompts. Rename the option if you will.

If you think it's important enough (more so than the other prompts "5 minutes down!") that it warrants being on automatically, at least stick it at the bottom, make it green, and leave the top red prompts for important things like code refreshes.

Still think the sound option is best. People who like fluff will be happy, people who don't will also be happy. I vote "Sound & fluff" for the option name ;p.

I like the "+1" notifications. It provides a little bit of that variable reinforcement that helps build addiction.

James

I agree with James

I agree with James as well.

Is there a way a user could select if they want the notifications on or off so everyone could be happy?

I disagree, I don't think how many characters I know is vital information when I'm practicing new characters. I'd prefer not cluttering up the interface with that sort of messages.

Also, how many new things do you guys add? I'd be getting around a 130 of these messages a day...

nick: The "click to show definition" is an informative reminder (since if you click on it, you get the definition), the toning-in-and-out "Do you know the definition" is more distracting and unnecessary. I think.

However: I would love all kinds of extra statistics in the Progress page though. There it won´t be a distraction from the actual practising. There all kinds of stuff could be placed, like "today you broke your old record of tones learned per day" or more graphs, competitions, or whatever you may think of.

Hi guys,

Just to add to the discussion. I personally find the notification extremely distracting. For me this information is meaningless since 'new character learned' would also apply to those characters I struggle with for a long time. One time I remember them next time I don't yet the information pops up once in a while.

In short for me this is extremely distracting. If some people really like it, fine with me but then please make this optional so that others do not have to 'suffer'.

Thanks for your consideration.

Stephan

Okay; I'll work more on this later. For now, I've changed it so you only see it if you have Sound FX enabled in your practice settings.

Many thanks from a happy skritterer : )

I enjoy seeing it, the total number of whatevers learned is like a score in a video game - nice!

For the record I prefer having as much information as possible. I dont like the idea of having to turn on sound effects whatever that is to get it though (:

Thanks Nick!

I think Tove's ideas there about extra stuff on the progress page were really good, I'd like to see that. Breaking records would be motivating :-)

I had a great day yesterday learning characters, and was really looking forward to jumping online this morning and being told I'd "learned" all these characters. But it seems it's not to be! Oh well, I guess I better go turn on sound effects...

I also find the notifications very distracting-- this kind of meta-information is extraneous to what I want to focus on-- Chinese characters.

The sound effects are better integrated, because they are feedback about whether you got the character right or wrong. Too bad I may have to turn them off now to be spared the "learned" notifications.

Also, "learned" is just a conventional notion-- as I understand it, the spaced repetition algorithm is constructed on a premise that we also regularly forget characters, and there is, for example, no corresponding notification to tell us when we've "forgotten" a character, so I don't see why we need one to tell us that we've "learned" a character.

Anyway, this is all in the spirit of constructive criticism. I am a huge fan of Skritter.

@ulyart

Yeah I agree about the character not being actually "learned" after a 12 hour retention, but for me it's motivating to have something concrete and countable.

I guess it could say "You put another character on the first step to long-term retention, now at x" :-P

Customisability seems to be an increasingly large issue for Skritter, as different camps form around different options, and our beloved developers have to find a balance between offering customisation but not confusing us with too many settings. Perhaps the "settings" drop-down on the practice page could stay largely as it is from now on, but also include a link to a "fiddly / fine-grained settings" page for those of us who really want to tweak it?

I want my fiddly fine-grained special-edition magic-key-press customisation control panel. I want it bad...

It's not just a problem of the interface on your end; it's a problem of support and work on our end. Every preference takes implementing, makes code less flexible, makes it more likely to break, increases the amount of scenarios we need to test, etc.

Better design is almost always the solution! (Not that I'm good at design.)

It seems like the main idea of the "new items learned" is pretty similar to the progress bar which shows items added. Would it be possible to slightly complicate the progress bar to show items learned in this session? This would be fairly unobtrusive and would look much like the existing progress bars, so maybe wouldn't bother people so much.

I've been practicing with the +1 notifications and like them quite a bit. I'm also getting to like the time spent notifications.

James

I think they're really good too. I think they'd work just as well if they were the same as the progress bars, as James said.

I'm thinking there should be some little shrine to the Skritter developers somewhere, as they do such a good job. Keep it up guys :-D