Looks like the Great Firewall or something like it is preventing you from completely loading www.skritter.com because it is hosted on Google App Engine, which is periodically blocked. Try instead our mirror:

legacy.skritter.cn

This might also be caused by an internet filter, such as SafeEyes. If you have such a filter installed, try adding appspot.com to the list of allowed domains.

What I like the best about skritter!

DaXia   April 30th, 2011 7:04a.m.

Skritter obviously has a lot of great features. For example, the ability to make your studies more "active". You actually have to WRITE the character, TYPE the pinyin or "CHOOSE" the correct tone, and not just try to figure out how well you remembered something (hmm, did I remember this character or not? How well did i remember it? lol)
Another great feature is that its online, so that you can use it on any computer anywhere.

But for me, the best feature is that you can use it on your phone. No matter where you are, you can now make some good use of the time you spend riding the buss, waiting for the train or being bored at work etc. The sun is shining outside and you sit in front of the computer studying Chinese...but not with skritter. Take your phone, bring a cold soda and sit outside in the sun, get a tan while studying on the same time.

And then we have the fact that with touch screens, you can actually truly WRITE the character with a pen or your finger. It's not just more accurate than writing with the mouse, your remember it easier too!

The phone version of skritter works pretty well, but there are some things that you may wanna add in the future.

How about the ability to study offline? Even thought its 2011, we still dont have wireless internet everywhere. Wouldn't it be great if you could download a set number of word excercises. Like lets say you are going to the beach where there is no net, or maybe you are going to be on an airplane. How cool wouldn't it be if you could "prepare" the next 500 words by downloading them at home before you leave! Just a thought.

Skritter rules!

Lawnmower16   April 30th, 2011 1:02p.m.

I'd like it if I could actually use it on my phone. My phone is totally capable of running it, but it can't because flash support hasn't and probably never will be incorporated, and the Skritter team are just like, "eeh, I don't feel like making an Android app." This is pretty much the only thing that frustrates me about Skritter, is that I can only use it when I'm at a computer with my writing tablet.

nick   April 30th, 2011 11:36p.m.

Hey, thanks for the positive post! Always nice to hear about the good parts.

The current version, working on Android in the browser, is only possible because it uses the existing Flash code. We may make an Android app that sits as a shell around the Flash, which could make certain parts of it a little nicer, but the core experience would be similar. With the existing Flash client, it would be really, really hard to allow for offline study, so we're not planning that feature, as nice as it would be.

Likewise, it would be even more difficult to make a native Android app for Skritter that didn't use Flash, just as difficult as it is to make the iPhone app, which is already taking me a long time. You probably wouldn't even have the same phone by the time we finished it, Lawnmower16. Rewriting Skritter once for the iPhone is enough; I don't want to do it again for Android if we already have it working there, if not perfectly. The one good thing about doing the iOS app is that I can increase performance and get offline mode working and other mobile optimizations that don't make any sense when working with the existing Flash code.

Hope this makes some more sense of our mobile plans.

DaXia   May 1st, 2011 3:22a.m.

@Nick

So if I understand correctly, in the future skritter might be slightly more optimized for iphone, but at the moment it's not compatible?

Skritter is such an important tool for me, so my choice of phone will probably be based on skritter compability.

At the moment I am using samsung galaxy si9000, but if skritter will work better on iphone, I might go for iphone5 when its released later this year (hopefully).

nick   May 1st, 2011 9:19a.m.

The native iPhone/iPad Skritter app I'm working on is going to be a much better mobile experience than the Android app when it's finished, but it may be missing some features, and have other features, etc. It's still a long way off, though, so please don't weight your choice of phone too heavily on the Skritter iPhone app thing.

This forum is now read only. Please go to Skritter Discourse Forum instead to start a new conversation!