2.3 / User Interface Enhancements
- Thread starter mikelove
- Start date
Bendy-Ren said:
That's being fixed - the current arrangement came out of a chain reaction of bottom right menu button -> buttons to scroll through full-screen entries at the top right corner -> dictionary switch button at the bottom left corner on that screen -> dictionary switch button in the same place on the main screen, but there are clearly better ways to resolve that conflict. (we're also moving the menu button to the bottom right on the flashcard / OCR screens)
D
Deleted member 4086
Guest
I'm thinking about getting a iPad Mini mostly for Pleco. I know you haven't had a chance to try it out for yourself yet, but do you see any possible problems using Pleco with the smaller screen size?
Kanin said:
Well all of the buttons will be smaller - I'm sure Apple has made some tweaks to their tap detection algorithm to correct for this, but there may be a few bits of the UI that are needlessly difficult to hit correctly until we release an update. (in our next update we'll probably add dedicated iPad-Mini-specific default font size settings and maybe make a few buttons larger on it too, but the fonts at least will be easy enough to adjust in Settings in the meantime)
I really hope Apple allows iPad Mini/iPad Maxi separation (as per the iPhone/iPad separation now), because the target size is going to have negative run-on effects one way or the other. I don't want all my iPad Maxi targets suddenly growing to accommodate fingers on a smaller screen that I don't have. (This is not aimed at Pleco, of course, just a general observation.)
Vzzzbx said:
Well in theory, the targets on an iPad Mini should be equivalent to those on an iPhone but smaller than those on a full iPad - the full iPad has fewer pixels per inch than an iPhone, the iPad Mini just has the same number. So a developer following Apple's standard toolbar / control sizes (and not specifically shrinking them on the iPad) ought to find that most of the targets are usable on both devices - Apple already had some extra margin there on the iPad and now they've taken things back to where they were on the iPhone, so a given button on the iPad Mini should be no more difficult to activate than it is on an iPhone.
We actually make our targets on the full iPad even more generous in most of the places where there's a difference, so I'm hoping there won't be any serious control difficulties, but nonetheless we'll certainly be attempting to get our hands on one of these on launch day so we can make sure about that.
spherelander
秀才
Thanks Mike for a great product and great support.
I didn't see anyone else request this before. When flashcard testing a multiple character word in "tone practice" mode it would be great if the box above each character showed some feedback as each character tone is input rather than only after all tones have been entered. Maybe it's just me; but I can't tell you how many times I've had cards scored as wrong because without feedback I suspect that I must have miss-pressed the tone button and try entering the first character's tone again.
Perhaps, the box above the character could change colors for perhaps immediately score, character by character, as red or green. I'm not sure what "score immediately" does but from experimenting it doesn't seem to address this question.
I didn't see anyone else request this before. When flashcard testing a multiple character word in "tone practice" mode it would be great if the box above each character showed some feedback as each character tone is input rather than only after all tones have been entered. Maybe it's just me; but I can't tell you how many times I've had cards scored as wrong because without feedback I suspect that I must have miss-pressed the tone button and try entering the first character's tone again.
Perhaps, the box above the character could change colors for perhaps immediately score, character by character, as red or green. I'm not sure what "score immediately" does but from experimenting it doesn't seem to address this question.
spherelander said:
That's a new one as far as I know, yes. I think it would only work for tone practice, though, since with fill-in-the-blanks it could support someone's guess by giving away the first half before they finish typing the second. Interesting idea though, thanks.
spherelander
秀才
Thanks. I forgot to mention that the box doesn't necessarily have to become red/green (incorrect/correct) it could just change to some other color to register the input of a tone.mikelove said:
radioman
状元
Some comments
W/R/T the Reader on the iPhone form factor.
In "Tap to Advance" Reading mode:
1) Allow swipe gesture to go to the next page.
2) Eliminate the Arrows at the bottom.
3) Go from 4 rows to 3 in the definition area.
4) Eliminate the top bar.
5) Tap area should be evenly set by thirds (right now, the tap to go back and tap to go to next area is small - if I am recalling this correctly).
W/R/T General Interface
- Have a way to completely hide from the user character sets (e.g., Traditional Writing). I sometimes find that I have accidentally hit the Traditional characters mode - a mode I never, ever use. I understand the interest and need for the ability to switch, but in the mainland Chinese teaching world, the opportunity to inadvertently be on the wrong character set far exceeds the benefits of being able to occasionally look at the traditional character. Whatever the argument might be, I would request the option to remove the toggle from the toolbar.
W/R/T the Reader on the iPhone form factor.
In "Tap to Advance" Reading mode:
1) Allow swipe gesture to go to the next page.
2) Eliminate the Arrows at the bottom.
3) Go from 4 rows to 3 in the definition area.
4) Eliminate the top bar.
5) Tap area should be evenly set by thirds (right now, the tap to go back and tap to go to next area is small - if I am recalling this correctly).
W/R/T General Interface
- Have a way to completely hide from the user character sets (e.g., Traditional Writing). I sometimes find that I have accidentally hit the Traditional characters mode - a mode I never, ever use. I understand the interest and need for the ability to switch, but in the mainland Chinese teaching world, the opportunity to inadvertently be on the wrong character set far exceeds the benefits of being able to occasionally look at the traditional character. Whatever the argument might be, I would request the option to remove the toggle from the toolbar.
radioman said:
You mean to scroll down a whole page, or do you want us to institute page-turning as well?
radioman said:
Makes sense, but then how do we handle the |<- and |-> functions?
radioman said:
That one I'm less sure about, the current one feels nicely balanced (especially with the move to taller-screened iPhone 5s) - do you find it occupying too much of the screen now?
radioman said:
How would those functions be accessible then?
radioman said:
It actually should be thirds now - is it not triggering on those correctly? (might be an iOS 6 gesture detection thing)
radioman said:
That's definitely happening (already has on Android), the original idea had been to include it as a way of advertising our traditional-friendliness but it's just not heavily-used enough to deserve that slot. Plus, we've got better things to use the toolbar space for now anyway - still haven't decided if we'll bring the "quick input bar" concept from Android, but it's very likely that we will, in which case the main screen bottom bar would become history (relocated from the top bar to get rid of the jumping dictionary icon) / handwriting / radical / keyboard / menu.
Just a quick request that I've searched for but haven't been able to find an answer to:
Is there anyway to loop the playing of audio for a word? I've can't find the option in the settings and have tried double tapping and tap-holding on the audio play button in the dictionary. I've ended up just hitting play in between each time I write a word down, which gets tedious because I copy each word 10 or so times and have 25 words to learn a day
Can this feature be added in a patch or put into the mega update that seems to be in the works? The audio pronunciation is a great feature, I just wish it was easier to immerse yourself in. Maybe tap and hold to start looping audio until the button is tapped again, both in dictionary and in flashcard mode?
Is there anyway to loop the playing of audio for a word? I've can't find the option in the settings and have tried double tapping and tap-holding on the audio play button in the dictionary. I've ended up just hitting play in between each time I write a word down, which gets tedious because I copy each word 10 or so times and have 25 words to learn a day
Can this feature be added in a patch or put into the mega update that seems to be in the works? The audio pronunciation is a great feature, I just wish it was easier to immerse yourself in. Maybe tap and hold to start looping audio until the button is tapped again, both in dictionary and in flashcard mode?
wholemilk said:
We can certainly think about it when we're rewriting the audio system anyway for TTS, but no guarantees at this point since as soon as the missing piece that we're waiting on is ready we're going to pretty much lock things down new feature wise and get it debugged and released ASAP.
Sorry to be nagging, but is there any ETA on the big update? the thing is this post seems to b up for a really long time.
i m sure that there a few things that got updated along the way, but still, no real major update for a very long time.
p.s
i'm assuming u might have said something in the other channels, but i'm sorry as i'm in china and they (twitter, facebbok...) r pretty much blocked here.
i m sure that there a few things that got updated along the way, but still, no real major update for a very long time.
p.s
i'm assuming u might have said something in the other channels, but i'm sorry as i'm in china and they (twitter, facebbok...) r pretty much blocked here.
yuvalcho said:
Yeah, I should probably demote this thread and start a new one once the update's out - the roadmap has changed significantly since this thread began.
Basically, we're waiting on the finished type design, which is taking way way longer than it was supposed to (we expected to have it in hand by September). We really want to make sure that's in the update because without it it's unlikely to "feel" big enough to satisfy everybody; we've made tons of under-the-hood improvements and added some major new features, but a lot of the work has been subtle (e.g. threaded / interruptible / merged multi-dict / frequency-sorted searches with intelligent handling of variants - that search engine revamp represents about 1/3 of the new code by itself) and hard to notice on first use.
We're certainly changing quite a few pieces of the UI as well, but we're not going to be rolling out silly exotic textured toolbars or anything like that, and unlike on Android there isn't a revamped new system UI theme we can adopt, so curb-appeal-wise the new type design is really essential.