2.3 / User Interface Enhancements

[YoshiCookie]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

User Interface:

Honestly, the best kind of UI is redundant. Meaning that you can find the same option (or get to the same menu) via multiple routes. Why? Because no two people think exactly alike. I may look for something here, you may look for something there.

One thing that has sort of bothered me is just the basic jumping up and down of the menu bar. (First it is on the bottom, then it jumps to the top). Perhaps this would take too much resources, but I would like tabbed browsing so that I could have multiple searches going on at the same time. (I know I could retrieve a search later via History, but I like having the tab functionality so that I don't have to close and possible forget about what I was looking up.

Also, the main dictionary looks pretty brilliant (glad to see it is improving even more). It is actually the reader, flashcard, and settings tabs that could do with a slightly updated look. Just in terms of clean, organized... nice looking menus.

Next one...

This is more of a "feature":

I wish there were topicalized vocabulary lists. (nciku has many topicalized vocab lists... they also have a nearly endless supply of example sentences and topicalized conversations... on their website... their app is still in a very early stage). For example, it would be really nifty to have dictionaries within dictionaries. Such as a 成语 dictionary, where there would only be idioms displayed. For me, I'd like to see a robust 儿化韵 dictionary, haha... everything from 盆儿 to 脚豆儿。

Side Note: Please add additional pronunciations to words. Some words are said differently by others. 因为 Southerners say yin1wei4, Northerners say yin1wei2. 粽子 Southerners says zong1zi. Northerners actually tend to say zhong4zi. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Thanks again!

UPDATE:

I think it should be simpler/easier to make your own custom flash cards, and to browse/scroll through your own "USR" dictionary.

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Not quite sure if I know what you mean by "menu bar" - are you referring to the fact that the "fan" button moves to the top of the screen during flashcard tests? That's unavoidable given the way the flashcard user interface is organized. Or are you referring to how the dictionary switch button moves from the bottom to the top of the screen while you're inputting a search? That one was kind of an agonizing design decision, actually, but basically, since you really can't vertically "stack" buttons on an iPhone screen, there was no way we could have a dictionary switch button at the bottom of the screen in the handwriting recognizer without leaving too little room for character candidates, and for the keyboard, we didn't want to require the "tone panel" to be visible since with that on the screen there's not very much room at all left for search results, so there was no way to add a switch dictionary button to that either.

I'm still not clear on how the look for those other screens is deficient - which aspect of them needs to be updated? Is it just a lack of clear organization for the various settings controls, or is there something else about the design that's bothering you?

With topical vocabulary lists, the main problem would be creating / finding a source of data for those; something like 成语 at least we could just filter from tags on dictionary entries, but I don't know an easy way to get a list of words for, say, automotive vocabulary without making it ourselves.

 

[gato]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Since the dictionary is the most frequently used function of Pleco, I would like the dictionary be accessible by just one tap on as many screen as possible. Right now, it requires two taps (tap the "fan", then the dictionary) in most places. I often forget about the fan and use the home button and restart Pleco to get back to the dictionary instead. You obviously do not want user to exit the program to return to the dictionary.

This might involve adding the dictionary icon next to the fan in many screen when the fan is the only icon on the bottom. For screen when the bottom is already full, you might add the dictionary icon to an open spot in the upper right hand corner.

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Actually, even exiting and reopening wouldn't work on iOS 4, you'd end up exactly where you left. But good point - I'm a bit concerned about this being so inconsistent, though; the ideal would be to have a gesture / button that worked absolutely everywhere. How about if we did something with tap-holding on the "fan" button, would that help? Could also consider a shake gesture, I suppose, we don't do anything with those right now.

 

[gato]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

That would be fine, except then people probably will need to read the manual the manual to find out about it. Or maybe you add a bullet point format "user tips" for some of these features (with links to the manual sections for more in-depth description). Oh, I just noticed you don't have builtin help. Should that be considered? You can add it to the bottom bar and put the add-on button in settings.

EDIT:
On second thought, I think it would still be more intuitive if you had a persistent dictionary icon in the status bar. Because space is an issue, would you be able to combine the reader and flashcard into another menu? Would you be available implement the pop menu that DocsToGo uses? You might then be able to put high-but-secondary-priority items there.

 

[radioman]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

I like the "press and hold" fan idea to initiate the dictionary.

Maybe when someone presses the fan the first time a popup comes up with a description of pressing vs. holding the Fan - with the option to have the popup be shown again next time the user hits the fan, or being dismissed forever.

I would also like when entering the reader, that if the reader had been used to read a doc, I can again get the doc opened where I last left off automatically, (maybe something like a continue previous session message).

Once in the reader. I could hold the fan to open the dict, and then hold the fan to toggle back to the reader.

 

[gato]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Another possibility is return to the dictionary every time the user taps on the middle of the title bar. It's like in a lot of news reader, where a tap at the top of the screen would return you to the beginning of the page.

This reminds me to ask for a modification to the scroll bar. Right now the leftmost end of the scroll bar in the dictionary takes you all the way to the beginning of the dictionary. I think it should be to the beginning of the search display instead. Right now, if you start scrolling, you can easily lose your place and will have to do the search again to the original results.

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

gato - Builtin help has been on the todo list for a while - we do have an online manual built in but it's not even in a very iPhone-friendly format at the moment. A user tips section is definitely something we need too. Add-ons needs to keep its own tab, though - it's how we get paid

A popup menu system would help with the current surplus of buttons, but I'm still iffy adding a dict button unless we add it everywhere, and that means 2 of the 5 button slots are going to fixed tabs... Is there a particular screen you often find yourself wanting to come back to the dictionary from?

radioman - Adding an alert to it makes sense, might even allow for assigning other functions to that tap-hold. And I really like tap-holding again to jump back... The reader actually should return to the last location automatically, at least in text files - is it not doing that now?

gato again - I'm not wild about using the title bar that way - it's pretty clearly a jump-to-the-top gesture and there isn't enough feedback / possibility of backing out of it to assign it to something big like a tab jump; people will find themselves suddenly in another screen and not know why.

You don't need to scroll to get back to the results, just tap on the 典 button - we really need to do a better job on that UI though.

 

[gato]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

A user tips section is definitely something we need too. Add-ons needs to keep its own tab, though - it's how we get paid

I knew you were going to say that.

 

[character]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

gato again - I'm not wild about using the title bar that way - it's pretty clearly a jump-to-the-top gesture and there isn't enough feedback / possibility of backing out of it to assign it to something big like a tab jump; people will find themselves suddenly in another screen and not know why.

Not wild about it either. FWIW, Instapaper had a similar problem, but added an "undo" button which disappears after a few seconds. http://blog.instapaper.com/post/420370426

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Not wild about it either. FWIW, Instapaper had a similar problem, but added an "undo" button which disappears after a few seconds. http://blog.instapaper.com/post/420370426

Not a bad solution, but mainly makes sense if you're still on the same screen - I suppose we could have a temporary floating popup for this, though, like some document reader apps do for orientation changes; a little translucent "Undo" button that appears at the bottom right corner of the screen for a few seconds after you jump.

 

[nico176]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

I really like hopping through dictionary entries by using links, tap actions and popups.

Would be nice if tap actions would be more systematic. Right now the "head tap action" option allows to change between "select word" and "select char" for headwords, but characters inside an entry are always "select word".

The point is, I do need both. Sometimes I need to select words, sometimes I need to select just a character. I'd love to have something like TAP for "select word" and TAP HOLD for "select char".

Something else: Links inside a popup (like in the ABC dictionary) open a new "window". Would be nice if tap actions inside a popup could do that too.

thx

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Would be nice if tap actions would be more systematic. Right now the "head tap action" option allows to change between "select word" and "select char" for headwords, but characters inside an entry are always "select word".

That's actually what the |<- button is for, though it's certainly not a perfect solution. For Character Info at least we actually do respect the specific character you tapped on, even if it's not the first character in the word - you'll see that the point on the popup bubble points to that character and not to the first one; would it help if we added an extra button to the toolbar which collapsed the selection to that single character?

Something else: Links inside a popup (like in the ABC dictionary) open a new "window". Would be nice if tap actions inside a popup could do that too.

Been going back and forth about that one - bringing up another popup bubble doesn't really make sense (makes everything too crowded), but I'm not sure if bringing up a separate window does either since then there's no way to adjust the highlight. I suppose one solution might be to have tapping on a character in the popup bubble bring up the separate definition screen (> button) with that character already selected in a new popup bubble, but that could get a bit confusing...

 

[nico176]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

I wasn't really aware of |<- and |-> 8) *blind*

Guess my post is irrelevant then.

1. No need for an extra button.

2. Multiple popups would be too crowded. By "window" I meant "separate definition screen". You're right, the > button does the trick. Can't think of a more elegant solution.

P.S. Pleco does all the things I want it to do. I just didn't know.

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

P.S. Pleco does all the things I want it to do. I just didn't know.

Thanks! Though the reason many of those buttons exist is because other people posted here asking why they didn't, so you're in good company.

 

[plecoUser]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Mike,

I love Pleco for iPhone. Much, much better than the Windows moible version, and easily my favorite software on iPhone.

Not sure if these have already been covered (I started skimming after page 3 of the thread), but some thoughts on the UI/UX:

Nice to Have's/Blue Sky features:
* Speech search. Think of the Google app for iPhone where you simply speak your search and away it goes, but in Chinese. I realise there would be issues around determining the context, accent, etc. but it would be amazing.
* Photographic OCR. I would LOVE this. Snap a picture of some chinese text and away it goes. It's not fool-proof (even in English) but surely must be possible despite some limitations?


Should Have's:
* Ability to set the default dictionary. Am I missing something here? I can't find where this can be set...
* A simpler more linear settings menu. I appreciate the complexity of presenting many options in an orderly fashion, however I still think things could be further simplified/grouped. I often find settings that I think should be related are actually spread across more than one setting group. Obviously it's easy to argue a case to include some settings in just about every group!

Could Have's:
* When viewing flashcards and pressing on a character, the dictionary window pops up, which is good. However it's a little jarring when you then press on the next character in the sentence and the window closes, requiring you to press again for it to pop up again. I realise the user is mean to use the left/right arrows that display at the bottom of the interface and that pressing anywhere outside the dictionary definition box closes the window, however it seems much more intuitive to be able press the next character you wish to get the definition for (it may not necessarily be the character immediately following the first character you looked at).
* Integration with a Chinese e-book market? Not even sure if one exists, but easy access to a central repository of leaner e-books would be awesome.

Love this product. Looking forward to 2.2!

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Thanks!

Nice to Have's/Blue Sky features:
* Speech search. Think of the Google app for iPhone where you simply speak your search and away it goes, but in Chinese. I realise there would be issues around determining the context, accent, etc. but it would be amazing.
* Photographic OCR. I would LOVE this. Snap a picture of some chinese text and away it goes. It's not fool-proof (even in English) but surely must be possible despite some limitations

Speech search isn't really feasible at the moment - accents / tones are too variable and there's too much ambiguity for single words in isolation (works better with phrases / sentences, just as when typing Pinyin on a computer). As for OCR... stay tuned, though I think people may tend to overestimate the amount of time that saves compared to handwriting recognition. As they do with speech, actually...

User perceptions of input methods are kind of funny in general; Microsoft in the early days of Windows Mobile didn't offer a Graffiti-esque handwriting recognizer like Palm did, because their usability testing showed that people actually entered text more quickly with onscreen keyboards, but Graffiti "felt" faster even if it was actually slower and Microsoft eventually relented and added their own 1-character-at-a-time handwriting system. I think some of the hubbub surrounding Swype may be similar - the perceived improvement over a regular onscreen keyboard is much greater than the actual improvement because of the smoother / more continuous motion.

Should Have's:
* Ability to set the default dictionary. Am I missing something here? I can't find where this can be set...
* A simpler more linear settings menu. I appreciate the complexity of presenting many options in an orderly fashion, however I still think things could be further simplified/grouped. I often find settings that I think should be related are actually spread across more than one setting group. Obviously it's easy to argue a case to include some settings in just about every group!

The default dictionary is whichever dictionary is at the top of the list in "Manage Dicts"; go into Settings, Manage Dicts, and tap on the Reorder button at the top right corner of the screen to reorder the dictionaries in that list. Are you referring to the default dictionary for the document reader specifically, though? That's still the one at the top of Manage Dicts, but we're considering adding an option to make the dictionary selection in there "stick" when you manually change dictionaries.

Re-doing settings is definitely a priority for 2.2, though linearity can be bad when there are so many options involved - more likely that we'll try to separate frequently-used options from "expert" ones.

Could Have's:
* When viewing flashcards and pressing on a character, the dictionary window pops up, which is good. However it's a little jarring when you then press on the next character in the sentence and the window closes, requiring you to press again for it to pop up again. I realise the user is mean to use the left/right arrows that display at the bottom of the interface and that pressing anywhere outside the dictionary definition box closes the window, however it seems much more intuitive to be able press the next character you wish to get the definition for (it may not necessarily be the character immediately following the first character you looked at).
* Integration with a Chinese e-book market? Not even sure if one exists, but easy access to a central repository of leaner e-books would be awesome.

I suppose we could add an option to keep characters tappable behind the popup reader, but since the next few characters are very often covered by the reader "bubble" I'm not sure how useful it would be - we probably will offer this sort of functionality with the new embedded reader box in the document reader (= definition always visible at the bottom of the screen in a separate area), but I'm not sure if it would make sense to add in in flashcards when there's already so much other confusingly-tappable stuff.

As for e-book integration, we've made a few inquiries with Chinese ebook markets but they haven't really gone anywhere; at this point I think we'd be better off licensing a collection of graded reading materials - we can support a much wider range of learners that way. But are there any particular categories of ebooks you'd like to see, or any particular Chinese ebook markets you'd recommend we approach?

 

[gato]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

I listed a couple of Chinese book ePub booksites in the thread below. Have you tried contacting them?

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2113
Chinese books and newspapers on Stanza

 

[johnh113]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

Could Have's:
* When viewing flashcards and pressing on a character, the dictionary window pops up, which is good. However it's a little jarring when you then press on the next character in the sentence and the window closes, requiring you to press again for it to pop up again. I realise the user is mean to use the left/right arrows that display at the bottom of the interface and that pressing anywhere outside the dictionary definition box closes the window, however it seems much more intuitive to be able press the next character you wish to get the definition for (it may not necessarily be the character immediately following the first character you looked at).

Dear Mike,

I'm exactly the same as plecoUser. I almost always tap the character when selecting a new character (but I do use the >| arrow keys to expand or shrink my selection). It just seems very intuitive to hit the character itself rather than an arrow key, and the characters are almost always visible enough to select them.

John

 

[mikelove]

Re: 2.2 / User Interface Enhancements

I listed a couple of Chinese book ePub booksites in the thread below. Have you tried contacting them?

Haven't tried those two yet, no - in general we prefer to work with bigger markets since a) we want to make sure everything's completely on the up-and-up copyright-wise, and b) books in China are so cheap that we might as well offer the best-quality ones available when we're only going to have to charge $5 or $10 for them in any case.

I'm exactly the same as plecoUser. I almost always tap the character when selecting a new character (but I do use the >| arrow keys to expand or shrink my selection). It just seems very intuitive to hit the character itself rather than an arrow key, and the characters are almost always visible enough to select them.

Well as I said we could add it as an option, but it would definitely be an "expert mode" type thing - we've now had a few people write us to complain after accidentally turning on the "popup tap side to move" option in the document reader (new in 2.1.2) and finding that they could no longer tap anywhere in the screen to dismiss the popup because of that.