Easier deck browsing

I have a deck with ~ 30 sections, most of them with 10 to 15 Chinese words, mostly one-character words. I already know most of the words but I haven’t learned how to write all the characters yet. So what I mostly do everyday is this: I browse through this deck and look for a character that I want to learn next, then I learn how to write it.

To me this looks like the obvious way to use Skritter to learn Hanzi, but if you suggest a different workflow, I’d be happy to know.

Anyway, looking for the characters is often quite cumbersome (I use the Android app). I think adding the following three features would make everything much easier:

  • When tapping a section in the deck overview, then hitting the “back” button, the scroll position should be the same as before.
  • If a section is too long to list all the characters in the deck overview, it is listed with an ellipsis “…”. It would be nice to make that ellipsis tappable to expand the section – or some similar functionality
  • Add a search feature to find the section that contains a specific character or word

If it is too much trouble to add all 3 features, even one of them would make me very happy :slight_smile: Thank you

I’d also like to add:

“Search” capability should allow both searching in Chinese and English (looking in both the definition and the word itself)

Adding the “Next Section” and “Previous Section” buttons that the web list sections have.

This should be how it already works and if it isn’t then it’s something we’ve already fixed in beta. I do remember it was a regression and was fixed at some point. Which version of the app are you using? If you’re not using the beta you can try giving the beta a roll Becoming a Mobile Beta Tester (iOS / Android) - Skritter and if that doesn’t fix it then shoot us a message at team@skritter.com with some information about your device.

This conflicts with the way we currently have it built which is a tap anywhere takes you to the section. Having a tappable area inside of tappable area can be tricky in terms of tapping accuracy on mobile. I think if we resolve the previously mentioned preserving scroll issue that’ll help with this?

This seems like a reasonable and useful feature especially for decks with more than a few sections. I’ll bring it up to the team and see if we can’t get it into a future release. We do plan on giving certain areas of the app a design overhaul in the future.

I’ll add this to our team meeting notes to see if this is something that isn’t already in some of our design updates for the section screens.

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Thank you for your reply!

I am using 3.5.3 (300443). After coming back from a section into the deck, it is always at the topmost scroll position. Thanks for mentioning the beta, I will try that. I’m happy to hear that the scrolling issue it is probably fixed already.

Ok, if it seems unfeasible to make the section previews (with the ellipses) expandable, I think the other features will suffice, especially with Apomixis’ suggestion with the Previous and Next buttons.

Also when I rotate my phone, in landscape mode usually all the characters the section previews are visible. I forgot that when I wrote the report here.

It is working properly in the beta version :slight_smile: (referring to the scrolling issue)

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However, there’s still one issue left. Whenever you add only one word of a random section and then hit on the back button, it will automatically bring you to the top of the section overview although you just added a word of one of the last section.

Which back button? Android back button. This should be fixed in the current build. At least it is working as intended on iOS.

If it is Android global back button we may need to open a separate issue.

I am using iOS/iPad OS and the latest beta.

I am referring to the standard back arrow at the top left corner. It is true that the beta now saves the current scrolling position WITIHIN A SECTION whenever you mark a word as learned. But, what is still not working is remembering the scrolling position within the Deck itself in the section overview. You should be able to reproduce this pretty forward. Just go into a large deck i.e. HSK 6, then scroll down to one of the last sections. Then, just add a random word to your reviews and hit the back button at the top left corner. Now you find yourself at the top of the section overview instead of staying at the bottom where you should initially be.

Can you screen record a video and send it to me? I’m not quite following your steps and I just wanna make sure I see exactly what your seeing.

Screen recording might not be enabled in the quick menu by default on your iPad. But you should be able to turn it on in the settings.

Thanks in advance!

How can I send it over to you?

Shoot us an email to team@skritter.com so Josh and I can investigate and see if we can patch it up!

Done!

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:pray::pray::pray: Thanks! Will have a look in the morning.

We’ve received your video and I was able to reproduce this. I’ve opened up an issue so it can be fixed! :smiley:

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Glad you guys will fix it! A general suggestion which would improve the browsing experience:

adding the option within a section to navigate to the previous and upcoming section without leaving the section at all. That could be done by adding two more arrows.

Is that something which you can add easily? Would like to hear your opinion.

We’ve got an improvement open for it. I haven’t mocked it up yet. But it’s on the list of things to add for mobile.

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