On the iOS app, can we have the Pleco button at the top of the review page, as in previous versions? When reviewing using the previous version of the app, it was massively useful to get Pleco popping up with a single tap — and to have direct access to all those example sentences, and all that rich contextual information that I could drill down into, without having to go into another screen, then look it up, then go back to the review screen.
This would bypass the info screen, but Pleco is so much more comprehensive than the Skritter info screen (multiple example sentences, not just one; all that juicy information from the Outlier dictionary etc. etc. etc.). And this contextual richness was really useful for cementing learning, and getting a feel for the contextual use of the vocabulary.
I know it is only another tap to get there, but it does feel a bit clumsier than in the earlier app.
I’m 99.99% certain Pleco has never been on the study screen. It’s always been on the Info screen–two taps away. We love Pleco, but what you’re asking is that we change our study screen for a third-party app that not everyone has. Also, there isn’t even an “add to Skritter” button in Pleco!!!
Replacing Info screen with Pleco button, for example, means you could no longer make edits, drill into contained characters/components (Outlier is awesome, but they don’t have everything), submit corrections, or anything else you can do from the Info screen now and into the future. It also could have some unintended consequences for handling support, and fielding questions.
Maybe in Landscape mode. We’ll have a lot more top-bar space then
I’ve just double-checked both apps. And as you say, on the earlier version of the app, the Pleco button is on the popup info screen, not the study screen. My mistake!
But the mistake is an interesting one, because on the old app (on iPad at least), it didn’t feel as clunky, or as if you were navigating away from the study screen to look something up. And the Pleco button felt more naturally placed.
Two reasons for this, I think:
i) The info screen on the earlier app was a popup, rather than a new screen, so my brain automatically read this as not moving away from the study screen. And this made the experience more seamless.
ii) The old app still feels a bit faster, whilst the new app is a touch more sluggish at moving between screens (as far as I can tell, though I haven’t tested this comprehensively).
I totally get that you don’t want to change Skritter for a 3rd-party app. So perhaps the issue is not so much the positioning of the Pleco button, but the snappiness of moving to the info screen on the new app.
Alternatively, I could be just developing new muscle memory when it comes to the new app, and after a week, it will feel just the same as before (although I still doubt it).
Yes, Outlier is both awesome and also incomplete. I do love the access to multiple example sentences I get through Pleco as well. Any thought of having more example sentences within the Skritter info page? Multiple examples are so very useful when it comes to getting a sense of the various shades of meaning there are…
How about the Skritter UI providing a couple “customizable” optional action buttons that hand the Skritter “current item” to an action callback? On iOS, I could link it to an iOS shortcut (formally supported feature of iOS). Then, I can use the button to pull up Pleco.
I’m unfamiliar with the Android analogs of this capability.
We’d love to support some more sentences in the future. The important thing for us is creating amazing, level-appropriate, sentences. Skritter isn’t a dictionary, and we’re totally okay with that–Pleco exists after all :0 So, adding more sentences in the future would require us to take a slightly difference approach than just hosting a lots of sentences for a given word/character.
Honestly, something like this is still a ways off at the moment. The content team is currently working on lots of other stuff at the moment. We will be adding custom example sentence support to the app in the near future though, and I suppose it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to support more than one (we’ll start with one though).
In the meantime, the custom “mnemonic” is a great place for adding custom notes, sentences, etc. to study cards.
It’s interesting you say Skritter isn’t a dictionary.
That’s true, but…
Usage over time transforms Skritter into one’s personal lexicon, especially if you update Skritter’s definitions with as-needed definitions from Pleco as you go.
It’s not a dictionary in the sense that it is not the place to look up words, but it is a place you can daily review the meanings of words you’ve already looked up.
It’s a great feature of Skritter.
BTW it is much easier to refine Skritter definitions from the Beta app now that you can access the info panel quickly as you go through learn mode, or go to the list directly and update any word definitions (or mnemonics) in any list.
Very grateful for this new ease of modifying the info panel!
this 10,000 times, I would!
