(Archived) Skritter Mobile Beta 3.0

I meant roll back to the previous beta build :wink:.

Had to go back to the non-beta version because the character sound bug was really annoying. Hope itā€™s fixed soon, because the previous beta was pretty good.

Any word on the old skritter app? It still hasnā€™t updated in the App Store. Unfortunately, until beta gets out of beta, the old version is still necessaryā€¦

Unfortunately the Japanese app still isnā€™t working correctly on iOS 12-- weā€™re working with Apple to try and reach a resolution, however we havenā€™t been able to find the source of the problem yet.

In the meantime, you could use the website on your device at: https://skritter.com, or upgrade to the beta version of Skritter for iOS (which has many new features, like kana handwriting for instance) at: https://blog.skritter.com/2018/06/sign-up-for-the-ios-beta-app/

Sorry for the inconvenience everyone.

Really? After months of beta testing, a copy/paste reply? :-:

Yes, Iā€™m using the beta app. But to add new words to lists, I have to go to the 2.0 web site. But THAT app has a bug where you can no longer add words to the dictionary, so to do THAT I have to go to the legacy Web site. Which, by the way, isnā€™t a responsive web app.

What a mess. If I were a new user, Iā€™d have given up weeks back.

Thinking maybe I should cancel my subscription and just use my KanKen game instead. I know that works, at least.

Agreed. Weā€™re hoping to straighten things out soon. Sorry for the copy paste, we have to explain the situation with iOS 12 and the Japanese app a lot, and itā€™s a bit more efficient to grab an explanation then rewrite it a bunch of times. Weā€™re really sorry for the mess.

Any news on fixing that sound bug?

Tried using the beta again but canā€™t really stand hearing each characterā€™s pronunciation in a single wordā€¦ nor, as they have mentioned before, most of the time not hearing the wordā€™s pronunciation either because the next word pops in too fast.

Talking about the mostly functional Androidā€™s beta. Hope itā€™s a quick fix and we dontā€™ have to wait 'til the next update.

This will be fixed in the next update. Sorry for the annoyance in the meantime! :sweat:

Another question: will there be a search function within the ā€œWordsā€ section? Would be very helpful to have this. Not only for Pinyin or Characters search, but also for English words.

There probably wonā€™t be a method to search by English word, though you can currently search by reading or by searching for the actual word!

I just wanted to chime in to agree with the annoyance of hearing individual characters pronounced in the Chinese Android beta.

Moreover, Iā€™d like to add that it is incorrect since it plays the pronunciation of the solitary character, not the nominal pronunciation it has in the word. This is particularly dissonant when answering tone questions. e.g. åæƒč£” only accepts a neutral tone for the č£”, but then plays a third tone sound for it.

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Yes this is indeed very annoying and misleading in order to learn the proper pronunciation. Hopefully there will be a small update soon to fix this.

How are you getting on towards the 1st December deadline?
I assume all is on track?

Things are looking pretty good. Iā€™m sorry that there hasnā€™t been a reply to this question in seven days, but Iā€™m happy to say that I think weā€™re still on track for soft-launch at the beginning of December. We finally got Apple to approve the classic Japanese app for iOS 12, and it is in the store again, which has allowed us to focus on cleaning up new features weā€™ve been building.

The new learning flow feels impressive from a user perspective, and some of the things weā€™re doing for teaching Hiragana and Katakana to beginners like me are seriously cool, and so far beyond what weā€™ve been able to do in previous versions of Skritter. It bodes well for updates on the Chinese side, too.

This week weā€™re working on confirming that stats and progress are all working as intended for guests and logged in users along with doing extensive review testing on a few different styles of accounts while patching up any bugs that are still in the system. We donā€™t trust the updates to the review system enough yet to open things up to all of you. Sadly, this means weā€™re not going to hit our internal goal of getting beta testers in the app this week, but the version we do send out for testing is going to be a lot more polished as a result.

More updates to follow soon!

Best,
Jake

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sounds awesome! So we probably (but of course not 100% sure) see the next Beta by next week? Talking about the Chinese version.

Looking forward to to your reply!

Sorry for the bad news, but no Chinese beta just yet :frowning:

Weā€™ve learned our lesson trying to release large updates to both Chinese and Japanese at the same time and on two platforms. As much as weā€™d love to Chinese user feedback, we also want to avoid being bogged by Chinese specific issues while we finish up the Japanese app. Once the app is released weā€™ll work on fine-tuning the Chinese app and get it into your hands as soon as we can.

The current TestFlight beta (version 3.0.20) expires in 64 days and I really, really hope that we can get you all using 3.1 before then. Iā€™m mindful of the timeline weā€™re doing what we can to beat it.

-Jake

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Could it be possible to fix the current sound bug? Without breaking anything else, of courseā€¦

I believe the last beta build was already good enough for most of us, specially the improved SRS that made me review words that hadnā€™t pop in for months.

But nowā€¦ Having to revert to use the non-beta app is kinda demoralizing as I feel the learning quality is not as good.

Edit: Talking about the Chinese app for Android.

But the same is true for the iOS Chinese beta unfortunatelyā€¦
But yeah would be really nice to see this little update if that is possible at all

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@Ferran @Farham
Josh and I will discuss next week and look into patching it up. If we can fix it quickly and not break stuff, weā€™ll certainly go that route!

Itā€™s possible that it isnā€™t a quick fix. In the event of that, I think our time is probably better spent getting Skritter 3.1 into your hands as quickly as we can. The changes weā€™ve made are significant and pretty darn awesome for learning on Skritter. Weā€™re really excited to bring these changes your way. @SkritterMichaelā€™s rogue build of Chinese is already quite promising. Iā€™m trying to avoid making any promise we canā€™t keep, but I do think weā€™re very close to getting the new stuff in your hands shortly.

Today weā€™re working on wrapping up our 117th internal build for Skritter: Write Japanese and sending it off to Apple for approval. More on that on Monday! Iā€™m hoping that we can start the pivot back to Chinese apps in general relatively soon!

As always, we appreciate all of your patience during this phase, and we look forward to updating all of our apps as quickly as we can so you all can just focus on learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese in as stress-free a way as possible.

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Itā€™s passed the 1st December. Are we getting the new Beta?

Skritter: Write Japanese has been approved by Apple and will be live in the store today. The release has been scaled back a lot to focus on generating feedback on the new study modes without compromising user data along the way. Weā€™re still working on improving the review experience for the new version of the app and also optimizing deck caching and loading, two things thatā€™ll greatly improve functionality of the application for you and other existing Skritter users. Iā€™ll be opening up a new thread for the live version of the app today to talk about whatā€™s included in the released version and whatā€™s on our hit list for the rest of the month. Weā€™ll be moving fast now that the app is in the store.

More details here.

-Jake

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