I don’t understand why this was done. Regardless of your preferred learning style, it seems like a classic example of adding unnecessary complexity to a UI.
Previously (2.1.2 is my reference point), there was just one review mode, and a counter at the top of the screen. When it reached 0, you were done with your needed reviews and were reviewing continuously. If you wanted to review more, you could. If you wanted to stop, you could.
Now, you can choose between Continuous and Due Cards:
If you pick “Due Cards” and get to the end of your reviews, you are given a dialog with session statistics. That’s a nice addition. But then you’re done. If you want to review more, you have to exit and choose “Continuous” from the main screen.
If you pick “Continuous” from the start, I’m not sure what happens. It appears you get the same cards as if you picked “Due Cards” but it continues on when you’re done with the day’s batch.
So, the difference is… Due Cards stops you when you’re done. That’s it. Well, unless you’re out of cards for the day, in which case it does… nothing. DC/Cont was previously a toggle option, now it’s been promoted to two separate top-level buttons, one of which might be deactivated. Just to control whether you are forcibly kicked out of review when you’re done.
That seems a little overboard to me. It is complex and confusing. And you don’t need any of it. You’re always starting with your scheduled cards anyway, so why not just have one “Review” button? It would function like “Due Cards”, show you a completion dialog when you are done with the day’s cards, and gives you the option of continuing at that point. The completion dialog already has a button for this. If you are already done with your reviews, the “Review” button would just immediately enter continuous review.
Why is it unnecessary? The goal is to provide two separate study styles to suit a variety of needs. In terms of mobile learning apps, we actually have a lot fewer study modes than most if I’m honest.
If you’re only focused on studying cards that are due for the day, select “Due Cards” and go. The app will show you only what is scheduled. The goal of the review activity is to clear your queue of everything Skritter has determined due for the day.
Personally, I don’t interpret it as getting “kicked out” when you hit zero. Its an achievement–you’re done. The queue is zero! Perfect time to either learn something new or put the app down and feel good about being done with your reviews for the day and do something else.
If you’re looking to do time-based studying, or you want to review things you’ve studied from a specific deck or decks, select “Continuous” mode. Yes, you’re still studying cards that are due, but you also could be reviewing things that aren’t due at the same time depending on what deck you’re in and how long you choose to study. And, in continuous mode, if you study for an extended period, the cards you get wrong during the session will re-appear as you’re studying.
Not everyone wants to spend extended periods of time on Skritter, and some people do. This seemed like the most logical way for us to support both study styles without conflating the two. Also, when the mode was a toggle it got very little support or notice. There are multiple instances of this here on the forum, and the same was happening in our support inbox. For now (at least), it is front and center with clear documentation on both modes via the Help button on the settings page. While the old method might make sense to many of us who’ve used Skritter for a long time, it is also terribly confusing to explain to new users coming in the app for the first time.
For the record, I’m not saying we can’t improve the UI, but they are different, and they do different things on the code level. And I do appreciate the feedback!
I still find the distinction to be slight, but the reality is having the choice doesn’t affect my use of Skritter in a significant way. I made the observation more out of engineering empathy than to complain about something that’s getting in my way.
I’m curious what those differences are. It sounds like there is a lot more going on. As far as I can tell, they are:
Due Cards stops for good when you finish the scheduled cards, Continuous lets you overstudy.
(guess) Continuous doesn’t notify you when you reach the end of what Skritter has scheduled.
Continuous shows time and not remaining card count.
Due Cards shows remaining card count but not time.
Incidentally, I consider 3 & 4 to be regressions. If I’m in a continuous state of mind, I still would like to see where Skritter thinks I am, and if I’m studying Due Cards I still want to see how long I’ve been studying. To emphasize the latter case, I’ll note that a Due Cards user’s UI needs are basically the same as a Continuous user’s needs if they are sufficiently behind in their reviews.
It ultimately boils down to having a single very specific goal for the two modes. Due Cards is about getting things to zero by studying the most optimal number of things based on SRS so time is not the focus of this goal. Continuous also contributes to getting the due cards down, but since there is no stopping point putting in time is the goal.
It might sound easy to just make them one super continuous feature like before, but over the years we’ve gotten a fairly consistent amount of feedback which highlight why this is complex. The previous continuous style tries to accommodate too many different scenarios into one. Here are some points about why a single continuous mode to rule them all is challenging:
Cards can become due while you’re in the middle of studying, so it can be frustrating to get to zero for the day (especially if you have a bunch of newly added cards).
Similar to #1 if you get to zero, then check back in a few minutes or a few hours it likely won’t be zero anymore.
Users with a large number of due cards (think 2000+) have different often contradicting expectations. For example, some users only want to study down to zero, some want to study down to zero but want to add in some new things that get prioritized and some want to occasionally see some not due cards appear.
Reviewing something when it’s not ready breaks the fundamentals of how SRS is meant to work.
im having an issue with continuous, the wrong cards do not pop up again, i had the same issue before the last update, but i figured out the a fix, before i toggle the continuous to on, i had to make sure the due cards toggle was off and my wrong cards would pop up again after a couple of reviews. i was going to report this error, but the update happened! probably this issue got carried over to the new version.
The new app is REALLY bad for repetition. Hear me out here and explain to me what I’m doing wrong.
In the old app I study… Get my 300 words and start working them down. If I fail one it gets put forward a bit and I got it back after a certain amount of time… say 10 cards. This way I learn the ones I don’t remember during my study. When I hit 0 I’m done and cards have been repeated.
How do I do this in the new app?
If I go “due cards”, which I assume is the idea, I get 300+ cards that I have to do in order regardless if I remember them or not.
Say I don’t remember the first card. Now I will have to work through all 300 cards. Press “due cards” again. And here I get my FIRST repetition of the first card i didn’t remember 1 hour ago. There is not a snowballs chance in hell i remember it this round after so long time since I saw it. And even worse now I got an entire pile if “non-remembered” cards that I have to work through a second time.
And this I now have to repeat a few times to work down the pile to a number that is manageble.
On top of all this, the cards are gone after I successfully remember them once and I have to wait until tomorrow to repeat them. Now guess what. They end up in the top of the 300 pile, and after one repetition i probably dont will remember them 24 hour later. And I have to repeat the tedious task i just described.
Maybe Im just a slow learner but with the new app I probably work through 600+ cards to repeat my 300 cards… And the day after I almost remember none of the ones I didn’t remember today because I don’t get to repeat them after i manage to do them once.
The algorithm in the old app lets me work through waaay much faster and on top of that I manage to remember them the next day.
Thanks man. I will try out continuous learning tomorrow.
But if Im not misstaken continuous is just “due cards” on repeat. The downside is i cannot see how many cards I have left here, and I still have the problem where if I fail a card i need to burn through the entire pile before I see it again. Even if I cannot see how many I have left. Maybe continues addresses my problem after Im done with all due cards, but its hard to tell because all due cards is put of until tomorrow so I dont really know what Im seeing here.
Continuous Review uses the more traditional Skritter scheduling system, so cards you mark incorrect will appear due again more frequently than once a day if you’re using that review mode. Cards marked incorrect should be coming up during the same session if you study long enough.
If that isn’t the case then we’ve got a bug to fix, and we’ll get it patched up ASAP!
In theory continuous mode should be the solution, but in reality this mode doesn’t work, as reported by @mikelimassol in this very discussion. On my phone this happens: after a mistake I get to write the word again very soon, with one or two other items in between, but as soon as I get it right once it does not reappear the way it used to in the old app. Since the time between failure and new attempt is so short I am likely to remember how to write the word just from seeing it so recently, meaning that the long term benefits of this repetition are limited. I hope that this is just a bug, because at the moment the continuous mode is useless to me.
Hard to say. An items “dueness” is based on the server and it’s possible other cards in the queue are more due than cards you’ve studied and marked wrong during a session.
It does sound like there could be a bug in the system. And if that is the case we’ll get it patched up and deploy a fix!
My test account appear to be working okay, but that could be because the total number of cards on the account is not large enough to detect the issue. Gonna have to do more digging. I’ll keep everyone posted.
Thanks for reports! Sorry for the scattered replies well I’m on my phone. Lots of good things to tackle on Monday and early this week along with the other stuff planned for 3.3.7. More updates to follow later. In the meantime, I hope everyone’s 鼠年 is off to a great start!
I have had a similar experience. I have found that going to the home screen, syncing then studying again puts the cards I just missed at the top of my review queue. So every so often I find myself going back to the home screen to do that. It kinda breaks my study flow but it works and is better than not doing it in my opinion.
So every so often I find myself going back to the home screen to do that. It kinda breaks my study flow but it works and is better than not doing it in my opinion.
In one sense, I regard this as a feature. I can choose when to restart a new session and hence I can control the delay until I see missed cards again. Personally, I find it completely useless to see them again in the same session, so I normally keep the same session going until I take a major break and do something else, then restart with a new session hours later and only then go through all the missed cards. I almost always remember them the day after.
The old it’s not a bug it’s a feature line. I guess it could have merit to it if Skritter gave users the option of turning it off. Or better yet the ability to fine tune it like
Show card after a (day / hour / # minutes / # of missed cards reaches #).
Some people like me can’t remember (especially on newer vocab) even after a few minutes. A day is way too long (especially for the new stuff) I would much rather get it right at least once before it gets pushed back a day or more for review. Also after I have missed at least six (usually less) I start forget as well.
I didn’t mean to comment on the whole issue, I merely meant that at least for me, being able to choose when to redo cards that I missed by choosing when to start a new session is helpful. I did even preface it with “In one sense, I regard” and “personally”, which I hope makes it clear that it was merely a reflection on how I use the app. That doesn’t mean that the app is perfect, of course, and we’ll keep improving it, to a large extent based on feedback we receive from users!
You are right. Continuous is indeed what I needed to use, thank you. However it is just as @ddapore99 mentions, I need to restart it every now and then in order to get my cards otherwise they will disappear.
This feels like a bug and not a feature to me. Also newer “failed” should always have priority over older cards even if the older ones have earlier due date. Or at least that’s my opinion. Hard to say if that’s true since I need to restart it.
And as a side note. Why is there a timer literally right under the phones normal clock? A number with the due cards here would be so much more useful so I know when I’m done. However with the bug earlier mentioned I get to see how many cards I have left every time i restart… But if this bug is fixed i would prefer to see how many cards i have left in the continuous mode.
With this workaround I can at least study, I was being kinda frustrated with the new app until now. Thanks for the help
The timer is supposed to show you how much you have been studying. This is so you can use it to set goals like study for 30 minutes every day. I think the older version of the app even let you set notifications like “congratulations on studying for 30 minutes”. However this version of the app will reset the timer every time you return to the home screen. Not to mention it completely ignores the timer and goes for a card due countdown instead during your initial study session for the day (when Skritter updates with new cards that are due).
I’ve just noticed they seem to have improved the timers memory so when you go to the home screen you only appear to loose a little time and it’s not a complete reset every time.
