Using Skritter on an HTC Desire S, works pretty nicely! I'm currently using Dolphin Browser HD. A few points:

- Can anyone recommend the best browser for Skritter on Android? Dolphin seems OK, Firefox doesn't work at all, haven't tried the others.

- Would it be possible to have the study page auto-fit to the screen size? I'm sure this has been asked before, but it would make such a huge difference to the overall user experience. Even if it was just a url parameter for the desired size that we could then keep as a favourite, it'd be useful.

- I'm going to put in my two cents for the native Android app idea. I really do wish this was more definitely in the pipeline; the lack of one has been the first time I've been disappointed with Skritter.

- Would it be possible for the study page to detect what kind of device you're on and change settings accordingly? I'd like to use raw squigs and hide pinyin on a big screen, but not on my Android device.

- I'm not too clear on how these things work, but if there's no app, would it at least be possible to have some sort of dedicated launcher app for Skritter, or even a mini browser that's designed to just run Skritter? I understand if this is a ridiculous idea :-P

- I would be willing to pay more for or even donate directly to the development of a native Android app.

I know these points have all been raised before on the forum, but I think it's worth being vocal about our interest in Skritter on Android!

I tried other browsers ages ago (mainly Dolphin), but just went back to using the build in browser. I could never tell if there were actually differences or it was just my imagination.

It should detect your device and at least use the mobile study page. There was a month time frame several months ago where my device actually re-sized, but now it doesn't anymore. I think this was when Nick was more heavily playing around with mobile settings. I was I had had time to stop him while it was working!

I created an app that in the app store called "Add to Skritter" which is for adding vocabulary, but there are also links to the Study and Study All pages in the menu. I didn't get much interest or feedback, so I haven't added anything else to it, though there are over 30 people with it actively installed.

I did make an app that was basically a Skritter portal app for Android. It used a custom in-app webview to navigate the site, rather than another web browser. I think it's feasible to build and could be useful to Android users. I think it would need a bit more support to be built. I'd volunteer to work on it, but it would require some conferring with Nick. I'd perhaps need a view custom pages built on the site for it.

That custom app sounds pretty nice, is it on android market? I think having that sort of thing would make a big difference to the user experience.

Yes, it's on the market and there is a link if you click on my Skritter profile.

@josh I don't understand "I did make an app that was basically a Skritter portal app for Android ... I think it's feasible to build". You made one but you didn't build it?

It might be nice to have an in-app webview because a regular browser behaves a bit strangely on Android when in the background: it seems like it reloads the page.

@kai, let me clarify, I did make an app to test, but didn't release it. i'd need to work with the skritter team a bit to make it useful enough to release on the market. so it's built for my testing purposes only.

if I did that then i'd likely merge add to skritter and the webview into one app. not sure yet, i'd like to get some more feedback and a few words from the skritter team.

Josh, this is something we had wanted to do ourselves as a stopgap, but lack of Android experience makes it a rather high-overhead task for us. We can give you the support you would need in a couple months.

It would be pretty awesome if that could be done. That's the main thing I'm after really - a neat, optimised Skritter experience on Android.

@nick, Well if you'd like to throw it my way, then I'd be more than happy to take it. When I have free time I'll put some more thought into what the requirements will be. It'll definitely be easier to control re-sizing in an app, rather than trying to get the website to handle every situation.

Thanks Josh for this little app. I have a book on my smartphone that I use as a source for extra vocab. I use the pleco reader, so finding the dictionary entry is not a problem. Now I can very easily transfer whatever word I want to retain to my Skritter lists. Works great for me.

Marc

@marc, Glad it's working well for you! Let me know if you have any other ideas of suggestions.

I don't know if this is possible, but it would be real
ly useful to habe a kind of auto add function in the settings, just like there is an auto paste function now. When I am reading it is a bit cumbersome to switch to the app just to see it add the word (automatically).

@marchey, you're right! I'd like to do this. I've been looking into making a background service that might be able to handle that, but thus far no breakthroughs. Ideally I'd just add an option to Add to Skritter to the copy and paste menu, but I think I can only do that within my own app and not across the entire Android OS. Hopefully one of these days I'll stumble upon a solution.

I made a post related to some of your issues a while back and Nick gave me a temporary (until the long-awaited Android app eventually appears) fix for the resolution thing:

http://www.skritter.com/study/all?resolution_width=800

You can experiment with whatever resolution you need and turn it into a bookmark icon for your phone, if nothing else.

Original post was at

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=128623328

in case that helps :)

@foozlesprite, I've tried manually changing the resolution_width parameter, but I can't seem to see a difference. Does it do anything when you change it?

One a side note, in a few weeks I'm going to release an early alpha version of the Skritter Portal project for Android. It won't be on the market, it will be a manual install so I can get feedback on what is useful and what isn't. I'll make a forum post about it when the time arrives.

I don't know anything about programming Android apps but maybe this could be useful:
http://code.google.com/p/my-clips/
The way the app would work should then be set up slightly different:
1. Start the app, or when it is already started, empty the queue
2. Start whatever activity related to studying Chinese; in my case this is reading using the Pleco reader
3. Copy words to the clipboard and with the my-clips service every word will be copied to the app.
4. End the activity
5. Switch to the Skritter portable app and review the saved list, possibly deleting a few words (mistakes)
6. Hit some button to upload all the words to your Skritter database.

The current way of pasting automatically and uploading after a few seconds could still be maintained as a feature. It certainly has its uses.

Marc

@marchey, I'll look into it. I'd definitely like to have something that'll let you add words in a batch. You're right, that could greatly cut down on the back and forth time. I think I can get it to throw copied items to the app automatically.

I'm not too keen on having the browser load lot's of new tabs to add multiple items at once though.