Hello,

Do you consider making the size of the buffer, i.e. the number of characters that are preloaded a parameter? I think that it would help many people like me who want to use skritter on the train, subway, etc where network connections are not always stable. The problem now is that when the website times out the whole thing has to be loaded again and many times there is just not enough time to do that before the connection drops off again. This morning I could do only 5 characters or so in 15 minutes:-(

It's something we could do, although the scheduling takes a hit when the buffer size is set high because you can't buffer words that share the same characters, currently. Skritter will also stop trying to save old reviews to the server after a while, so you'd have to increase that parameter in order to recover from long internet drops. And it would use more memory. So I'm not sure how well it would work in practice.

Here's what I'll do: I'll test it out by fixing your buffer size to be 20 words instead of 4, and I'll increase your timeout limits to two hours, and we'll see what happens. You'll have to be on the beta site for this. I've uploaded it there, so give it a try.

I have been testing with both now for a while. Of course, I realize that thereis a prize to pay for a larger buffer: it takes longer to load a new set of words. I like having the larger buffer because it helps me bridge the gap between the often short periods of interrupted connections. However, as soon as I see the 3 green dots flashing, one of 3 things seem to be happening:

1. When I have a good connection they flash somewhat longer (a few seconds) than before, but then I can continue working with no problems

2. I have no or a bad connection but only for a short time: the green spots continue flashing, sometimes they even freeze, but soon skritter is up and running again.

3. I have no or a bad connection but this situation persists for 2 minutes (approximately) or longer: the green spots freeze and even after the connection is established again it takes an awful lot of time and a lot of traffic (whatever the speed, even on 3G) before skritter recovers, if it does recover. Actually, as soon as I am in this situation it seems that the best option is to back out and reload the page.

Overall I will continue to use the beta settings (buffer = 20) for the moment. I think that keeping the standard of buffer = 4 is ok if you provide a parameter in the settings somewhere for users to adjust this if they need a bigger buffer.

Regards

Marc

Thanks for the detailed connectivity report. It looks like this approach could be viable with some tweaks; I'd just have to figure out the cause of #3. I'll put it on my list to play around with these buffer settings later, but for now I've got to focus on the iOS app.

Ok Nick, as long as you leave the buffer size on 20 in the beta version, I am a happy client :-D

Marc