First of all, I really like the new designs. I think that they add a lot and make the whole Skritter process more intuitive.

I just have one question. As of yesterday, before the new features, I had three lists that I was studying. Two of them were paused so that I could add some words from the queue. Now, when I go to the study tab it says that I am adding words from only the one that was unpaused. Below that it says that I'm reviewing words from the other two. I noticed that the actual study/pause buttons are gone from the active lists tab. However, the two lists have the option to reset adding. Is this what I should press in order to "unpause" the lists?

Thanks for the help, and thanks for all of the great changes.

Yes, you're correct. We've brought out the playing/pausing controls, relabled them and put it in the practice nav, so that it's more visible and clearer what it does (play/pause buttons weren't particularly self explanatory). So if you want to control what lists are being added from, you click those links to pause/unpause the lists. Functionally it's the same as before.

I really like how the new update looks. If only just discovered it and not yet really tried it out, but so far it seemed great.
But I really miss the pause buttons. I think it's a great ideo to also have them in the practice nav, but I really don't like the fact that they are not instantly accessible while practising.
For my university courses I work with many different lists simulaneously and am always adding a great amount of new words per week and for that I found the playing/pause controls very useful.
At least I would hope that there will be an indicator in the active list section that shows from with lists words are actually added right now and which ones are paused.

A few points:
- Where is the study starred words section? I can view the words but can't find any button to actually study them.
- The scratch pad is often not loading properly so I can't add any words to it.
- The words i did have in my scratch pad is not visible at all if it is loaded.
- I am color blind but is the color for the study button really right? For me that is a terrible color but that might be just me. No problems, my life is rather grey;-)
- I love the adding/reviewing sections. I have hundreds of lists(Chinese pod) so this is very nice for me.
- So nice with the search function. Big + on that.
- I miss the option to be able to list words based on time studied.
- Very nice design of the "my words" section.
- How is the "study a single study list" working?
- Will the queue become a list in the future? I would so much like to be able to add words /cram that section.

I will test more but I must say that you are doing an fantastic work! Constant improvements, listening to the customers etc. Really fantastic work you are doing here. The major point is that the speed of my learning is so much faster after using Skritter. I go to China a couple of times a month and each time i can see how much I have improved by reading the signs, watch TV, read bed time stories for my children etc. Amazing. Thanks for doing all this for us!

Yeah, I the like general plan too. But where is the queue? And the pause thing pretty much ditto the above.

Is there supposed to be some other alpha feedback mechanism than the forum?

Problems: I can see only a small top part of my sixth list on the study screen, - this is with google chrome 7.0.517.44 on linux.

Tones are coming out as numbers in the my words listing.

"Study a single list" turning into a red cancel button is completely random and unintuitive. Surely it wants to go big and selected and the study all my words to go small like it was. (ie they swap)

I think there is an issue when adding words from a new list. When studying an individual list only i will be asked for adding new words "You don't have enough words" I then add some but still the sign is there. I am rather sure that there are more than 4 words that are not sharing any common character I add.

wispfrog: the queue is on the bottom left of the my words page. Given how important this is (you want to add some words - where do you go?) I think it needs to be right at the top in 10 foot high lettering. And similarly on the vocab lists page.

I think by removing the play/pause (and especially the "stop/pause adding at the end of the section" bit -- that's super useful) you're also removing massively helpful and convenient functions. By all means double it up on the main practice intro page, so it's clear what's what and so newbies don't get confused, but leave us with the convenience of being able to change things on the fly. After all, you've got the space there, you may as well use it. And if you want to get rid of play/pause, just use the same terminology as on the main practice intro page. No problems for newbies, convenient for everyone else.

Also I'd suggest on the main practice info page putting all active lists right on the top of the pile. Active lists are the ones I want to study at the moment, or are important enough that I've added them to remind me to study in the future when I've got time. At the moment it's not clear which are the important ones. If I go to the active lists tab while practicing, by contrast, I can see that there's three lists there that I need to focus on. On the main practice page by contrast, one of the three doesn't appear it all (it's buried under the see more bit), and the others are straggled between finished lists. Not clear from a glance.

For the play/pause buttons we've been trying out removing them, since they're redundant in the practice page (you can now do these actions on the study nav) and it seems to us few people use them or even know about them. We're running a poll now though to better measure how valuable they are to users. That menu in general is under scrutiny to determine if it pulls its own weight.

@MandarinBoy: Whoops, forgot to put the studying of starred words back in there. That's going into the starred words page, which is accessible from the my words area. I'll do that next.

The scratchpad no longer has the words from its last usage in it. It's meant to be not a permanent thing, only for one-off usage of studying a given set of words. Generally the system works better if you use lists, so we want to encourage that.

Hmm, I think the green's all right for the buttons. Could tweak it of course though.

For sorting my words by time studied, we wanted to simplify and strip down the viewer to its most important features. Also, the fewer ways we can sort words, the faster the system in general.

Studying of single sections works the same as before, it's just not immediately accessible from the study nav anymore. We wanted to emphasize list studying.

And yes, the queue will become a list. That's actually my next major project!

@wispfrog: The forum's a good place for alpha comments, so you guys can all join in on the conversation. Emailing us also works, or using the comment/feedback system. We're compiling all the feedback into one central document so we can mull over it!

Couldn't reproduce the problem with chrome, I've got version 6.0.472.55 running on Fedora as well. Does it show up like this before or after you press show more, or does it even give you that option?

Will fix the tone numbers.

Hmm, so you're saying when you click to study a single list, the buttons below (for each individual list) appear and the buttons at the top (for studying everything/a single list) swap places? That doesn't seem intuitive to me, though the way it is could be improved it's true. Will have to think about that.

@Byzanti: Yeah, might move the queue like you suggest. It's going to get replaced soon we hope, at least when the next major update happens, and then it will definitely be more visible. In the meantime, might be a good idea to not hide it so much.

And on the difference between active lists and what's on the study nav, that's a good point... I'm not sure exactly how to fix that though. The lists that are shown in the active lists box are actually somewhat arbitrary, while the ones shown on the study nav are the ones that have been added or modified recently. Well the active lists box may be overhauled anyway, so will have to think about what lists it shows. May make it more in line with what the study nav shows.

Whew!

I just noticed that when I'm viewing a section of a list, it is only showing the learned status and select checkbox for the first 3 or 4 words. There's no way to select the words in the rest of the list. This is consistent for every list and every section that I've tried.

Have you learned the words in the rest of the section? The checkbox/status should only show up for the ones you've done. Is there a JavaScript error on the page, and what browser are you using?

It's explorer. Debugging now.

Tone numbers fixed, starred words practice button added, so uploading those now.

Fixed!

Yep, Works now, Thanks a ton!

I've emailed you a screenshot hopefully scott.

The red Cancel is fine just after ones pressed to make it appear, but it doesn't say what exactly it cancels at all, so can imagine it being confusing it left. I don't know... really its just revealing the study only one list buttons that start hidden. Do they /have/ to start hidden?

Maybe there doesn't even /need/ to be a cancel at all. Difficult.

Horizontal space is kind of limited so we implemented that design to try and make sure each list row wouldn't be too crowded. When you press the button, the progress bar is hidden to compensate for the added button. We were basing it off the way the iPhone does such things, where you press a button at the top and the rest of the interface changes, like when you edit an entry. Perhaps it doesn't work as well in this setting though...

Will see if I can reproduce it the problem with the extra sixth entry sticking out. Does it look like that when you first open the page or do you press anything to make it look like that?

Its always like that on that computer.

On this one here, it works. This one is ubuntu maverick and the other is still lucid. It has a bigger screen. But zooming makes no difference.

Hmm, I just thought that I had better check on javascript blockers etc, but on here where it works, there is one (with appspot allowed) and on the other machine, none is installed.

I have a guess that the reason that happens is because the way I set it up was a bit hacked in order to do the smooth animation when showing more lists. I've changed it to be much less likely to break but the animation is gone. If we decide to go with this setup for sure maybe I'll come back later and work on a better animation system!

It seems fixed now, so that probably did it.