How about a more subtle hint? Sometimes I believe I *should* know a character but just cannot get started. If I could see the first (or next) stroke then I'm good to go. I don't want to see the whole thing, which the existing hint gives, just a clue.

As it is I will try likely first strokes in hopes one of them will come close and the sometimes-generous stroke recognition takes one... but that is a little silly. Anyone else?

I agree, I think a hint button would be nice. Maybe a keyboard shortcut or something?

Seems to me that there is some kind of "hint" stroke that shows up when I am working.

The 'hint' strokes - flashing in light blue - are nice. However, I would like to be able to disable them. I find that sometimes they tell me before I want to be told , sometimes I want to push my memory.

A subtler hint is a good idea; I'm wondering if pulsing the next stroke when hitting "Ctrl+S" or "Ctrl+" would be a good way to trigger it.

The "hint" strokes you see show up in two cases:
1) You've written more than three unrecognized squigs in a row.
2) You are writing with incorrect stroke order.

glr001, which case is it that you'd like to avoid?

I know what I like to turn off: the #2, writing in incorrect stroke order.
If it is disabled, then the "wrong" counter should still be ticked, but no hint given. Just a -anonymous-stroke-order-warning-. If I stroke in wrong order, it is an error, but it should not help me as such (as it is now).

I agree that it would be nice to have the option to disable the hint strokes. Sometimes when I guess a stroke wrong, it will register as a different stroke somewhere else in the character and it will show me what I should have written, assuming I just mucked up the stroke order.

And bodin makes a good point: when I do actually muck up the stroke order, I want to simply be notified of that and not have it reveal a stroke I haven't written yet.

And I'm all for the subtler hint idea too. Say you forgot what the first stroke in a character is. Just press hint and see what it is. There's a good chance next time you see that character you'll remember what your hint stroke was and you'll be able to take the character from there.

Of course it shouldn't count as a known word if you have to use the hint. But if you're stuck, it's better to salvage at least something from your memory rather than have to peek at the whole character.

Having such a hint feature would allow you to focus not only on the characters you have problems with, but also the specific parts of those characters you find difficult.

My current vote would be to have a button, not just a keyboard shortcut, to ask for the simple hint. I don't touch my keyboard when skrittering, so having to reach over would not be as convenient.

John Pasden just suggested a sweet idea for the hint: hold down the Show button (or "S") to get the animation, one stroke at a time, and when you let it go, that's it--the rest of the character doesn't show up. So you can hold it down briefly to get a hint of one or two strokes, hold it down longer to see the whole thing, or click it normally to get the instant display.

I'll try to work out the timing this weekend so it's smart at knowing when you clicked and when you're holding down, but I think that'll be an elegant solution. Now for explaining the behavior to new users... hmm.

I like the hint idea. Will there be an on-screen button? I use a tablet pc and generally don't have easy access to a keyboard when skritting.

The point about wrong stroke order is a good one - sometimes I write a character and it 'recognizes' the wrong stroke when I wrote the correct one (a bit messily). For some reason, boxes seem hard for skritter to recognize (国 for example or 墙 - this one always thinks the outer square strokes are for the inner square). It would be nice to be able to turn this feature off (an 'only accept the correct stroke' option).

The hint is live, so you can check it out now. It just uses the Show button, which you can hold down briefly to get the hint.

I like the new progressive Show, but it should still mark the character as incorrect when you use it.

Yes, it should. I will be working that into the next version, though (which is really starting to come together, now).

Thanks for the hint button. But the hinting when doing stroke order is still there. Will this be possible to disable somehow in the future?

Yes, probably. I haven't thought of anything awesome for this, but if I don't, I'll make a preference eventually.

Another hint idea: When now keeping the tone buttons, would it be possible to get number "aliases" for v and s? like on 7 (V) and 8 (S), so we can use the number keypad for left hand and mouse/wacom for right hand.

Skritter is a fast-pace game, and you should support fast input methods!

Sure, I can put those in with the new stuff.

Great!
You rule in listening into the community wishes and "needs"

You guys rule at designing killer language learning software... :)

Agreeing with Xerxes - After just a few days away from regular practice (working on a cram list for another chapter) I have a long list of things to practice and a rusty brain so, now back to the programmed practice, I have used the hint more than I would like to admit and I think it is kinder than it ought to be. I can get a generous hint and still get it scored as "correct". I would suggest a harsher rules when hints are given. Maybe only one hint stroke or two before it is counted as as wrong. I can ask for hints on a and get couple of strokes, do another myself, ask for another and so one and make it all the way through a character only by hints and guesses... without really knowing it. I know I can always mark it wrong myself but a tougher taskmaster is a good thing for learning.

I was thinking of trying something where a one-stroke hint would have no penalty, a two-stroke hint would give you a score of 2 (halfway between 3, the normal "correct", and 1, the normal "incorrect"), and more would mark it incorrect. But it might make sense to shift that one stroke down the intensity scale, so any use of the phantom will degrade the knowledge rating.

This will get implemented with the new Flash code, though, so it'll come out with everything else.