It would be quite useful if for a word like 热狗 it would decompose 热 as 扌+ 丸 + 灬 , in addition to mentioning that 执 means to hold something in your hand.
Instead of only listing the major components of a character a component tree could be visible, further decomposing the major components into their constituent parts. As such:

执 zhi2: grasp; hold in hand; execute (a plan)
|_ 扌 shou3: hand
|_ 丸 wan2: pill

灬 huo3: fire

This seems easy enough to do and would do away with the hassle of having to click on said major components to further decompose them.

Hmm--we used to do this, but then we turned it off. I forget why. I think either it was slow, or there was some other technical limitation. As far as we could tell, no one noticed, which seemed to validate the decision.

Hey, hey. Somebody noticed it just now, invalidating the decision. :)
These days there are no technical limitations to do this. You could just put a + in a square in front of the character and preload the content in the background. Nobody would click on it immediately, but the tree would show up instantly when they do. The + would also make them aware of which components have subcomponents and which ones have not.
Could this be made an option?

I appreciate how it would be useful for you, and maybe a minority of users do want this, but that doesn't mean we should put it in if it makes the request slow or takes significant development effort for something only a few will use. So if others have been missing this: let's hear the demand! What do y'all think?

You could also just show the separate components when doing a mouseover on the character. The all-in-one screen looks nice, but it does take some time to pull in all the information sometimes ("Loading...") and when you have to do this for every single character you want to decompose it quickly adds up. I do not really need to see the learned status, the words containing the character (unrelated to the textbook I am using) and the characters containing the component for every single character component. Most of the time, I just want to know the different character components, their pinyin and meaning.

I have wondered about this occasionally, but if I'm interested I do further research via MDBG or similar.

I think it's quite hard to decide what to put in the character pop-up box, because a lot of people use it differently. If I'd come across Skritter earlier, I would be really keen for this feature, because I would be wandering my way through vocab via the 'words containing this character' or similar; whereas now, I stick to a fairly limited vocab and focus on learn ing grammar while maintaining a basic level of vocab, which I can build again when I have more free time.

Essentially, I don't think it's worth it unless a lot of people will use it, especially if it slows things down - I've been impressed with the speed of Skritter so far, so I really noticed the once or twice it went slowly!

I also very much want this feature. I believe that the suggestion for a "+" that could be clicked on would eliminate the problem of loading time.

But really, I would love this. Especially when the "biggest" component is super rare or archaic and thus not that much help.

If it would not influence the speed then I would also be interested in this. It would be very useful. But I prefer speed.

I like a lot of what I'm reading, but the big issue with functionality like this is where to draw the line with character decomposition, or splitting into 部件 (components) when you don't need to.

Instead of simply providing all the information possible, it should be directed in a way that helps character writing and retention. Sometimes going to far actually takes away from that process.

Take the example posted,

执 zhi2: grasp; hold in hand; execute (a plan)
|_ 扌 shou3: hand
|_ 丸 wan2: pill

灬 huo3: fire

does the further breakdown of 埶 into a hand and pill help one to remember the character better? the simplification that occurred from the original 熱 has already lost the phonetic component 埶 replacing it with 执, but the thought of holding fire in your hand to heat something up seems more clear than further including a hand (represented as in the radical form, but not the radical of the character) and a pill.

I'm not saying that something like this wouldn't help langue learners, but unless Skritter decides to what degree every component is broken down there is no guarantee that this will help retention... especially when following the original rules of character formation.

I personal would rather spend efforts to clarify the radical component of every single character in the Skritter database, followed by an effort to apply parts of speech, especially if we are talking about ways to make the service even more useful for language learners.

In my opinion having a + sign that totally decomposed a character would be cool, but, having it in terms of it's radical is a better set-up overall on the initial view.

For instance 幾 機 嘰 譏 磯 would be better shown with the radical +幾 as initial view， instead of 幾 being plucked apart.

It essentially could work the same way it does by use going through and clicking + 3 times to get down the to the bottom level, just it would pop up on the main page if need be.

I like to follow the components, but for me MDBG is OK: I'm not in a hurry, and the time spent chasing the components helps to make the character stick in my memory.

maybe some form of "curated" component highlighting would be cool - it's really useful to know that the four dots = fire, and two = ice, and the hand component, and whether a radical is there for pronounciation or meaning, etc etc - cause we have a partial component breakdown already for some words, but if the important ones could be highlighted i think it would help in writing and recall.

I like malaili2's and atreyu89's ideas. Highlighting the radical with say one colour if it is there for meaning and another colour for pronounciation.

very nice ideas!

Hi SkritterJake,

"I personal would rather spend efforts to clarify the radical component of every single character in the Skritter database, followed by an effort to apply parts of speech, especially if we are talking about ways to make the service even more useful for language learners."

What exactly do you mean by "an effort to apply parts of speech"?

Another thing that would speed up learning: more often than not it seems there is no etymology available for a character. One then has to perform time-consuming research using chineseetymology.com, zhongwen.com, zdic.net, etc. Can this be fixed so that people can add a missing etymology to a character and/or edit it in e.g. Wikipedia fashion?

Sorry for not clarifying, I was referring to the grammatical categories in Chinese: nouns, verbs, auxiliary verbs, adjectives (stative verbs) and the like.

While it sometimes seem like you can use a word any way you want in Chinese this is hardly the case, and with so many students using Skritter as a study tool it would be awesome if this could be slowly integrated into the system.

SkritterJake, having read through all of "Modern Chinese Grammar" I could not agree more. I think this could best be done through an update of the example sentence section. Right now, there is a disconnect between textbook lists (e.g. your New Practical Chinese Reader list) and the example sentences. If these could be brought in line then the grammar points could be introduced in the same order as the textbook, making Skritter an even more effective learning tool.

@malaili2: I downloaded the low-resolution 30 page teaser and it seems to me that if you are already using a textbook like New Practical Chinese Reader with stories, pictures, etc. it is just Skritter on paper?