With the new & better iOS app, there are features people are requesting & being discussed, sometimes as part of discussion on completely separate issues.

I want to put together a list of requests for people interested in them.
For items with links, it is probably best to continue the discussion in the original thread to avoid parallel discussions.

If you know of some feature requests that have been posted elsewhere, put it in the comments, and I will update this post over time.

- Smaller iPad input area (http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=236108898)
- iPad: move forward/back buttons off writing area to avoid accidental pushing (http://beta.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=236108898#238180702). Help Nick debug problem at http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=238209032
- iPhone: move forward/back buttons to "prompt" area to avoid hitting by mistake ("new" request that I put in for long ago)
- Show components of characters without going to "Info" page (http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=196450761)
- Hide definitions during tone prompts (http://beta.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=238227852)
- iPad: Larger font & button sizes (font: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=238227852 buttons: http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=237737224 & http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=237737224#239304168)
- iPad: bring back dark theme. (rejected by management due to large size of all textures & graphics)

More & updates as I find them.

I'd really like the word info tab to contain information about which list one character/word has been added from.

Good compilation, nomadwolf. I wrote up a similar list last night:

iOS Future Dev Plans

Will do:
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Make the iPad study top bar larger
Allow anonymous onboarding (you get an automatic account which you can name later)
Make the Japanese writing prompt’s reading font size bigger again
Add displaying of example sentences to both iPhone and iPad

Might do, in rough probability order
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Allow choosing/creating/editing example sentences
Make Advanced Study settings sticky
Make the iPad tapdown button bigger
Adjust back/next hit areas/tolerance so that you get less misfires/misses when trying to go back, go next, and grade the character
Thicker light theme iPad squigs, maybe lowering the ink bleed
Turn My Lists, Forum, and Progress into native views
Add lists-added-from info to word details view
Allow download of even more audio coverage (beyond the most common 32MB)
Switch to Sparrow 2.0 and do stroke order animations
Switch to Sparrow 2.0 and do Zen Brush-style squigs
Show up to four writing/tone prompts at a time on iPad, each at half the size
Allow choosing mnemonics
Adjust iPad design to show more info (like decomps) on the front side
Add My Words
Add typing for reading prompts

Will not do
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Landscape mode
Dark theme for iPad
Minimalist theme
Single section study
Scratchpad
Add study toolbar for buttons
Making the app smaller (< 50 MB) so it can download over wireless data

Thanks for all the feedback on things to improve with the app, guys!

+1 for Laspimon's suggestion. I think the website only gives one list from which the card was added. It would be nice to see all lists which contain the card.

What do you mean by "Make Advanced Study settings sticky?"

I would really like to get the bold and italics text displayed in the iDevices; it feels overdue.

I would like to have images that go with the example sentences.
I know you can add pictures now on the website but it's not being used much and it doesn't work on iDevices. I believe it's not being used much now due to several factors.
1. It's not obvious how to add.
2. Finding a good picture takes time.
3. Most of us aren't photographers so most people would have to link to other peoples photos. However due to it requiring a link, you can't fully future proof it against the source being taken down.
I would like to ask for an image repository be maintained by skritter to go with the example sentences (not the definitions). For the iPad, it would be nice to have the image placed in a standard location and in a standard size.

I do a lot of adding to lists on my iPad, and would put in a plug for two big improvements in that regard:

1. Put some TLC into the user interface for quick add to a list, and how well it works for the use case of copying a character/word elsewhere and then coming to Skritter to paste it into a word list. The quick add input is very temperamental in terms of actually getting the input box live and getting it to accept pasted text. I love Skritter but to be generous, I'll just say this does not work well at all today...

2. Ability to quick add characters from the info screen. I often want to add a single character out of a new word - but definitely not so often that it makes sense to use the add characters option in setting. Today I need to remember the character, exit out to main menu, drill down Ito lists, add the word, go back out to main menu, resume studying.

Thanks for considering!

+1 on anything that makes adding words easier/native. Currently painful enough that I actively avoid using it on iOS.

I've been too busy to update the list, but it will happen.

Nick, thanks for your list, it's great to see that.
Couple thoughts
- if you do typing for pinyin input, please try to have some good solution for the tones. There's nothing I hate more than switching to the # keyboard. "Tone Buttons" might be a possibility, but then you have to prevent the keyboard from closing when pressing those.
- for the 4 writing/tone prompts at a time, you mean that we'd see all 4 characters of a word to be written at the same time? Sounds cool.


@ddapore99: I assume by sticky Advanced Study Setting is that if you set it up for a certain list/parts, it will remember those settings the next time you go in to Advanced Study.

Looks like there's a time limit on when you can edit a post. Duly noted for next time.

Other requested items:
- iPad: Font sizes (http://beta.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=239483780)
- (my new request) - be able to ban parts instead of just entire word.
- character quick add from info-screen (see comments above)
- (new) ability to dig into sub-parts of words on info screen. Since these parts/words aren't in the App off-line database, this would be an on-line only feature.
- (new) on info page for multi-character words, be able to click on character in top part of screen (where they are big) and not only the list lower down.
- (new) make click area of grading buttons a little larger. I often slightly miss the button slightly to the top and this advances to the next prompt, so I have to click back to fix the grade.

- Text File Import -
I would like to see the ability to import tab delimited text files (e.g., HanziPinyinEnglish. Seems that text file input support is standard on many other study platforms. I have many, many lists already organized and prepared. I would love to use them but certainly do not want to enter them by hand.

- Sticky Advanced Study Settings -
I also want this. It would eliminate the to enter back into the lists and select the one you want. The one you already checked will remain as the active until you go in and change it again. In general, my desire is to get back into a study session ASAP, even if that is just to study one specific list where I had to exit out of the study session early due to my battery or some other reason.

@Radiator, for text file import, I wouldn't think that should be an iOS feature, but you probably mean a website feature. I'd repost that request elsewhere so it doesn't get lost in the list of iOS requests...

That said, you can just copy the contents of your tab-separated file into the Add Word page of a list. It will take all of the Hanzi words, but it will ignore your pinyin & definitions in place of the values in the Skritter database.
You can always go back and modify the definitions you don't like, but you can't change the pinyin...

Has anybody thought about including a rough "Time to completing reps" number somewhere on the study screen?

If you just multiple the average time per item for a user by the number of items to review, it should be quite simple to implement?

We would have to figure out the mixture of writing, reading, definition, and tone items, and how many characters in each word, and the average user-specific item study rate for each type of prompt for each user on each platform--and even then, the time would still be in Skritter time and not wall clock time.

I think it's on our would-like-to-have feature list, but it's far down there. We'd probably only do it on the web, too: we'd prefer to keep the iOS interface cleaner.

Lot of other feature requests in this thread. Let me see:

Will do:
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Adding words to Skritter via Pleco

Might do
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Tapping big backsides characters for decompositions
Upgraded picture system
Native interface for word adding
Adding characters from backsides
Banning by parts

Will not do
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Digging further into components while online

Superb. I assume the last one is on the assumption that we can see the breakdown in Pleco?
If yes, how do I see the breakdown in Pleco, because I haven't figured it out. I can click on 字, and it'll give me the radical, but not the same type of breakdown I see on Skritter. Is there a database I'm missing?

Second, on the iPad, for the character/word detail screen it should resize so scrolling isn't necessary.

Not doing the deeper component drill-down because it's complicated to add another method to pull that info down which relies on being online, and because those kinds of requests are slow enough for it not to be very fun. I haven't checked out how to view decompositions in Pleco myself.

Can't easily resize the character/word detail screen.

Sorry it took me four days to notice this.

Anyway, character decompositions in Pleco are something we don't draw a lot of attention to because we're not entirely happy with the data we use for them yet - we've improved it a good bit for our next update (no more cases of the same component appearing under two different character codes which don't share their search results / definitions / etc), but to really get it to a point we're satisfied with I think we're going to need to generate or license a new data set specifically designed for character decompositions.

Right now we actually get character decompositions from the data for our Stroke Order add-on, which happens to break down characters quite well (in part to make itself more efficient) but wasn't designed specifically for that purpose. If you've downloaded that add-on, there'll be a "Chars" tab in the 字 screen along with "Details" and "Words."

Ah so. Then I'd think the next best think would be able to "View this character/word on the web" button that would direct us (via Safari) to a Skritter web-page where we can dig down into the decompositions.

But I think that would require some changes on the web-site... However, it'd be a great resource for all!

Maybe I am missing something (i.e., you can already do this) - but I would like to be able to fully flip the iOS app upside down - no need for landscape, but to flip the phone on it's head (I do not believe this is currently possible). In this way I can run a Skritter and have the power cable accessed out the top. This would give full flexibility to how the device is oriented relative to where the device is being used in relation to from where the power line is required to be accessed.

The iPhone version can't do this, but the iPad version can. Might be something we can hook up easily for iPhone as well; I'll take a look.

nick, I was surprised to hear that the iPad version will flip 180 degrees and so I tried it. The only time I could get anything to flip was somewhat hilarious: From the app's home screen, the background image will flip, but the main menu items (study, advanced study, etc) do not flip.

Really? Are you on 2.0.1? What iOS and iPad versions? I am seeing it working okay on my devices. Are others seeing this? I'll fix it if I can track it down.

Yes, I'm on Skritter 2.0.1. My first gen iPad is running iOS 5.1.1. I had my Lock Rotation switch on for a while and only switched it off to test this.

Ah; I think this makes sense, then. I've changed the device rotation code now, so I think it will work better from the home and study screens in 2.1.0.

Just thought of a great (and simple) feature.

Can you add a button on the word info screen to copy the word or character to the iOS clipboard? Then it's easy to take over to another program for further research...

Thanks!

Actually, it automatically copies the word to the clipboard every time you even view the details screen, so you can just go to that screen and then go to some other app to paste it in.

Huh. Hidden feature. Great and thanks! I like this fast service. :)