Not sure how hard/easy it would be, but it would be nice to have an offline mode for when we're not on the net but want to keep studying. Ideally it would let you download X number of items to the Flash UI and then when you're back on the net it would sync your progress with the server.

I was on a plane yesterday and spent a while using Anki because I didn't have Skritter; a lot of my Anki study could just as well be done in Skritter now, except for the fact that Skritter requires a working Internet connection.

I think an offline mode would probably be much more important when you have Skritter working on cell phones.

James

Yea, HTML5 allows you to store a database of information. Browsers supporting html5 could be used to store a list of upcoming things to study and then record the results for later syncing with the server.

Depending on how the API is designed this would either be really trivial, or too complex to implement.

Oh and yes, I agree there rally should be an offline mode (:

I like that idea, too, as I would love to be using my flying time for something more productive than watching movies or doing Sudoku.

I have another reason, too: being able to do some offline Skrittering would cut down on distraction. I study a lot on my netbook, and it's good for me because the slow wireless connection(compared to 100Mbps at home) encourages me to focus on one task at a time. Being able to turn off the internet completely would be awesome.

Yes, I must say, that would be awesome. Finding a hotspot isn't always easy to find in the middle of China.

+1 ^^

This would solve my problem with the summer vacation. No internet access --> no skritter --> frustrating amount of forgotten words.

I can almost guarantee you that this will not happen as this will surely lead to "hacked versions" of the skritter flash application and therefore defies business rationale.

If someone wants to try to reverse engineer and hack together a Skritter client, she can be my guest. I might try to hire her.

We might work toward something like this alongside a possible mobile version, but probably not before. It's a complicated problem, and browser support is still not very good for those parts of HTML5. I know it would be cool, though!

Heh, thanks for the invitation I just might take you up on that.

Biggest problem with hacking something up are that there are so many "Code updates, please refresh" that I don't think any other hacked up version could keep up.

@ Nick: There is no need to reverse engineer the whole Skritter engine, for an offline version it would be enough to find out how you would distinguish registered versions from unregistered ones and manipulate that switch.

Nevertheless, if you'd release such client it would be awesome (and if it was only to save the battery of the laptop by disabling the wlan card ;) )

Well, any offline version we made would only allow you to review--you wouldn't be able to add new words without fetching them while connected anyway. Since adding is the only thing that you need an active subscription for, it wouldn't help much.

But I like your thinking!

I love the idea of an offline mode too. It's not a problem not to add new words while offline, we just want to be able to tackle our huge review pile when we can't connect. This would be a huge help to me if I do move to Xinjiang this summer.

@nick - I thought the Flash client already downloaded the next several items in advance, and had some kind of logic to deal with network failures. I was imagining that an offline mode would mean you would download ALL due items (which might require the user to increase the Flash player's local storage quota) and that you would expect the network to not work at all. But maybe things are much more complicated than I'm imagining...

It has exponential backoff retries for several minutes to update reviews and other network requests, but that's not enough to be able to save state beyond closing the tab. So we'd need to be able to save all the Flash state somewhere, like Flash local storage. That doesn't look too hard, but would still need to be done.

And while in theory, it can wrap up all items that could become due, in practice there are several issues it doesn't handle well enough yet and relies on reloading the items for (spacing similar parts, updating items that have been fully loaded for review when other words containing those items have been studied, etc.).

Count me as one of those interested in an offline version. I have a tablet PC I carry with me everywhere and is perfect for Skrittering, but I can't use it during my off-time at work.

As I'm about to get on a plane for a 14 hour flight, I like this idea.

Hi,

I am late in this thread, but having something to practice offline could be great.

L