I have no idea how easy it would be to implement but it would be a great help for lots of people.
Many characters how certain halfway logical ways they are put together. A lot of it has to do with the radicals and other parts determine the pronunciation. I know that it is like that from my wife but because I haven't really had any formal Chinese classes I don't really know them and it probably would make my life a lot easier if I did :)

Obviously I could (and I am for a matter of fact) go through the radicals and will then see them being part of other characters I am studying but that's only of the story and it's not quite the same as if one sees the make-up of each character as one learns it. I don't know whether it would be a good idea to just have an additional window next the writing one where one gets that sort of background information or whether it is even something one would like to test (as in first write it, then the tone, then the part which is the deciding radical for the meaning/pronunciation...). I also don't know whether you would want to use the users to put together the information on the various characters (the character radicals are probably easier to do automatically...but the other stuff like the meaning within the characters or the the pronunciation...)

As I said...just an idea and I have no idea how easy it would be to implement. It would make my life a lot easier, though.

I know not why I missed this post for so long, oh.

You're very right -- this is one of our most salivated-after features. It will take a long time to implement, because we are going to have to go through and mark each radical and component in each character (although there are some resources we can draw on to help with this). But once we do...

You'll be able to write each radical before it snaps into place (avoiding the extra "hints" that this currently gives). Each character will show you what components it's made of, which ones carry the meaning and which one carries the phonetics. Recognition can have more context to go on and will be more accurate. You'll learn all sorts of radicals and components and compositions during normal practice, oh yes!

This feature yet swims, embryonic, in dreamy saliva. It will take some time. And then--it will rock.

In the meantime, one could use the Firefox add-on perapera-kun to break most hanzi up into their constituent parts -- it's actually a mouseover Japanese dictionary but it can take on most Chinese characters thanks to the substantial character overlap. (It tells the rough meaning, components, readings in pinyin etc. but no back story to the character).

(There is also a Chinese pera-kun but it doesn't have that extra dictionary as yet.)