Developer Release Notes--September 6th, 2017

Hi, we’ve got some brand new Android beta and website updates for you guys (version 2.3.4). We’re working on a couple larger features that are almost ready to release, but we decided to not include them now in order to give you an update sooner. So you will see some smaller bugfixes and improvements now, and once the newer features are more polished and tested we will release them, which will be a more pleasant and happy experience for everyone involved. Good things are just around the corner!

Here are some of the highlights in this release:

  • Added ability to enjoy background music while studying in Android beta!
  • Add automatic detection/fixing of stale account data. No more stuck on “fetching next”!
  • Improve account reset data retransfer stability
  • Improve list browsing on Android beta
  • Add some stats to the dashboard on Android beta
  • Add colors to reading and definition prompts on Android beta to help differentiate prompts
  • Fix display of vacation mode dates
  • Misc UI improvements, especially for Android beta

In the next and near-future releases, expect to see some larger features such as:

  • new and improved item auto-adding for both web and Android beta
  • offline study mode for Android beta
  • new and improved goal mode for both web and Android beta
  • new ios beta

Let us know what you think!

2 Likes

Thanks for the update — look forward to the next release. Although it looks like auto-adding will still be disabled for 2.3.4.

Do you have any plans for controlling the pace amd/or giving an idea of progress though lists/levels? I really appreciate that aspect of memrise and on wanikani, which break up the sessions into more manageable levels and chunks of time, and you get a feeling for “where you are”.

In contrast, once they start to get longer Skritter sessions feel like they continue relentlessly without a pause, until I get a headache or something and stop the session myself. Maybe even just something that lets you know you just moved onto adding from the next section of a list might be useful.

1 Like

@mungbean, right, auto-adding is still disabled in 2.3.4. I’m working on some heuristics right now to make it better than ever. Some examples are that you’ll see new stuff when you’re super low on your review queue so you don’t overstudy stuff you already know, or you’ll see new stuff after you’ve studied for a while if you have a higher add rate even if you still have a large queue. Additionally auto-adding has a daily cap so that unless you want a larger-than-normal influx of new vocab (which you can freely add manually no problem), it’ll overload you less often.

As a way to study, constantly thinking about the number of items due and studying monotonously for hours to get it down is a demotivating approach. We all on the team feel like the app encourages this kind of thinking too much and want to shift our focus in study sessions more towards time-based goals and perhaps making a certain chunk of progress (e.g. learn n new characters/day, complete 1 section/day). As a starting point, we’re adding a revamped goal mode to all the 2.0 clients soon, which will offer some timeboxing and an alternative approach to how you study in a Skritter session.

In less abstract/philosophical realms, yeah we like the old progression indicator bar when you advanced a word too. We’ll bring some variation of that back and plan to indicate and make note of section/list completion a little more.

2 Likes

Thanks @SkritterMichael for your thoughful response!

Sounds great. Looking forward to it.

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