Some ideas after 6 months of use

[contactnathan]

Dear Ernie and all, for what it is worth here is a top list of development ideas I have compiled over the months of using this excellent app:

1) An easy way to convert a card into a series of "fill the gap" style cards. Eg: a phone number to remember is generally too long for a single card so it is better to cut it up into several cards as follows:

579336 XXXX
57 XXXX 8842
XXXX 368842
5793368842

The above technique also applies to long spellings etc. If we could have a convert to fill the gap button this would be great and make this process much easier.

2) Easier ways to change settings such as 'swapping sides' per question phase and adding the scribble pad to a particular card. These settings are buried deep and I often forget where they are and how to do this.

3) An easy way to back up flash cards with pictures and sounds attached. Can we have an option to add media too in the email backup please. A one button backup solution to dropbox which includes all media would be great too.

4) A calendar view that shows how many cards are due for review in the future.

5) A smart app badge that displays the number of flashcards due for review.

6) An optional alarm to alert users that a card needs reviewing.

7) Less than the one hour min review interval. I would like to see an option to have a review after 10mins etc. This would seriously help in learning difficult cards.

8) A better ability to zoom in and out of an image to any scale when selecting an image for a card. At the moment the scale keeps bouncing back to match the width of the image being added; which is annoying.

[Ernie]

Hi Nathan. Thanks again for the feedback. Below are comments:

1) Fill the gap. I'm not sure how this would work, and am guessing it's too specific of a feature for the app, but I'll keep this mind for the future.

2) I think the settings you mentioned are just two taps away to get to from study screen ("i" then "show side first" or "drawing"). I have a lot of options which means I can't make every option the first one you see. While I think the options are fairly well organized at the moment, some people are a little overwhelmed so I'm going to try to improve on this.

3) In the next couple updates I'll be working on better backuping / restoring options. This may include zipping up media for email exports. My first goal will be to get Google docs import/export working.

4) A calendar would be nice, but I think it's a small improvement for a lot of work. (Apple doesn't provide a built it one.) I'll revisit this idea much later when I'm ready to tackle this.

5) I currently don't have an app badge because in order for it to be meaningful, it needs to get updated in the background. I think I can do this with OS 4 "multitasking", but I haven't looked into this yet. I will. The next version will show due counts on the main deck listing screen which should make it a lot easier to see what's due.

6) Alarm. Noted.

7) If you need less than one hour, my advice is to change the card back to "New" so you can practice it at will. I keep cards in my "new deck" until I think I know it well enough to remember after several hours.

8) I don't know what you mean. Are you talking about when you add a photo/picture to a card and you choose the "Edit Picture" option? If so, this editing feature is built in to Apple and cannot be changed. (Or maybe you are talking about zooming a picture when studying?)

[norbert]

Hi Ernie!

Concerning "Fill the gap": Well, actually this is not for this program, but it is on my big wishlist and I was thinking to write something like that myself: I am studying Japanese, and also Kanjis. I know some Kanjis, and some compounds where there are Kanjis I haven't actually studied. Now I would like to have a program that I can tell the Kanjis I have learned, and it asks me words (one side of a flashcard, translation) together with the answer (other side, Kanjis) where on the spots where there are Kanjis I know an empty space is written, and the Kanjis I don't know are actually shown.

Well, I guess I have to dream or write my own iphone program Guess if I find time I will try to find some simple examples on how to program iOS apps and write something like that.

All the best

Norbert

[Ernie]

Hey Norbert. This feature sounds pretty advanced. I'm not getting too enthusiastic about it probably because 1) I don't see many people wanting this (or if they did, each person would want a slightly different variation of the logic), 2) it sounds complicated to program and 3) probably more importantly, I don't understand the idea well enough. Well, if you need help with iPhone programming, let me know!

[norbert]

Hi Ernie,

yeah, sure enough I didn't want to *ask* for that feature, it was more a plan I hopefully can follow in the future.

BTW, today the new version of FCD came over the app store, yeah!!! I moved the beta .sql file over to the real app and all worked fine. Thanks a lot. As usual, for beta testing contact me.

Concerning iphone programming ... I have done some C, loads of perl and tcl/tk and some other prog languages, but never for iOS. If I can squeeze time out between real life work (math research), Japanese learning, and TeX Live development, I might write something up, I'll contact you then, thanks.

Norbert