Hi All,
A new beta version just pushed with the following updates:
New login screen
Setting to always show status in the popup
Setting to auto-increment status after activities
Submit new meanings by hitting enter on the dictionary screen
Show language flag if user has more than one dictionary language
Enable LingQing of phrases containing numbers
Known words show in language chooser
Bugfixes
As usual, let us know any issues or thoughts.
Bug: App crashes for me when I delete a language. Tried two times. It deletes the language so that part works. Also submitted crash report.
Existing Bug:
Edit: even when it is low on the page, if the definition is long enough, it will have this behavior.
In langage like mandarin, be able to identify proper name in the text would be great IMO .
Hello
I have found another bug that I thought you would want to know about. For words with a lot of community definitions, the notes pane gets pushed down a very long way which makes it quite difficult to use. As well as being pretty annoying in itself, this also means that the pane is actually hidden by the software keyboard on the iPad as shown on this screen capture: - YouTube
Thanks for fixing the bugs I reported earlier. The only one that I can still replicate is the progress bar not updating, which still happens to me regularly.
We do want to show all meanings in the expanded popup even when there are lots. The notes field can be accessed after you choose a meaning and all the other meanings get hidden. We could add a setting that keeps the popup open after choosing a meaning for those users who use Notes or want to see Related Phrases right away. But, that would be a future enhancement.
Hi Mark. I can see what you’re trying to do, but you need to fix the problem of being unable to see the box you’re trying to type in because the keyboard appears over the top of it. Putting the notes box above the definitions might be the simplest way of doing that.
Looks like we have to do something there. We’ll take a look thanks!
Hi,
I’m new to beta version, so, here are my initial thoughts after checking it out.
Thanks!
I’ve been testing the iOS version of the app for about a week and here is some feedback. There are definetly things to improve on, but compared to the previous version, this is a very big improvement. So good work! :). I have written below some feedback that i’ve collected so far, i hope it is useful. Moreover, i’d suggest having a private page to join everyone’s feedback together in a structured manner, so it is easier to keep track of.
Playlist view with the scrolling text and the floating playlist box is great
The course info and lesson info pages are fantastic.
Underline mode makes the reader look less like a rainbow when there’s a lot of lingqs and new words.
Sentence selection is much easier and more intuitive.
New library page is much cleaner
Overall design of the UI is a clear improvement, looks more modern and feels smoother.
The known words progress bar on the light theme has too little contrast that makes it very hard to see the progress
The total words number and the number of known words for a course don’t seem to add up. One course has 1762 total words, but 5896 known words. (Total seems to be new + lingq counts)
The dark theme has too much contrast, i’m not able to read properly at night without getting a white lines effect in my vision. I’d suggest both reducing the whiteness of the text to something lighter, and the background to be less dark. (Look into a comfortable combination between the text and the background in the reader view)
There is a delay between clicking a word and the TTS, unlike the original app, it seems to be almost 1s delay. Additionally, clicking another word while the previous is playing TTS, does not stop TTS to play the new word, and doesn’t play it at all.
It seems quite a few buttons with text have the onClick listener on the text, instead of the box that acts as the button. Ex: the status buttons in the floating window (when clicking a word in reader view). This makes it hard to click the buttons properly and confuses me a bit.
Changing line spacing in the settings glitches the labels of these options a bit in the settings window.
The underlines option for lingqs and new words could be a bit thicker, even in light theme it seems a bit hard to see.
I would love a sepia theme (just for the reader view), i find it easier and more comfortable on the eyes than either a white or a proper dark theme. White is too striking at night.
Text justification between words (or option to) for the reader view, would make it look better and more comfortable to read.
Option to further decrease beyond .5x the line spacing, + option to configure paragraph spacing. At .5x line spacing it seems theres still a bit too much space between lines for it to look like a book page, and the spacing between paragraphs seems to be almost equal to this line spacing, which makes it confusing to see what is a paragraph and what is a line.
Also as a curiosity from another web developer, and if you allow me to ask, is there a reasoning behind developing three separate apps across diferent platforms, over a cross-platform solution? It seems like a lot more work than it is worth. Don’t take this the wrong way, it is just a curiosity and i know there are valid reasons for this too 
Thanks for the detailed feedback! Glad you are enjoying the new app.
I don’t really understand what you mean by known words progress bar. The green progress bar seems clear in all themes. We definitely have to make sure all stats are correct, up to date and synced. Where are you seeing the Total Words number out of sync?
As for the colours, this will be something we work on over time. I will pass on your comments. Noted the issues with TTS which will have to be optimized too. There may be an initial delay as the TTS is fetched since it comes from the server but subsequent plays should be fast. Is this not the case?
As for the underline, it is meant to be subtle. We do plan to continue experimenting with these styles over time. Thanks for the feedback.
Sepia is definitely a possible future improvement along with text justification and other page customizations. We plan to offer more customization of the reader over time.
As for why we would develop 3 separate platforms, we just find the experience on the native mobile platforms to be much better than a mobile web platform would be. The theory of one platform is nice and would simply our lives immensely but the reality is that what we are doing in the reader is quite complicated and not easy to do well on mobile web.
We are always open but I’m not aware of a cross-platform app that works equally well on all platforms.
I have had a few crashes in the past couple days. If we are sending them through Test Flight, are you capturing them? Or should we be doing something else?
We do get the TestFlight crashes, yes. But if you have a repeatable crash feel free to mention it here also.
Hello thanks for the reply and also apologies for my late reply, things are pretty hectic in my life atm.
By the known words progress bar, i mean the one in the course details view on the right:
The bar is white, on very light grey. And regarding the numbers, maybe i don’t know exactly how the calculations are done, but here it says 27k known and 20k total. Total seems to exactly be the # new words + # lingqs, and not the real total.
The TTS does seem to have a delay only on the first play, but it is minor thing.
Regarding the underline thing, maybe i’l get used to it, it’s subjective and may work differently for others.
Anyways, keep up the great work, the app is looking great
Thanks, I see that now on the iPad interface. Yes, somethings obviously wrong there!
Please check out the just released web beta. Details here Login - LingQ
I’ve noticed a bug where audio cannot be resumed from the phone’s lock screen. Here’s what I mean:
I start my playlist. Over time the phone’s screen goes off and the phone locks. Audio continues to play as normal.
I need to pause the audio for some reason.
I want to restart the audio and instead of unlocking the phone I simply use the control that lets you hit play again on the last audio. When I hit play nothing happens.
I have to unlock the phone and open up the lingq app to play audio again.
I can confirm that the audio controls work in the web β (even from iPad) and from iOS v4.0, but not from the last iOS β
Which audio controls are you referring to? What isn’t working on v5 iOS?