I wouldn’t mind using google translate, it is just that it doesn’t open up automatically. I have to click it every time.
James, I also review them while doing a lesson, when they are fresh. I think this is a good practice.
You can go into dictionary settings to make it pop up automatically.
I think I actually got the idea from one of your videos, Steve.
Yes, as James said, if you set google translate as your default dictionary it should just pop up. And make sure you move the pop up to where you can see the definition and the LingQ widget at the same time.
Oh, how I hate it when you are right! (both of you). I have reset my dictionary settings. The google pop up is popping up nicely.
Thank you for that timely reminder, I am just working my way through one of Serge’s wonderful old books.
Hmm, Google translate. It opens a new window - which is annoying to begin with - that alone takes at least 5-6 seconds (sometimes up to 10), then looking up the word takes at least couple of more seconds. OK, just a few seconds here and there, but way slower than when we could just copy the info from the LingQ widget.
If - and that’s a big if - the import/export tool worked, I could just copy the whole “quick list”, let Google translate the whole thing, and then import it to my vocabulary list (with all the info I wanted - in the proper fields). In a matter of a minute or two for lessons with +100 words - there’s no way I can do that now.
Are you sure your internet isn’t slow? LingQ is incredibly fast for me.
ditto, your internet seems slow. My internet speed is pretty average (3mb/s download) but is much faster at LingQing than yours. Maybe you have firewall or antivirus issues. Also, for me, the word is already 'looked up" after the new window opens. The process takes 4-7 seconds total.
Jeff, you may not like pop ups but for me it is quite convenient, always popping up in the same place just to the right of the text. A quick drag and drop and I am done, whether in Quick LingQs or LingQing in the text. I would say that the Google translate definition pops up almost as quickly as the LingQ widget. For the first word I look up in a lesson I have to open the dictionary, after that the pop up comes up automatically when I click New Hint in the Blue Highlight. There is no additional “looking up a word”. The whole process is a matter of one or two seconds.
Yes Babylon is no longer reliable and yes we are looking at other solutions to make LingQing easier but in the meantime I am not at all bothered by the slowness of LingQing most of the time and cannot understand why it is so slow for you.
Jeff, this is not the first time you have complained about speed issues that others do not experience. Are you on a slow internet connection? Or, do you have some kind of firewall installed as dooo asks?
It doesn’t have much to do with the speed of the connection. It’s the number of hops a packet has to do between LingQ and the user’s computer. Lousy routing is responsible for the biggest perceivable slowdown. The actual amount of data to transfer is very small, even a dial-up connection should be okay for most uses. Most latencies are due to the packet going through too many relays, and there’s very little—if anything—the user can do on his end.
I do not understand most of astamoore’s comments, even when the subject is one that I am familiar with, so when the subject is “hops of packets” and “lousy routing” I am totally lost, but will pass this on to our programmers.
Perhaps Sweden is just one hop too far!
Opening Google translate for a LingQ with Internet Explorer took me 8 to 10 seconds.
Open Google translate for the same LingQ with Firefox took me 4 to 5 seconds. Even that is to slow for me.
There are huge differences of the speed related to the browser.
This is only one example. Horrible is the use of the library with IE too. It is unbelievable slow. In the last months LingQ it is not possible to work at an adequate speed with IE on LingQ. How many interested people quit LingQ before they know about it because they use IE?
I often help me that I open a second tab with a dictionary and let this tab open.
I recognized that LingQ close the dictionary window (that I open within the LingQ) when I open another LingQ and click on dictionary again. This behavior is annoying and time consuming.
I am in Firefox and everything is very fast, one or two seconds, most of the time although occasionally slower. What is the experience of others?
I know we have spent a lot of time trying to optimize the site for different browsers and I understand that a newcomer who uses IE can be discouraged, and so we will undoubtedly continue to try to improve performance in IE, but in the meantime it seems to me to make sense to use FF, or Chrome or some browser that works faster with LingQ.
I just checked the time needed to call an external dictionary (Google Translate) from within LingQ:
Google Chrome - 1-2 sec
Firefox 4 (RC) - 1-2 sec
IE 8 is a very slow browser, IE 9 is expected to be faster.
I use chrome and it’s really fast with LingQ.
Blame Microsoft for making the slowest and most buggy browser on earth.
Switch to Firefox or Chrome and you will be happy again!
VeraI wrote: "I recognized that LingQ close the dictionary window (that I open within the LingQ) when I open another LingQ and click on dictionary again. This behavior is annoying and time consuming. "
That annoys me, too, and is one of reasons that I use me own bookmarklet for opening external dictionaries from LingQ. The dictionary popup window will then be reused, and not closed/reopened. And it’s faster because the query goes directly to the dictionary and not via LingQ to the dictionary.