I use the site a lot and for the life of me I still cannot figure this out. I would use the site even more but it is so frustrating to use that I often skip the lingq site completely and copy the text to a word document. What I am trying to do seems to be the most simple thing in the world and yet I can’t do it.
How do I do this (which I would have guessed as being the main function of the site):
1) Listen to a dialog
2) read along with the text
3) Occasionally roll over a word to see what it means
That’s it.
Currently, any time I roll over a word the scroll arrows no longer work. So, this pretty much means that the function of looking up words is worthless unless I want to completely freeze the screen.
The only 2 options that I currently see available aren’t usable:
Use the right arrow key. There is zero way to smoothly scroll with this and often the next word that is marked is several pages of text down. So, zero way to smoothly scroll and follow text.
Use the laptop track pad. Also not possible. I am listening to native podcasts spoken at high speeds. There is no way to roll over a word and then try to move the cursor back to the right scroll bar.
There is the additional problem that the blue popup box is not workable unless the line with the blue word is at the top of the screen. Please see screenshots:
Am I missing some way or function so that I can simply listen to a dialog, follow along to the text, and occasionally look up a word??
I hate to complain because I am quite aware that I owe a big part of my ability to speak Russian to lingq. However, using the site has gotten terribly difficult for me.
One thing that might help is to click on the blue arrow to the side of the text at the top so that the dictionary shows to the side of the text instead of as a pop-up.
What I do and it may also help you is to go through all of the blue and yellow words first and only then listen to the audio while reading along.
Keep the cursor on the scroll bar and bring it down as you read. You don’t have to look to do this, just position it at the beginning, and keep going. You can still use the arrow keys to move between saved words.
I am not sure I understand what you are trying to do. You want to listen to the audio while reading at the same time and scrolling between the unknown words as you listen using the arrow keys in a natural way without having to continually grab at the mouse or see the screen suddenly jump several paragraphs into the future?
Hmm, I can’t think of a great way to do this, but I think Elric’s suggestion of quickly scrolling through and making all the yellow words before reading the lesson is a good one. It might help, though it is still not perfect.
Basically, I just want to read along with Eko Moskvi podcasts and occasionally look up a word as I do so. My Russian is not quite good enough yet to listen to Native Podcasts with a high enough degree of comprehension without the accompanying texts. So, I listen and read along with the texts a few times first.
The up and down arrow keys work great for this as I can easily scroll the text as I listen. However, the second I use the mouse to roll over a blue word the up/down arrow keys stop working.
Strangely, this behavior does not occur with yellow words. To your suggestion, is there a simple way to mark all the unknown blues to yellow at one time? The podcasts are usually 50 minutes long and there can be 100s of words still blue.
When you are on a blue work the up and down keys are used to select which hint you want to save, otherwise one would not be able to save words using just the keyboard well.
I think making the yellow words first and then going through the lesson would solve your problem, but it is still time consuming. You can do it quickly by turning ‘QuickLingQ Mode’, which will mean that the screen will automatically follow your progress in the text and that when you make a blue word as yellow that you will automatically jump to the next blue word. It can still be quite time consuming though if you are saving lots of words in a long text.
If you are not worried about the hints being particularly accurate, and just want hints that are accurate in some cases, you can just put a little weight or something on the return button and let the yellow words be made automatically. This would be a good time to go and do the dishes, and when you come back, your lesson will be prepared. You will get a lot of nonsense from Google Translate this way, but it will work.
I have read this post carefully and have tried to duplicate the problems. One major difference I see might be one of screen size. I don’t have the problem which you show in the screen shots. I am using Chrome Browser on a Windows 8 platform on a fairly large size tablet. As for workflow, I had to think about how I do actually work, since my workflow does not involve using those arrows at all. (You are totally right, if you do use the arrows for scrolling, they stop working when you click on a blue word!) I have started a new thread about workflow, and there have described my process. I doubt my description will help you to solve your problem, but the thread is there anyway, and perhaps people will share their thoughts about workflows and maybe we can all pick up some ideas which might help. What's Your Workflow? - Language Forum @ LingQ
oooooooooohhh…I see what it is doing now. If goes to blue popup and arrows switch to selecting a definition. This makes perfect sense. Then, without a selection or other action the arrows stay in this mode.
It would seem these is a quick technical fix to this - {on mouse defocus of blue word return arrows to normal scrolling state}
Anyway, I will try some workarounds. Thanks for the help.
Exactly. Colin stated it well. I I found that if I clicked on a blue word, the arrows stop working for scrolling. But if I then click on a yellow word, those arrows work once again for scrolling.