I agree, this is also something that bothers me in this new design. Not only having to click more, but the whole visual hierarchy and behavior is weird. I mean, “Saved Meaning”, “Dictionaries” and “Popular Meanings” all seem to be headers of sections with equivalent hierarchy. But why then you would need to click a drop-down button on “Saved Meaning” for these other sections to show up? It makes no sense and it’s confusing.
Anyway, I’m not sure that could be fixed only with CSS (which is what is used in userstyles). Maybe a userscript could do it, using JavaScript, but I’m not actually a coder, I just mess around stuff and have some notions of CSS.
Maybe someone who knows JavaScript is interested in pulling it off? Apparently there are many people interested.
I’m happy that you liked it! I really appreciate all the work you guys have made in the new version. I think it looks great, and I acknowledge it as an overall improvement in relation to v4. It’s just that there are still some things that could be adjusted, but I guess that’s how it goes when something new is released, and they get fixed along the way
The same for me. It’s very annoying to scroll all words in the multiple choice. Before I could see 4 options od words. It took 3 times less time than now.
Also, I can’t fimd the option ‘the classic view’ to open the whole text on the same page, not 2-4 sentences for every page. It could make sence only for starting of learning when you have a lot of new words.
But my great disaster - I can’t import my lessons and podcasts. I tried to import two podcasts, but it doesn’t work because I don’t see any logic as I saw before in the version 4.0
Yes, the site is now more visual. It can be nice for young people who love Tick Tock etc. But how EASY was the site 10 years ago when I started to use Lingq and how difficult it is now!!!
This is how, in my opinion, LingQ should have designed the new reading screen.
It can be installed by creating a userstyle with a browser extension such as Stylus, pasting the code available on the link below, and setting the style to apply to lingq.com.
The code:
User ColinJohnstonov also made an userstyle for another purpose and explains in his topic how to install it:
This is how, in my opinion, LingQ should have designed the new reading screen.
It can be installed by creating a userstyle with a browser extension such as Stylus, pasting the code available on the link below, and setting the style to apply to lingq.com.
The code:
User ColinJohnstonov also made an userstyle for another purpose and explains in his topic how to install it:
i put your message everywhere where people complained about the sidebar being too little. I said in the beginning it is from you but some people think it was me that did the “tweaking”. They are liking it:
“OMG! That’s exactly how I imagined the sidebar should look! You’re brilliant! =)”
Please make sure to reduce the number of clicks necessary.
I like it that you can now see the automatic tags even when you haven’t added a word yet, but could they also be displayed in the vocab review mode? Currently, I add the tenses in brackets, if necessary, but it looks cleaner when you just have tags and it saves a lot of typing. Thanks!
Not just other entries, but other dictionaries, too. Sometimes, I need to check several of them to find a good translation, so that, too, increases the number of clicks.
I agree. I’m thinking it would be great to simply have the dictionaries near the top and always shown, like when you first click a blue word. For yellow words to get to view the dictionary list is too many clicks.
I’m guessing the thought was that once a word is yellow there’s no need to go to the dictionary, but when words can have many different meanings this just simply isn’t the case and having the dictionaries there at the ready is necessary imo.
Actually I think just having the format of the “blue word popup” probably would work great for both blue and yellow words and solve most of the extra clicks problem (at least for me).
****Note…I wish people would create a new thread when they have an issue unrelated to the OP’s original subject. First of all, it kind of hijacks the OP’s issue. Second, it’s probably harder for the LingQ team to see your “new” issue if it’s buried in a thread that has nothing to do with your own issue.
Well, a userstyle is just CSS, so it only tweaks visual parameters, like margins, padding, heights, widths, etc. CSS doesn’t really change the underlying “structure” of a webpage, because CSS can’t do that. HTML and JavaScript do it. That’s why, as far as I know, there’s no way a userstyle could automatically expand that button that shows dictionaries and popular meanings, but a userscript could. Since I don’t know JavaScript, I can’t create a userscript.
LingQ 5.0 apparently uses CSS grids, which is a feature I didn’t know about (as I said, I’m no professional, I just mess around stuff), so I had to research how that works. The top and bottom rows of the reader (the one with the progress bar and the one with thre three buttons) span a grid with 5 equally sized columns. If I added a new column to the right with the same width as that of the sidebar, these elements would span only the left part of the screen, making way for the sidebar to get higher. Then I changed the size of the sidebar by tweaking its height, and moved it up using a negative top margin. I also had to increase its z-index (to bring it to front) so it would become clickable in the parts where it “invades” the top and bottom bar areas.
These are all workarounds that had to be done because the structure of the website is already made; as I said, I can’t change that with CSS. If that was the desired result originally by the LingQ team, their code could be simpler and wouldn’t need workarounds such as empty columns, negative margins and changing z-index.
By the way, I also changed some other visual properties of these elements. I slightly reduced the height of the top and bottom bars, and I increased the height of the text area.
I also think that some work could be done inside the vocabulary sidebar. The internal content could get a little more compact, which would help fitting more information in the available space. Maybe I will update the userstyle with more tweaks in the future.
I agree how the translations/dictionary function has become problematic and annoying, but we might as well not talk about going back to the previous version. It´s not gonna happen and this version can and will be improved.
I feel the same. If we keep asking for them to go back. It is the only way they will go back. They should be listening to the paying customers who have loved and used this site.
