I’m a desktop user and have been using the site for a month or so. The site is great but there are a few small issues I run into:
For whatever reason my clicks sometimes register as click+drags. I believe this is a problem on my end. However, when I click a word and this happens [i.e. click gets interpreted as click-drag], LingQ behaves as though it’s going to allow me to create a one-word phrase when it really won’t. If I’ve already LingQd the word, I get confused about what I’m seeing. If I haven’t LingQd the word, I can’t LingQ it via a click+drag, even though hints are presented as though I will be allowed to. So I suggest that LingQ just treat these single-word clicks as the same thing.
[edited #1 for clarity]
When I click a new word for which LingQ can’t offer any hint at all (“No hints available, try dictionaries below”), I think there should be a blank there to let me start typing. I often have an idea of how it should be glossed and why there are no suggestions for it. Instead I click to bring up Google Translate in a pop-up, which I already know has no suggestion because LingQ would have used it.
When I click the big green check mark to complete a lesson, I think LingQ should forget my last-read position in the text. (For some purposes maybe it already does?) Because when I go through a course again later, and navigate to go to next lesson, it brings me to the end of the next lesson, which is jarring/unexpected.
I also agree that the third point is very annoying. When you have finished a lesson, it should start at the beginning next time you open it. Now, if you relisten to your last lessons, you have to reposition it to the first chunck all the time. I also would prefer that the “Great you finished this lesson”, does not show up anymore once you have finished this lesson. Very annoying if you listen to short lessons, and want to quickly repeat what you have been doing already.
Agreed. As much as I’m a sycophant of lingQ … I especially would love to have a blank to type into straight away as GT often has no hint or rubbish hints for material I import (and I have reliable translations)
I don’t understand the issue here. Clicking selects the word. If it’s not highlighted it makes it a blue word again with your available options showing again. Yes, you can create a LingQ for the word that is selected this way.
The best thing to do here is to use the keyboard shortcut “h” to open the yellow widget with the cursor in the hint field. There are other interesting keyboard shortcuts if you look at the expanded list.
That’s an interesting suggestion. We’ll review it. But, in general we like to preserve your location in the text. If you do want to go to the beginning, make sure to click on the first chunk in the progress bar to get there quickly.
Hi mark, the issue with #1 is the behavior of click+drag to highlight a single word. Since there’s no such thing as a one-word phrase, the site should behave the same way as just clicking the word (without dragging). Even getting an error message might be better than the way it works now, which is confusing and seems like a bug (i.e. it invites the user to select a hint, but without saving what is chosen).
Just to be clear, I’m not deliberately trying to click+drag; my clicks are just sometimes interpreted that way. Enough for me to rank this as my #1 even though other posters are preferring #2 and #3.
Thanks for your suggestion on #2, that will work for me.
Regarding #3 I would liken it to a physical bookmark: When you finish a book you take the bookmark out; you would not plan to return to this book at the last page. If you want to communicate to the user that they have finished the lesson at some point in the past, I think that should be shown in a different way, because one’s last-read position in the text is not a fool-proof indicator of this.
At least on the iPad, when in the mobile app, the hint field opens up at the same time as whatever dictionary you choose so you don’t have to wait for the dictionary to load. There is no good way of avoiding the dictionary on the iPad I’m afraid.
@Miznia - When you start selecting on a word it automatically also selects the space to the right of the word. It has to work this way since it is set up to select phrases. Without adding additional logic to what is already actually a complex function, we can’t do what you are asking assuming it’s possible. We are unlikely to do this unless a lot of people are requesting it. I must say that this has never happened to me when I am trying to click on a word and we have never heard this from anyone else. Maybe it’s a mouse problem? Do you find yourself selecting text instead of clicking on it in other applications?
Actually I did a couple of tests and found what’s happening is a little more complicated than I thought.
If you click+drag to highlight a single word and set a definition for it, it DOES save it, but you won’t be able to see that it is LingQed until you leave the lesson and come back.
if you use “paging moves to known” and page past the word (which still looks blue) and then page back, it will appear that this word got moved to known. But if you leave the lesson and come back, you will see it yellow and LingQed.
So it is already implemented that LingQs defined for a “phrase” can get applied to single words, and those hints/definitions are not simply being lost… So that’s good, but still kind of odd of course to not see it immediately…
What I had in mind at least was that there could be a an extra field saying sth like ‘create a new definition’. I use my own Chinese dictionaries in split view and copy all the time from there to create new definitions.
Also, there is one thing that is not a problem on desktop but a bit of a headache in the app. For example, the dictionary app (pleco) will have 1. … 2… 3. …4. … definitions of a word. But if i copy the whole text with the numbers, and try to paste it in lingq, it doesn’t work, i need to copy individual subdefinitions and write the numbers one after another manually. It really takes a lot of time to do it. Sometimes even just copying the text will not work, I need to change the selection eg one less letter at the end, copy, and only then successfully paste in the definition in lingq. In the desktop version I can copy paste anything. I don’t know where the problem really is though.
I’m not sure there’s much we can do for you there. We don’t want to add extra controls to the interface. It is already busy enough. We can’t add special controls for all users…! As far as the copy pasting goes, we have no way of controlling for all possible dictionary apps and how pasted text from them is going to appear. I’m afraid there is not much we can do there. Do the native dictionaries not work for you?
… I especially would love to have a blank to type into straight away as GT often has no hint or rubbish hints for material I import (and I have reliable translations)
As far as the copy pasting goes, we have no way of controlling for all possible dictionary apps and how pasted text from them is going to appear. I’m afraid there is not much we can do there. Do the native dictionaries not work for you?