What's up with the abomination of the new UI statistic?

[ericb100]

@D.lfzM
I like that. I would also be curious as to how some design choices are made. It might be good to get some user input. HOWEVER, there are so many diverse opinions on these things that someone is going to be annoyed no matter what they do…

@davideroccato and @SeoulMate don’t like the popup dictionaries. I disagree. I think I much prefer them being popups than having a cramped, scrollable area embedded in the window (perhaps there are other ways it could be done, but I don’t think so).

So how do you choose? Some things you could make configurable and LingQ has done that, but there are probably some things where it really just may not make sense or will make any other change way more difficult in the future.

Some of the things people suggest I know I’d absolutely hate. I think in general the team is trying to do what they think is best overall. We can give some polite feedback, but some of the vitriol here is lame imo. I sometimes go through these posts and wonder if I’m even using the same software as I enjoy my experience with LingQ every day. I can understand the frustration of some folks that are having issues. The best thing they can do is what Mark stated. Provide the examples, identify the app (browser, android, iphone). What lesson, or a link to the lesson that was imported. What language? etc. etc. I’ve seen plenty of the bugs that I’ve seen fixed that no other person has reported.

Design choices are going to be subjective so that’s another topic altogether and as I said before, provide polite feedback and let them take it into consideration, but also consider that one’s own ideas may be the complete opposite of another’s ideas of what would make the software great. So a little understanding from everyone would be nice.

[mark]

I’m sure that’s true. We will try to announce things better and try to test them more thoroughly before pushing.

[perplexing]

• I’m referring to the website
• No idea how to reproduce the next lesson issue, it seems to just happen intermittently
• there obviously is a way to separate multi-word lingqs, the same way words are separated, or at least round the corners
• There used to be a confirmation dialog when moving to the next page, but it doesn’t appear anymore
• by “lingq widget” I’m referring to the sidebar box that appears when selecting a word in the reader

[davideroccato]

@mark

We will try to announce things better and try to test them more thoroughly before pushing.

Both of these actions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking these steps!

[iam3]

I haven’t used LingQ for other languages that much as of late, but this happens frequently for me while using Norwegian:

The selected phrase should be underlined/highlighted like a ‘‘4/Learned’’ phrase, but instead nothing, just like the phrase immediately next to it which is actually set as Known. Also this happens when phrases are not adjacent to each other nor overlapping with other ones. And it’s kinda annoying cause I tend to got through the text with the arrow keys to jump between words/phrases, and often the flow gets kinda disrupted since I get further in the text only to check back a sentence or two etc. cause a phrase wasn’t highlighted (but as I’m going through with the arrowkeys, it still sets it as active (as it should) once I get to it).

Here’s how the current phrase looks like without being active (although again - it should have … under it):

[fabbol]

Here are two issues that AFAIK remain unfixed:

• One is a UI/UX issue: iOS: How many coins do I have?
  In short: neither the browser nor the app display how many “coins” I currently have. The only information I have is all the coins I ever earned, and how many coins I earned during a particular period of time - nowhere does it show me how many coins I have remaining after spending some on saving my streak. Thus I cannot know for sure whether I can save a streak or not, until I actually try it.

• And the other is a technical issue:Recurring bug is back: overcounting Words Read - #5 by fabbol
  In short: the browser overcounts words read by multiples, resulting in unusable statistics and way too many coins. As far as I can tell, the problem is a combination of two issues: 1) the browser counts a word as read as soon as it is displayed on the screen, and 2) the browser re-counts words on the screen at a certain, seemingly unpredictable interval. Together, these two mean that the very same word is counted as “read” multiple times if it is displayed for long enough - in my experience, at my reading speed, a double-column page is counted at least twice or three times before I manage to finish reading the page.

[sma_grodorna]

@mark

Canceling is not hard.

I don’t know how you can say this in good faith. Look at the hundreds if not thousands of people on this forum who could not manage to cancel on their own. There are posts on other platforms calling LingQ a “scam” because of this. How does all of this benefit the user experience? Why not just make the process simpler and more straightforward so that so much employee time isn’t wasted on this nonsense and you can focus on more important things? It baffles the mind how you guys willingly choose to operate so inefficiently!

[davideroccato]

@ericb100 not that I ever asked for this change, but while I was studying now, I encountered an example, so I made a screenshot, just to show what was mentioned before. Or at least, so I understood.
I bump on these situations multiple times every day. As I said, I write many definitions, and not at random.

You see the popup opening on the left, with two red boxes for the same word, sometimes there are lot more and you also need to scroll down. The first red box represent the same word as a noun, the other represent the same word as a verb.

In this particular case, I write all the 5 definitions for the noun, and I open a new field to write all the 3 definitions for the verb. If there is the same word as an adjective, I write it in a 3rd field.

Each time we click the field of the definition to start writing, the popup disappears. As I don’t have a super great memory, in this case, I have to go back and forward, bringing back the popup window multiple times, before I finish to do the job.

@mark Actually, at least in my case and thinking about it right now, it would be even great if there would be an option to leave it floating on top until I close it. That would work too. Maybe it’s possible and faster, and could be activated or deactivated like in other apps.

In any case, there is all the space in the world, possibly, to make the popup dictionary on the left side (left green box), like I have shown in the example. Considering that I was even in a small laptop.
Btw, opening the entire right side is also an option, so whoever wants the popups could just not use the sidebars. Or maybe there is the possibility to choose between both options if really necessary.

Now, my place as a customer, and not expert in developing or UI/UX designing, it is to share my concerns, frustrations, and suggest options. It’s the team that can tell me that they don’t know how to do it, don’t have ideas on how to do it better, or that’s not possible to do it, etc.

So far, I have written and shared 65.000 translations. Even if I haven’t asked anything about it, I can say that I can definitely understand the problematic.

[MartinGuehmann]

Each time we click the field of the definition to start writing, the popup disappears. As I don’t have a super great memory, in this case, I have to go back and forward, bringing back the popup window multiple times, before I finish to do the job.

For switching between two Windows, I usually use ALT-TAB, works on Windows and KDE/Linux. For Mac you need to install an add-on to get this functionality. Mac comes with something similar, but that only allows you to switch between programs. If I remember correctly, this is CMD-TAB.

But I agree, having it in the same window is nice. Actually Vivaldi has split tab feature, so you can have two tabs in the same window. Or you arrange the two browser windows so that they don’t overlap. But still, you would have to copy and paste from LingQ to the dictionary and then copy it back, unless of course you want to write yourself.

That is a bit less integrated but I have open three external dictionaries open anyway.

[davideroccato]

@MartinGuehmann

Mac comes with something similar, but that only allows you to switch between programs. If I remember correctly, this is CMD-TAB.

I can switch between programs or between tabs. It wouldn’t change anything, the moment I click on the field, the opened dictionary disappears below, and I would have to click a shortcut multiple times to make the window appearing again. I use the gestures to achieve that anyway, multiple times, because each time I keep writing in the definition’s field, the window disappears again.

What would be the add-on? Maybe something like that would switch from the two windows, if the program recognise the popup as a secondary active window, and would bring it to the front each time.

In any case, by switching back to the window with the definitions, it probably wouldn’t go right back in the field when I want to continue finishing the definition. As soon as you get out from the field, LingQ saves the definition, and you need to click back again inside the field to continue writing. Anyway, thanks for helping.

[jt23]

@mark

@SeoulMate What are the “countless bugs on the platform” that you are referring to?

Does the LingQ team actually use this app? It seems not.

[SeoulMate]

Agreed, and that’s definitely the main problem here.

[MartinGuehmann]

@davideroccato

What would be the add-on? Maybe something like that would switch from the two windows, if the program recognise the popup as a secondary active window, and would bring it to the front each time.

It is quite some time ago that I used a Mac. So I don’t remember what the add-on was. I just googled “Mac Alt Tab” and that gave me:

https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
https://zapier.com/blog/alt-tab-on-mac/

I don’t know whether I used this or something else, but I would expect that it allows you to switch between different windows, whether it is a pop up window or the main window. Basically, I expect it to work like on windows. It may use a different keyboard combo.

@davideroccato

In any case, by switching back to the window with the definitions, it probably wouldn’t go right back in the field when I want to continue finishing the definition. As soon as you get out from the field, LingQ saves the definition, and you need to click back again inside the field to continue writing. Anyway, thanks for helping.

That’s true and I find that very annoying, too. I don’t mind if the thing is saving, but the insertion mark should stay there. I also consider that something to fix.

At some time I also wrote some JavaScript and it turned out that Safari is a special browser. What’s working in other browsers does not work there, even so it’s standard. And that time I had no access to a Mac. So I installed a MacOS in a virtual machine just to debug the code on Safari. That isn’t really nice but I can imagine that the LingQ team has that problem, too. (Well, that’s a guess.)

At least, I don’t have many problems with Waterfox on Kubuntu. Except as mentioned before that sometimes after finishing a lesson that the next lesson isn’t shown, even so there is a next session. And that isn’t nicely reproducible.

[jf999]

I’ve been studying Japanese for about 3 1/2 years now, and have migrated to several different platforms over that time. I’ve yet to find one that’s perfect, but the annoyances are easy to ignore for a while. Over time, they accumulate into irritations, and the irritations accumulate into aggravations, and eventually, it becomes an obstacle to my progress.

I’m a little sad to admit that I’ve finally reached that point with LingQ. I really thought this was going to be my home for a long time. But I’ve had a hard time just logging in and studying here for a while now, due to all the aggravations, but I think this stat thing was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I broke my 600+ day streak a few weeks ago, but I’m happy to say I’ve found a few new venues where things are back down to the “annoyances” category.

I would recommend the same to anyone: whatever tool you’re using to get you to fluency is just that: a tool. And if you find the tool has become detrimental to your progress, don’t be afraid to move on to something else. In hindsight, you’ll be glad you did, and looking back, you’ll wonder why you lived with those problems for so long.

[davideroccato]

@MartinGuehmann

It is quite some time ago that I used a Mac. So I don’t remember what the add-on was. I just googled “Mac Alt Tab” and that gave me

Thank you for taking the time to find this equivalent add-on. I read about it and decided to download it. It is a nice tool and does what you said it would. It doesn’t completely solve the problem, but it might be faster than using the gestures, and it could definitely be useful in other situations. I appreciate it.

[mark]

Thanks for that. We will look into those issues.

[mark]

Thanks to those of you who responded with detailed feedback on the issues you have found. We will go through and see what we can fix. As long as the issues can be reproduced, we will fix them.
@davideroccato while that looks like it would be a good solution for your use case it looks like it would be quite challenging to implement and make things cluttered but always good to get interesting ideas put forward.

[Denys_B]

Hi @SeoulMate !
May I ask you to share a screenshot of this issue you mentioned:

@SeoulMate

…
• The counter displaying the number of unique words in a lesson is malfunctioning.
…

Thanks!

[MassiveBladeBro]

I can post this as an example from a course which I’ve made personally. So 2834 new words, 1521 LingQ, 1888 known words, yet only 177 of them are unique… Yeah doesn’t check out.

I think I have an idea of how this bug comes about. It seems to be the case that it counts the unique words, starting from the first time you begin studying the lessons of the course (that is after you’ve opened a lesson), and then as you add more lessons later, it won’t continue updating the Unique Words’ counter.

I also have this bug on the IOS app, where the post-lesson “data screen” always says that I’ve learnt & LingQed zero new words, even after I have added several new ones. This has never happened to me on the Android app, which counts words & LingQs as intended.

Finally I have another issue on the IOS app when it comes to playing videos from YouTube. If an imported video has several audio tracks (that is the video has several dubs), then I don’t have the option of changing to the one that is in my target language. This problem doesn’t occur on android.

All in all I think these shortcomings and issues are fairly negligible. I do have to concur, however, that the previous UI going over one’s personal stats was better. Not sure why it had to be changed.

[schlick]

This works well enough on Lute3
This is a video/gif if you scroll down