Today we release a bugfix version to address two bugs (thanks to our users for reporting them!):
- fixed: app required cardspackgold when creating cards from cardslist, even if <100 cards
- fixed: wrong interpretation of creation date for cards created with versions prior to 1.6
After a longer pause we are back with an exciting new release, addressing many of our user’s needs:
major
- added: backup/restore all courses to Google docs (including images)
(implements uservoice proposal “Import/Export card decks when you got a new device”) - improved: faster database schema, resulting in significant speed improvements: searching, importing/exporting/deleting a course up to 10x faster
(implements uservoice proposals “speed up import”, “Fix import for for large online decks”) - improved: more options for configuring a learning session:
- added: more options for how many new cards to add
- added: alternating learning direction
- added: scope which includes new cards only
(implements uservoice proposals “allow more flexibility in number of new cards to learn”, “Add an option to learn only new cards”)
- added: option to configure size of images for image cards
(implements uservoice proposal “Don’t compress images”)
minor
- fixed: added latin + haitian creole to list of languages for google translate
(implements uservoice proposal “Add Latin to the list of language codes”) - fixed: bug which caused the first card in learning session to be always shown source => target
- fixed: image picking with gallery not working on some devices
- fixed: reminder did not reappear when pressing back from learn configuration
- improved: images get scaled down (if required) before they are saved to the FlashcardsToGo folder
- fixed: ensure that directory exists when saving images
- improved: memorize cards: load next card after tap, not automatically after timeout
(=> no more wake lock permission required) - fixed: creation date of a card now also gets exported/imported in full format
- improved: showing creation date of a card in card editor
- fixed: sorting of cards in cards list was in some cases not correct
- improved: visually representing image cards without image
The Flashcards ToGo app allows you to directly create new flashcards within the app on your phone. For entering many cards - and when you have access to a computer with a normal keyboard - this may not be the most efficient way, as typing on your phone may be rather slow…
So what are the alternatives to that?
- Recommended for creating cards yourself (you only need a browser and a Google Account):
Create the cards within a Google Spreadsheet document directly in your browser!- Open Google Drive and create a new Spreadsheet document:
- Add one line per flashcard: text for front/source side = first column, text for back/target side = second column
- Save the document with a meaningful name, e.g. FlashcardInbox
- Open the Flashcards ToGo app and import the cards:
- From the “more…” dropdown menu for the course you want to import these cards into, choose “Import cards”
- As import source choose “Google Spreadsheets” => you will get a list of documents
- Choose the document you just created
- Confirm the mapping (first column = source) and wait for the import to finish
- Done!
- Note: If you want to use the same Spreadsheets document again for importing cards, you should first delete the already imported cards, or they will be imported again (it’s just an import - not a sync)! (Hey, does this sound like the app should do that for me? File a proposal for that feature on our uservoice forum…)
- Open Google Drive and create a new Spreadsheet document:
- Recommended for downloading existing content - there are millions of flashcards available: Import cards from Quizlet, FlashcardExchange or StudyStack
- These websites also allow you to create flashcards and share them
- You need an account
- Flashcards ToGo allows to import public decks from these online services
- Note: If you imported a deck of cards to your phone, then added new cards in the online service, and import it again: The existing cards will be present twice - it’s an import, not a sync!
…can I still use Flashcards ToGo? For example to memorize biology terms?
Yes, you can!
Although the standard course configuration speaks of a “source” and “target”, and offers you some default “languages” to choose for source and target, you can as well define your own language or topic (like “biology”) or use generic topics like “front” and “back” to represent the front and back side of your cards.
To define a new language/topic:
- From the main screen, choose “Settings” from the main menu
- Within the settings, choose “Configure languages”
- From the menu, choose “New language”
- Now you can give your language/topic a name, and choose an icon
- For the icon, you can not only choose an icon from the provided ones, but also pick an arbitrary picture from your phone
After you have defined a language/topic in this way, you can choose this language/topic in any of your courses as either the source or the target.
Note: In one of the next versions we will provide generic “front” and “back” default languages/icons so you can easily name your course “Physics”, and choose the front and back languages as your default icons, see this proposal on our uservoice forum and vote for it if it’s important for you!
(Another option would be to offer an option to create courses with one icon only, where the icon represents the subject, e.g. Biology. Please create another proposal on our uservoice site if you want that feature!)
major
- fixed: correctly scale font size for displaying longer texts
(addresses uservoice proposal Scrollable Content) - fixed: layout of card size
- fixed: configuring card limit via preferences had no effect
- added: create new card from cardlist via menu
minor:
- improved: learning configuration now shows languages
- learn direction: do not change for a single card on pause (orientation change or switch off)
- fixed: some exceptions reported via developer console
Since version 1.5 a learning session can be configured very flexible with the following parameters:
- Scope:
- due cards => only consider the cards that are due now
- cards due soon => also consider cards that will be due in the next seven days
- all active cards => include all cards in the active state, regardless of due date
- all new cards => include all new cards (but no other cards)
- Limit:
- no limit => learning session will last until all cards are seen or you manually finish learning via the menu
- time limit => finish after x minutes (x can be configured via the preferences)
- card limit => finish after x cards (x can be configured via the preferences)
- unknown card limit => finish after x cards are judged as unknown (x can be configured via the preferences)
- New Cards:
- no new cards => no cards in the new state will be transitioned to active and shown during the learning session
- 1/5/10/15/20/30/50 new cards => include that many new cards in the learning session. As soon as a new card is presented to you, it will be transitioned to the active state.
- Direction:
- Source => Target
- Target => Source
- random - for each card the direction will be chosen randomly
- alternating - the direction will change depending on level:
- level 0: source => target
- level 1: target => source
- level 2: source => target
- …
- Shuffle cards
- if activated, the cards will appear in random order
Please note that the configuration is persisted, so the next time you start a learning session it remembers your last settings.
Prior to version 1.5 Flashcards ToGo did not deal well with the case of importing e.g. 200 cards: All of them were due immediately, but you cannot memorize 200 facts at once.
To address this, in version 1.5 a lifecycle for cards was introduced consisting of four states:
- NEW - Cards that get added on the phone or via importing start with the NEW state
- ACTIVE - When learning you can choose how many of the cards in the NEW state should be transitioned to ACTIVE, e.g. you can add 5 new cards per day
- KNOWN - When you mark a card on the highest level as known, it will automatically transition to the KNOWN state and will not be scheduled for learning again.
- TODO - When you initially create a card with only one side or when you manually mark a card as “TODO”, this card will not be considered for learning until you either add the missing side (which automatically transitions the card to the NEW state) or manually transition it to NEW or ACTIVE
Thus, the typical lifecycle of a card would be TODO (as long as one side is missing) => NEW => ACTIVE => KNOWN.
- added: support for importing images from Quizlet
(implements uservoice proposal Problem: Importing cards with pictures from Quizlet) - added: import from and export to google docs/spreadsheet
(implements uservoice proposal allow importing a spreadsheet from google.docs) - added: backup of all card data to google spreadsheet
(implements uservoice proposal auto backup to Dropbox (or other online storage)) - added: card lifecycle (new => active => known) to improve handling of new cards
(implements uservoice proposal study time options or option to control how many new words per day - I have 800+ cards), see the FAQ entry What is the lifecycle of a card for details - improved: more flexible learning configuration
- improved: main screen layout
(addresses uservoice proposal Clean the interface - Mockup attached)
If you hit any issues, please let us know (see the Feedback page for details).
I’m excited to announce two new events:
- done: we have migrated the website from Wordpress to a Posterous-based site, I hope you like the new look and feel!
- almost done: a new release is just about to be pushed out to Google Play: stay tuned for import/export from/to Google docs/spreadsheet, and for improved card management and a major UI refactoring!
The following permissions are required by the app and will be listed when installing it:
- INTERNET - required for integrating Google Translate (which proposes a translation for a card using the service from Google) and for importing cards from the Internet (Studystack/Quizlet)
- ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE - required for detecting whether internet is available, and gracefully handling the case when it is not (e.g. when trying to access Google Translate)
- WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE - required for exporting cards to your sdcard, or for saving the image files of image cards on your sdcard
- RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED - required for correctly scheduling the reminders after the device was switched off and has completed to boot
- WAKE_LOCK - required to prevent the screen from dimming/switching off while memorizing cards (when memorizing many cards, for a long time no user interaction is required and the screen would switch off while the user is still memorizing…)
- USE_CREDENTIALS + GET_ACCOUNTS (since version 1.5) - required for access to Google docs (for importing or exporting cards from/to Google docs/spreadsheet)
