slide show tweaks
One minor tweak would be to permit a person to hit "next" while on the last slide, to end the slide show, rather than having to wait around for the entire viewing time time to expire, before the slide show ends. (for me, at least, It doesn't allow me to hit hit the next button when I'm on the last slide; that button is grayed-out. I wonder if this is a bug). Of course, as always, you can still hit "stop slide show," but from what I can tell, your progress is not saved when you do that. Which leads into my next suggestion: It would be nice to be able to end a lesson at any time, before it's finished, without losing your progress (i.e. the cards that you reviewed should still be counted as such).
(That said, this app is marvelous!)
JJM
Re: Keyboard commands
The reason I didn't think there were keyboard commands was that the right and left arrows don't work for me. At first, I assumed they were the obvious choice for forward and backward functions, but they didn't work. But I guess it's just a bug. A rather frustrating bug. Escape and Space Bar appear to work properly, though.
Keyboard commands bug
Are you on Mac OS X 10.4? We think that the bug occurs on that system.
Drew
I am.
I am.
Card progress
You mention that you want to be able to stop a slideshow and still have the cards you have viewed marked as having being viewed. That is already the case: if you look at both the prompt and main content, the note will be marked as having been viewed, and the progress updated. (Bugs aside.)
Drew
Next button on last slide
We decided not to quit the slideshow when hitting next on the last slide, because sometimes you might want to go back and forth in the slideshow, and it could be annoying if it quit. So you have to explicitly hit the close button.
The fact that the last slide does not get marked as viewed is a bug, and will be fixed in the next release. Sorry.
Drew
Fair enough
Fair enough
Combine "Next slide" and "mark note as [in]correct" buttons?
It might be nice if the notes were neither marked as right or wrong, by default, so that you had to choose. (Because otherwise, sometimes I get so 'into' the slide show that I forget to do that. What if the "next slide" button and the "mark as correct/incorrect" buttons were combined? i.e. you could have a "correct/next" button, and an "incorrect/next" button. That way, you advance to the next note and mark the previous note as correct or incorrect, simultaneously, which means fewer keystrokes. Faster.
JJM
Correct/Next and Incorrect/next
Sorry, I forgot to address the combined button idea: We seriously considered this option, but decided against it in the end. We decided it would complicate the toolbar a bit. Although it does mean a few more clicks, we thought having the next button separate to the right/wrong buttons was a cleaner solution. We'll add shortcuts for right/wrong, to make the extra keystrokes as painless as possible ;-)
Drew
That will be marvelous. JJM
That will be marvelous.
JJM
Right/Wrong is Optional
The reason we don't make you choose is that we realize a lot of people don't want to use the correction buttons. They just want to study the notes. So we made the default 'right', so that if you do nothing, the lesson will be updated just as you would expect. The way we have things now, you have to actively choose to use the correction buttons, by pressing 'wrong'.
Drew
Changed my mind
I changed my mind. It makes more sense to have the buttons work as they do. Good choice.
JJM
manual slide transitions preference option
In the name of flexibility, I think it would be good to allow the viewing time for slides to be set to infinity (i.e., they only transition manually.)
JJM
Infinity
We have thought about this. It is a good idea. At the time we thought 60 seconds was practically infinity anyway, and if you needed more time, you should just pause the slideshow and navigate manually.
We'll think about whether to add the infinity option. I think there is something to be said for it...
Drew
switching application focus mid-lesson
Where you switch focus from Mental Case to another application, mid-lesson, and then come back to Mental Case, the slide show should still be there and at the same point where you left off. That way, if an alarm clock app goes off mid-lesson, or a song starts playing on iTunes that you don't feel like listening to, or whatever (there's a million possible scenarios), you can switch apps momentarily and take care of it, then come back and resume the lesson, rather than having to either lose your progress in the lesson, or wait until the entire lesson is completed before switching focus to the other app.
JJM
Switching apps
I agree with you, but this poses a few technical challenges, so we have to think about it a bit...
Drew
keyboard commands in lessons
It would be very convenient to have keyboard commands for each of the slide show control panel buttons.
JJM
Re: Keyboard commands
There are shortcuts for forward-back (arrows), play-pause (space bar), and close (escape). I think it would be useful to have shortcuts for right-wrong, because you need these a lot, but the other buttons are used much less, and I don't think shortcuts are really necessary.
What shortcuts would be appropriate for the right-wrong buttons, do you think?
Drew