[Android] Flaming Durtles - Android app with offline support

Just installed it. Itā€™s awesome! I love all of the options, especially Anki mode.
Thank you for making this!

Works really well - Iā€™m living all the options!

Maybe I missed it, but if not - it would be nice to be able to limit syncing to wifi only. :slight_smile:

Looks like there will be two Android apps out there with offline support. Competition!

Since offline support would be big for me, I decided to give this a shot. However, Iā€™m lazy, so I grabbed the device nearest to me, rather than figuring out where my smartphone is to install on. (My smartphone is where Iā€™d most likely use this app.)

Audio Download Concerns

  • User may not need audio.

I review on a bus, and donā€™t use headphones, so I keep my device muted.

  • User may have limited space on device.

I removed the micro SD card from my smartphone to use in another device the other day, so I need to check how much free space is on there before installing this.

  • User may not have an unlimited data plan for their cell phone.

I keep my smartphone in airplane mode and have data disabled, but if I were to accidentally be on a cell connection and had a bunch of audio start downloadingā€¦

My recommendation: When first loading user data, prompt whether to download audio or not. This gives the user a chance to opt out of audio. I see you already have a menu option for downloading audio, so they can download later.

Edit: Is there a setting to opt out of audio download for future reviews as one levels up? (Or do all future levels audio download up front?)

Disclaimer: Iā€™m testing this on the Android device that was nearest to me, and I am not suggesting that this device specifically should be supported. I am most likely to use this app on my smartphone, not the one I installed it on to try it out.

I had two items for review, so I figured Iā€™d give it a go. Hereā€™s how it displayed:

Hidden for image size

  1. What am I answering?

  2. Does this normally default to focusing the input field? It didnā€™t for me.

By the way, the ā€œabandon sessionā€ featureā€™s great.

I expect Iā€™ll install it on my smartphone once my laziness is cured. (Or hopefully later today.)

You are fast! I remember you said weā€™d have the beta version on fall lol :stuck_out_tongue:

Can you notify us when Google Play Store accepts it :slight_smile: ?

Itā€™s on the list. Right now Iā€™m waiting for 1.2.0 to show up on the Google Play Store, once that is done pushing updates will become easier for me and then Iā€™ll do this one.

2 Likes

Actually, that was not me :slight_smile: Youā€™re thinking of Leap for Android ā†’ [Android] Leap for WaniKani Demo (Native, Offline, No Web)

Thereā€™s quite a lot of interest in Android, and vrickey happened to make their announcement just as I was getting ready for mineā€¦ but these apps are unrelated to each other.

2 Likes

Yeah, Iā€™m not happy about the audio downloads at all yet. Whatā€™s in there now is my ā€˜it works for nowā€™ implementation. Itā€™s always possible to preload audio from the menu so it wonā€™t start downloading unexpectedly on the road. Still plenty to do there (wifi-only setting, no audio at all, etc.), and Iā€™ll take your feedback along. Thanks!

You should be seeing the text of the vocabulary youā€™re quizzing, in white on a dark background. Presumably youā€™re not seeing it because of issues with the display. It looks like an e-ink or e-paper display I guess? I know the app works with monochrome displays in general, but maybe an e-ink display requires more attention to support. Itā€™s one of those things Iā€™d like to support, but Iā€™d have to get a device like this (real or emulated) for testing, so itā€™s not much of a priority for now.

And yes, the keyboard should pop up automatically, but I can only ā€˜suggestā€™ that it does. User settings or the device itself can always stop it from happening, and thereā€™s not a lot I can do about that.

Yup, e-ink. Iā€™m not suggesting it should be supported, but figured Iā€™d mention it in case there was an ā€œaha, I know the problemā€ epiphany moment like sometimes happens. I just now installed it on my smartphone (had to temporary disable Google Play protection, so thanks for linking to a guide on that on the download page) to try out.

If I find any issues with it on my smartphone, Iā€™ll be sure to point them out. So far, my expectations are high (while being tempered for a pre-release product) =D

Oh ok i see, it doesnā€™t help that youā€™re both level 3-4 and with no profile picture :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway i didnā€™t try the app yet (will do so asap when itā€™s in the play store) but have read the thread and it seems you have added everything I wanted and then some! I actually cant stop thinking about the anki mode, itā€™d be such a time saver (especially as typing the meaning in English takes so much time for me lol) that i might do my reviews on this even when Iā€™m at home.

Yes, I could see how that could be confusing. To clear anything up, I changed my avatar to Anghel Higure the bad boy from the 2014 Japanese dating sim classic, Hatoful Boyfriend.

3 Likes

Nice work getting all the syncing up and running! I am sure that took a little bit of fiddling. It sounds like we should request an API to enable a seamless onboarding experience in terms of setting user permissions.

Anyway, here are two resources that I think you might find helpful:

  1. Setting up an internal test in the Google Play Developer Console
  2. Material Design: Develop for Android

The first link is to setup an internal test group of up to 100 users through the Google Play Store channel. They will immediately get your app updates and since this is the official distribution channel, you wonā€™t run into any side-loaded security issues. Users go to the Play Store app to get an update or manage the app. Youā€™ll need to pay the $25 registration fee and get set up first, though.

The second is a dual design-code documentation resource for the new Material Design library. Itā€™s fairly plug and play, so copy-pasting the components you need would even go a long way.

Neither of these are in the Android docs, so it could be confusing if this is your first full feature app.

Leap for WaniKani is more or less on pause until I hear back from the team on what their mobile app plans are and their moneteization guidelines, so youā€™ll be first. Chapeau to you.

I did the internal test track thing, but it takes ages for the first build to get approved. Sideloading is not ideal, but at least I can do it on my timeline, not Googleā€™s. I got the first release approved earlier today, so hopefully I can move faster now.

I know about Material, and I am deliberately staying far away from it. I donā€™t want to get into a long rant about UI design, but doing what Google considers proper Material design on mobile leads to horrible UX in all but the simplest cases. I want a UI thatā€™s simple, fast and compact. Material is none of those things.

1 Like

Flaming Durtles is now on the Google Play Store!

You can get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.the_tinkering.wk

Because the store sees the sideloaded versions as untrusted, you will not be able to do a smooth upgrade to the store version, sorry about that. Youā€™ll have to uninstall the sideloaded version and start fresh with the store version. So make sure your reviews are synced before you do, and keep your API token ready! But after that, updates will be smoother, and you can let your device take care of them automatically by turning on auto-updates.

If you enabled sideloading or disabled Google Play Protect just for this app, you should put your settings back the way they were once youā€™ve installed the store version.

The version on the store incorporates the majority of the feedback Iā€™ve gotten so far:

Version 1.2.0, 2019-08-18:

  • Handle vacation mode. If vacation mode is active, disable lessons and reviews and hide the timeline bar chart. All other functionalities of the app remain available.
  • The Undo button now also works in Anki mode.
  • Multiple undo is now possible, as long as the last item hasnā€™t already been reported back to the almighty Crabigator.
  • Normally Flaming Durtles will try to report a lesson/review item to the almighty Crabigator as soon as youā€™ve answered both meaning and reading. There is now an option to delay this upload until the entire session is finished. (This will also allow unlimited undo.)
  • A few tweaks to the layout to make the UI more intuitive, and more usable in landscape orientation.
  • Added an option to disable lightning mode.
8 Likes

Doing this now :smiley:

Quick question just to be ultra certain. The self study option doesnā€™t affect your SRS at all right?

Yes. The self-study works exactly the same as a review session as far as the app is concerned, but the results are thrown away and never reported to the API.

2 Likes

Just popped it from Play Store, and I already know this is the app Iā€™ve been waiting for! Huge +1 for making the vocab font size waaay bigger then in WK for WaniKani! :grinning: What I would like to see yet:

  1. Wrap up button
  2. Option to turn popups completely off after inputting an answer, or even better: display only the alternative answers
  3. Back button works a bit odd now, jumping back to the reviews screen when I want to exit etc.

Keep up the great work!

Itā€™s in the menu. I didnā€™t put it on the quiz screen directly to avoid overcrowding that.

Iā€™m not sure what you mean by this. Could you explain in a bit more detail what youā€™d like to see and when?

The back button navigates to whatever screen you were on before. So for example if you choose to look up something during a review session, pressing back will bring you back to the quiz screen. So that works as intended. Iā€™m trying to fix up the history stack so you donā€™t back up to a review session thatā€™s already finished, but Android is a bit temperamental about that so far.

If you just want to exit to the dashboard, thereā€™s always the home button in the toolbar at the top.

2 Likes

Ok just downloaded the app, a quick thing that really confused me for a few minutes:

So I had an extra kanji in the reviews compared to the website, in the website it was saying 60 reviews and in the app it was saying 61. So i did the extra kanji. As you can see itā€™s in level 32 whereas iā€™m at 31. Actually this kanji used to be taught much earlier but it was changed with the Content Overhaul. Actually even the reading was changed so I kept getting it wrong and was really confused.

I think this is the only kanji in this situation, at least for me, where I learned it but itā€™s not supposed to be in my reviews. Can you do something about this? Or if you think itā€™ll be fine when I get to the next level itā€™s fine, at least I donā€™t mind.

Edit: It keeps coming back lol, each time I start a new session itā€™s there. Iā€™ll memorize it completely by the time I learn it in the next level :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like

Ooh, interesting edge case :slight_smile:. I havenā€™t seen this before, but so far none of the content changes have affected me in this way at all. I think I know whatā€™s going wrong and how to fix it, but to be sure, could you send me your debug log so I can see what the API is telling you? Itā€™s at the bottom of the settings menu. (Ideally immediately after doing a review with that kanji in it.)

And yeah, it should resolve itself when you level up, but Iā€™d like to fix it anyway.