one thing I’ve run into as well, when studying kanji and looking at the readings, it’s much less clear after the update what the intended reading is. You certainly CAN tell, but the readability of normal vs. bold is much lower than the readability of the previous normal vs. light grey
Small CSS fix:
though they should fix that…
+1-ing all of this once more. Brought it up in the inital dashboard thread but I’m glad it is being discussed further and further. Huge, huge downgrade from the old and unlike the radically altered dashboard I don’t see why it would be hard to undo these specific changes so I’m hoping it can return
I‘m not a big fan of the cosmetic update, I think the previous version was much more readable and user friendly and I really liked the onhover feature that showed time left to review but whatever. I’m here to bring some bugs:
- One radical is not loading at all and I‘m not sure which one it is:
-
One new radical appeared on my radical list ( level 6 ). Dunno if it’s supposed to be like that or not, but it has never happened before:
I’m sorry about the blank radical. I have no idea what could be going on there.
As for the new radical appearing on your to-learn list, that happened to me a few times before the UI update (some items moved up or down a level). I think that’s deliberate and unrelated to the UI update.
There have been recent content adjustments in the past couple weeks- the radicals, kanji, some vocab and other things (like on’yomi/kun’yomi for answers) relating to directions specifically has been moved around and/or had new content added. Indeed unrelated to the UI
Edit: here’s the link to the full info about it
Ok thanks for the info! Not sure now if this thread was a right place to share those bugs, I’m quite new here and was a bit high on emotion in the moment.
I agree strongly with all of this, especially that these little squares are waaaay harder on the eyes than those nice big blocks on the old UI, and I also liked to use the kanji page to informally quiz myself as I scrolled around.
I wish there was an option to use the old UI for those who don’t want the new UI.
- As I am older, I have trouble seeing the smaller font.
- I don’t like how I need to click today to see how many reviews are coming up in the upcoming hours.
- I don’t like how I need to click Kanji under Level Progress to see all the Kanji characters. Also cannot hover the cursor to see when it will be reviewed again.
- I had a dark mode that worked. Now it is not working that well. Each widget is staying bright. If anyone found a dark mode that works, please let me know.
Just chiming in here to say we have all of this feedback written up on our end — plenty to look at for improving the UI, thanks everyone for helping us out here.
Please do so!
“Do or do not. There is no try”
Thank you so much for chiming in here! So grateful to have the ear of the development team.
That’s good to hear, but it’s been days….I’ve not seen one person saying they thought the tiny kanji were a good idea….and unless I’m very much misunderstanding, returning these pages to the way they were should be simple?? Can we get some kind of update at least?
I’m not even doing my reviews (though of course those pages remain fine) cause I’m so discouraged with the situation and half expecting I’ll be leaving here soon, which is something I never thought I’d say…I stayed (and paid!) even when I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to log on for a long time, I so believed in the project, and still used it as a dictionary. That’s…impossible now
At first I was certain they would act, but I become less and less confident as time rolls on. Looking for alternatives….
…just give us a toggle that lets us use what we had before. Been using this for 10 months with no issues and now you guys just force this change upon us. The experience has been objectively worse for no reason.
I don’t know if it’s me but while I’m doing the reviews (just noticed it), the (large) kanji(s) you are studying in the review at the top of the screen - the font just looks sharper? The line thickness has increased and it doesn’t appear as spaced or smoothed out (?).
Compare the current display of wanikani to the display of a userscript that uses the former style of wanikani with big cards. I think the former style is much superior from a learning perspective. The new one is just too small to compare the similar kanji. Also the color of being burned (black) doesn’t add anything useful in this scenario and is more distracting. Please bring back the option of the former style.
They clearly don’t care….this remains ageist and ableist, but it is what it is….there are so many things I love about this site, I may just deal with it for another couple of months while an alternative develops…
it is just too bad though. There may be reasons other than humoring the designers for the refusal to adjust this? Server space, etc…but the lack of transparency only compounds the problem
Hi Koichi, any updates on plans for improving the dictionary (characters, radicals, vocab) UI? I have nearly entirely ceased to use WaniKani as a dictionary, which seriously diminishes its value as an integrated Kanji SRS tool. So at this point, the tool has been degraded to a mere flashcard deck for me and apparently many other users. I’d really like to continue to use WaniKani if I can…
I’ve never posted on this forum before and I’m not usually the type to bother, but I feel so negatively about the UI changes that I want to register some feedback. I agree with everything chkremer said in the original post on this thread. The updated versions of the Kanji, Vocab, Radicals and Levels pages are a huge step backward in readability and usefulness. In particular, I want to point out how these changes affect the individual Kanji pages.
In the old version, I would often use the Found In Vocabulary section of individual kanji pages to quickly reinforce the different possible readings of a kanji, and note groups of vocabulary that use the same reading, isolated exceptions that use an uncommon reading, and so on. This was very easy and clear in the old UI, since it used a list format, and all of the readings were aligned along the side of the page. I found it a very useful way to follow up on mistakes, and it was part of my daily routine when studying.
In the new version, I find doing this basically impossible. Where the readings used to be neatly aligned with each other, now they are spread across the whole screen, each in their own container. There is no longer any visual unity of like categories of information between different vocabulary words. To me, this approach of using a dynamic array of card elements is very ill-conceived. The way the cards rearrange themselves based on screen width makes the vocabulary list feel disorganized at any screen size, despite still being in Level order. That the card-size itself is dynamic based on the content makes it look even more chaotic. The larger cards, like “Underground Shopping Mall” in this image, create ugly white space at irregular intervals, and the groups of the smaller cards create areas of increased visual density. (All of these critiques apply to the Search page as well!)
Overall it is disorienting to look at. To be honest I find it kind of nauseating. I want to echo chkremer again by saying that these changes seriously degrade WaniKani’s usefulness as a dictionary and reference tool to compliment SRS study, which was previously one of its strong suits. I was already considering putting my account into vacation mode until the end of the semester, and these changes are the push I needed. I’ve even been considering migrating my progress into an Anki deck, despite the colossal pain that would be. I sincerely hope improvements are forthcoming, because as it stands it’s really quite bad.