Mathieu Tozer's Dev Blog

Changed the button types, added a language switcher button (well made a space for it), and a split view area for the word lists. Removed the remove button. Users should just hit the delete key, and the software should keep all the words you know. 'More' still opens the drawer, but it's still looking the same (and just as ugly) so I've hidden it.
This is cute! Look at how little that search bar is. It works too! More info could be placed in these colums. The 'Most Recent' shows the current word list being displayed, and there should be two little arrow buttons (as in iCal month selectors, for example) to allow users to scroll along their word lists. The number of words shown in the current list (obviously not accurate here) is at the bottom.

1. Leave Multiple Users up to the Operating System. That's what UNIX
is great at. Don't add another level. How confusing and time
consuming that would have been! Then there's no password stuff that
needs to go down.

2. In the interests of concentrating on the features that will be
used the most, leave language parsing for later. Don't support the
full import of texts. All that stuff is so messy! It might be useful
for someone like myself, but entirely useless for others. Word lists
are going to be what people are going to want to use, so concentrate
on getting that working well.

What I really need to clarify.
1. Some columns will need to be available for specific languages.
Like on and kun yomi for Japanese only, and Pinyin for Chinese. Also
Trad and Simp versions of Chinese. These columns should be updated
when a user switches over languages they are working on (?)

2. Language switching. Ideally, a user should be able to enter a word
in the same way, and the software should be able to tell which
language it belongs to (somehow). Naively by searching every
dictionary that you have a language defined for, and seeing if
anything comes up. Which wouldn't work for Japanese and Chinese,
where the same characters can have different meanings. Does the
character encoding have some way of determining the language it's
written in? It would be annoying for the user to have to change the
working language in Words as they move though websites of various
languages, to make sure the words they input go into the right
language's word lists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Words helps you learn words.
Main features:
Keep separate lists for different languages.
Organise your word lists as you like
Use smart lists to track your recently seen words and words you have
to learn, for example
Never look a word up on paper again - automatic dictionary search.
Add a single word or list of words from anywhere (website, RSS)
Take quizzes of your word lists.
Thus Words knows when you have rememebered a word.
And so it can automatically know which words you need to revise (ones
you haven't seen for a while)
And even search for sentences where they're used (online, spotlight)
Language genericity - learn any language w/ the same program.
Record words and export them to iPod to learn aurally. (on Shuffle -
it's effortless).
Print your word lists and fold them creatively (origami style) with
templates, and normal lists too to practice writing on paper.
Teachers - email words to learn for students to import.

Side note: I used to record words when sytudying Japanese in year 11
and 12. I'd record short tracks like 'kotoba ____pause____ word'. The
pause was to let me think and remember. And it would just play
randomly between songs when I had the player set on shuffle. It's
good because you never knew which word iwas coming, which simulates
the real world. And it was fun too, because you're listening to music
at the same time.

I need to make some more mockups of the app with all these extra
features included.