The link to mdgb (from completed characters) is great. Just one question:
Is it possible to set it up so that it reuses the previous instance?
What I mean is, I write a charater, click on the small copy of the character, which opens a new tab to MDGB, browse the dictionary, come back to skritter, write a new character, click on the small character, which opens a second tab to MDGB , etc.
Obviously, it's not a serious problem, but it's a bit untidy.
Is there something I should change in my settings?

I changed it a couple days ago so that it should open the new link in the same MDBG tab; is it not working? What browser are you using?

Any chance for a future option for the user to choose whether the character links to, say, mdbg, nciku, or zhongwen.com? Although mdbg I think is the cleanest and quickest dictionary that I use online, most of the time when I want to look up the character I am seeing on Skritter, it is because I either want to see it used in sentences (imho nciku>mdbg) or look at the components to try to remember it better (zhongwen). The definition is already under the word so I personally pretty much never need to go to mdbg.

Anyway, just a thought. Also, there might be better dictionaries/resources out there, those are just the ones I know.

Thank you for pointing out this feature. I hadn't noticed it before :-) It is working ok over here on Firefox 3.5, i.e. all entries appear in the same tab, which is opened after asking for the first definition.

nick: another small issue with the forum. I now it is possible to order the message by time of the last entry (message + replies), just by clicking the heading of the last column. By default the ordering is by topic creation date only. It is very difficult to have real discussions this way, especially for topics that were created a while ago, as they are not on the radar of the parson who just happens to have a quick glance at the forum. Do you see what I mean? IMO it would be better to change the default setting.

Regards

Marc

A good solution would be to have a small drop-down-menu next to the characters which contained links to different resources. Possibly one also could choose one to be the standard when just clicking the characters. The list might even be customizable in user settings.

Apart from the above mentioned resources I would also like a link to www.yellowbridge.com (since I think they have a better layout for character decomposition than zhongwen.com), and perhaps dict.cn for example sentences.

We're planning on having a preference on the new practice page settings menu that controls which dictionary the links point to. It wouldn't be the most convenient for being able to use multiple dictionaries at whim--is that a common use case? Something like a dropdown menu is almost certainly too much clutter, with all the new stuff we're putting there.

Marc, for the forum thing, here's my philosophy: I don't like last-updated-first strictly because topics never die. Really long threads that have been revived multiple times, bumping, etc.: not sweet. Better to start a new thread on the same topic if there's more to be discussed. Still, I know it's hard to follow things. I think some sort of notification of replies to watched threads is in order.

Joel has post discussing this here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html
A lot of what he says is good, I think, although he is more sassy toward his forum users than we will be (he has a lot of unregistered or uninvolved posters).

I like the idea of notifications for watched threads.

@Danwa: thanks for the yellowbridge, for some reason I had heard of it before (as a dictionary I think), but never saw the etymology part. I have to agree that while zhongwen.com has a cleaner look, it always seemed to have a weird design and showed so much random stuff all over the place. Just saw yellowbridge's equivalent for the first time, and while they have some hideous graphics, web design, etc. going on, their actual format for the etymology looks like it works well.

@nick: Glad to hear about the preference. I don't think multiple at once is necessary, for me anyway. RE: forum, I knew you guys didn't really want the typical forum format, but never really knew why. I just never encounter forums that aren't last-updated-first. I read the link you had, seems like you might be a bit of a fan :) He does have some good points and good writing. It isn't completely the same situation as you do have to register here, the number of users is small (for now..), and at any one time most active users are paying users. So things like the ask a question and check your inbox phenomenon probably aren't valid. But I still respect that you want new questions and new topics on top. I think the biggest disadvantage is seeing the same questions over again (or repeated short conversations about similar things instead of a lengthy one), and if you don't mind that, then the pros probably outweigh the cons. Anyway, interesting read :)

The notification via email is a good idea. I have it on my blog too. Works really well.

I'd like to second the links to nciku, zhongwen.com. Would it be possible to have some little icons below the character linking to respective sites (you could use their browser tab title icons, they're about the right size).

I really like skritter and is great for revising all those characters which I recognize but never learned to write properly, but I'd also like to use it as a tool to learn new characters and being able to cross-reference to other sites, dictionaries etc would be immense! Perhaps in the future you could consider pulling in info from these sites and displaying it directly on the left hand side?

Actually, what would be REALLY useful would be to list the most common words the character is used in, including the character itself if it can stand alone, with definitions and (in a really ideal world) an example sentence. eg, for 中, it might be something like
中 - zhong4 - to catch a disease - 吃街头小吃很容易中毒
中文 - zhong1wen2 - chinese - 我喜欢学习中文
中心 - zhong1xin1 - center - 这里有全国最大的培训中心

That would really give you a good feel for the character.

yes, please
I like the way 小马词典 is doing it here:
http://hmarty.free.fr/hanzi/

Words from MDGB/CEDICT
and character frequency from Jun Da
http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/

The etymology / decomposition is assured a place below the character definition on the left side of the prompt.

Word and character frequency, hmm... do others want this? I would say we could try it out, but it could be hard to find a place for it. I mean, we're trying to stay simple so that we don't turn into a YellowBridge; if there is too much information visible, it won't be highlighting the important stuff. Maybe some sort of show-on-hover type stuff?

We have big ideas for example sentences (like sentences that are matched to your level or contain only characters you already know), but they will have to come much later.

I try to do my reviews at a reasonable fast pace. I would probably not even notice the frequency.

Yeah I would say stick to being a great and fast way to review the reading and writing of characters. Actually "learning," or perhaps being introduced to, new characters and words I find is better done in other settings like the classroom, through other input, and just daily life (well if you live in China).

Words/characters that I only know through Skritter, unless I quickly recognize and use them again in other contexts, are by far the hardest for me to remember while reviewing, and probably the least useful for me as well.

I agree with Hobbes' last point - it's really a "use it or lose it" situation.

I think I saw this question before, but can't find an answer; when I get taken to MDGB instead of a character I just see question marks. I am using IE 8. Any idea of how to fix this?

Oh, I thought I'd uploaded that fix. I guess not; sorry! We needed to safely encode the URL or IE won't understand the Chinese characters.

I'll try to get the fix uploaded today.

A different weirdness today; I am taken to the MDGB site and see the character, but after about two seconds it automatically navigates away to Google and I get this message from Google:
Sorry, we couldn't find "http://static.addtoany/menu/sm.html. Here are some related websites: " Please help, thanks. (I'm still using IE 8. I have the Google toolbar on this computer, but not enabled currently. Google is also my default search engine for an "accelerator" in IE8, if that makes any difference. )

PS problem solved. PS: I just notice that it is not Google per se but Google running inside a Dell windown becuase of the browser error redirector program. I uninstalled the browser error redirector program and that seems to have solved it.

Ah, accursed browser breakers! Sometimes I'm thankful for Chrome not having any add-ons, because even though I miss out on neat stuff, I also have no chance to mess things up by installing broken / malicious / infested stuff.