Blog commenting and login isn't working for me right now in China (plus it's long :) ).

I used the new interface for just a few minutes because it is a little too slow for my computer right now (the old one is just barely able to run smoothly if i use epiphany instead of firefox, stupid old computer). Here are my observations so far:

I got a "still learning" on a character which I learned long ago. I assume it is because it was a tone practice that i have gotten wrong enough to "unlearn." I guess "still learning" is true in a sense, but maybe "forgotten, relearning" would be more informative, if it's not too much.

Probably had this before and I just never noticed/commented on it, but the "Write this character" over the flash on every character seems redundant to me. Anyone who uses Skritter for more than 5 minutes I assume knows to write the character if they see a new blank canvas. The tone one is slightly more helpful in that it helps differentiate between a shadow for drawing and a tone test, but even that still probably isn't necessary, at least from my perspective.

Just curious why the "bad stroke order" is in the character look-up information instead of "feedback" like before. I understand maybe that someone is looking up the stroke order from that button, and then wants to report (therefore convenient placement), but it seems big and out of place for all the times you don't want to click it. I would vote for feedback still. Tangentially related question, it seems you took this opporunity to update/change a bunch of stroke orders (from my small sample size), is this to intentionally fix them or could they be bugs that need to be fixed

Also a lot more whitespace seems visible... is this where the defnition/pinyin practice will go? Otherwise seems like things are squished around the edges of the prompt. Could the vocab progress bars, or some rework of them, go there if not practicing pinyin, etc. I miss having that visual feedback on my adding word progress, though I agree it is not a crucial thing by any means.
Along those lines, the characters above the pinyin still seem a little small (but I remember something about that in a forum thread a while ago). I also have been wondering about the pinyin for each character that appears below the main pinyin. I see that if there are two readings now it eliminates the wrong one after you draw it. Is there enough info to just eliminate it before? I sometimes find myself cheating by looking at that prompt to guess which "jie" is the one in "解释" for example. Also if you could eliminate the definitions that go with the other reading that would be awesome.

Last and possibly least, the progress bar above the flash looks more out-of-place and uglier than before. Don't know if that is a color thing, styles clashing with the rest of the update, or just my own imagination.

I know that's a lot and probably not all that helpful, I really do like the new interface, simpler and more stylish at the same time. Looking forward to killing more characters with an optimized version of it and the new practice modes soon! :)

A little slow, but works fine, and generally it's looking good. The actual practice window is much prettier, and the buttons are nice; but I wonder if the page as a whole looks a bit less smart now in comparison, and I have to agree with Hobbes about the progress bar, which perhaps needs a touch of visual finesse. As do the tone buttons if those are in use.

The "look up more info" prompt is good and useful.

That whitespace could be put to better use. I wonder if the "added a new word" is a bit intrusive in the practice window. Could it be moved into the bottom of the whitespace? However, I love the "add new word" button, which makes a whole load of sense.

Overall, Skritter just gets better and better. I look forward to when the new interface is released. Now, back to those characters....

Wow, thanks for all the feedback!

I'll be trying to make it much faster this week.

I'm not sure I have enough info right there to differentiate "still learning" from "forgotten; relearning". That message is for when it's more than 999% ready. I could change it to "learning" to be more general; not sure if that'd make as much sense. What do you guys think?

I'll turn the "Write the character" message off.

It seems clear now that the bad stroke order button should not be where it is. We'll try moving it, perhaps back to the feedback area.

The stroke orders aren't changed, it's just that alternative stroke orders are behaving weirdly with the new Flash code, so the correct stroke order is reporting incorrectly.

We're saving space for the mnemonics / decompositions area under the prompt, so it looks a little empty now. Kind of a challenge to get the prompt looking good when mostly empty while growing flexibly when it has lots of info in it.

For the progress bars, one thing I haven't done yet is to make a version of the progress bar pop down from the top of the Flash and animate a little bit of progress whenever you add a word, so you can see where it was added from. Would that do you for the visual progress feedback, while still having the active lists hidden behind the button? That would replace the "added new word" message at the top of the practice window.

It's possible to make the 汉字 in the prompt bigger; what do others think about their size?

The character bubble reading elimination isn't done and is behaving weirdly. I'll make it more similar to the old way soon. I don't know about eliminating readings and definitions from it, though. Perhaps if they're still in the lookup menu for that character... hmm.

Yes, bigger prompts, please! :)

word popping in from lists sounds pretty awesome :)

can't wait for decompositions in that whitespace too. Will help me fix all the mneumonics I make up without really knowing what a lot of radicals mean / make up ones that actually have to do with the meaning.

thanks again for all the hard work!

Recent changes I like:
Ability to step back
Hearing a whole compound and then the last syllable just written
New grading scale

Having a quick way to root out the etymology will be nice. Right now it can be done through the dictionary links pretty effectively I think, but takes a few navigational steps.

Actually, hearing the whole word before the last syllable is a bug that I'll be fixing soon.

The etymologies/decompositions will be built into our site and will be totally sweet, but it'll have to come later. Hard to wait, though!

Maybe I have it backwards; what I think it's supposed to be is hearning the character you just wrote, and then hearing the whole compund in which it belongs. That would make sense to me anyway. Right now Skritter seems to be a bit inconsistent. Also, on the new practice pad the speaker icon does not seem to be live: I was going to click it a few times to try to drum some tone patterns into my head. Is this a bug, or just "under construction"?

Under construction. Most of the audio-related stuff on the new page is yet buggy and being worked on. Will get there!