Hello developers and users of Language REACTOR !
This Application/Extensions became on important part of my life since i couldn’t speak a word of english years ago, neither in Korean. I’ve been using the free mode when it was the ancien name app (LLWN). And maybe since the past 3-4 years i’m using the pro mode. (As i marked all the word i see while watching a movie/series and stop the episode at each end of sentences (yeah one épisode of 45min take me more than 2hours to watch lol) I have now more than 80.000 words marked ! And unfortunately for me a lot more to marked…)
Anyway All this to say that a lot of progress has been made and none of them were bad. Sometimes some changement working less good than thinking but nothing bringing bad impact for the user to learn the target language. Also other important point as this forum has been created to help each others and give informations about the app, changement, bugs… (which i’m gonna talk about in a few minutes), recently (few months ago) i noticed a changement on the “Saved word” page on the app and the tab “marked word” which now is not a rolling infinite down but working by 50words by page (Thank you for that btw because it was long for me to wait the charging time !) So as i mentioned up there, every changement made, it brings help for users !
So I thought it was time for me, to suppose you the point that can be improved. I will tell you here : This is my opinion, maybe not all users can agree on what i’m gonna say but I want to present it to you :
First I’m giving you a list, and then I’m gonna details each of them (Make you a coffee, seat comfortably on your chair, and let’s follow me) :
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Possibility to add a note to a word
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Possibility to choose the 2 colors for the “known” and “learning” word
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Possibility to select a group of words and tags them together
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Possibility to add a description to the saved sentence
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Possibility to change the noun of the tags
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Possibility to change keyboard shortcuts
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Communicate more with users
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Simplify the process to export with Anki (or create a flashcard feature
)
1. Possibility to add a note to a word :
This first point might be the most difficult (among previous points that I expressed before) to realize for the devs
Adding a note on words we choose. Easy no ? To be even precise, i should say : Marking the word, add a note on it and be able to find it on the website. To be more clear for thus who didn’t get it or who want to have a better idea about what’s my asking, i did some work for you (As we say in French : Une image vaut mille mots (explanation : A picture/Graph is more easy to read that words)) :
This is what it can look like :
So after marked it like that, we can see it like in the sentence like :
And of course, on the website, we can found it like this :
And there it is ! 
This might be helpful for users, in case of the word has particularities like expression, different definitions, grammatical principle, etc…
2.Possibility to choose the 2 colors for the “known” and “learning” word
I have to admit that this proposition can be useful for a lots of people who has trouble with colors : daltonism. Even though this can be also useful for the average people that we are, some people can have difficulties in life to recognize the color and so with this app. So, I think it will be nice to be able to choose the color of the 2 “known” and “learning” word.
For example can be set in the setting and let the choice between 10 colors (Again an image (yeah i worked fews hours to write all these propositions lol)) :
How about it ? Isn’t nice ? Of course the colors that i put aren’t very good (coming from default of Apple) but the the possibility to change can help a lots of people !
Well, 2 points made, let’s continue !
3.Possibility to select a group of words and tags them together
Well, if you remember the point 1, I might have said a lie about the “most difficult to develops for devs”…What I’m gonna show you will make devs hit their heads on walls… Sorry Devs
Let’s dive into a simple explanation to present you my 3rd point ! Easy explanation : I wanna be able to select followings words in the sentences and tags them together. Now, time for explanation : In languages, there are grammatical rules, expressions, conjugaisons… which all includes more than 1 word ! And here is a difficulty than can face every language’s learner : knowing each word of the sentence but the sentence is an expression so you cannot understand it ! Let’s see an example to be more clear :
Example (it’s gonna be in french because my native language but you just need to get the point !) :
“Noyer le poisson” -->Word by word translation (as used with LR when you marked the word) : “Drown the fish”. And here is the issue ! This is an expression is the english equivalent of “Duck an issue”
Okay, this was just an example of issues that can be seen when using words by words. Of course when we marking the word with LR, we don’t have choice to mark them word by word which is very understandable. But here is my idea to solve it : Be able to select them and tags them together
And you know what ? Let’s using images again (way longer for me to do it, but way more efficient to understand) !
Here is my example (Let’s deep into Korean ! We don’t care about the meaning of the sentence, don’t worry) :
As I mentioned, in the image, there are 2 words which are separate by a space. These two word can be used separately OR if we used them together (as in the image) we create a grammatical rules (Which i’m not gonna explain here, of course !) ! But as a user, I HAVE to know this grammatical rule to fully understand the sentence. Problem : there is more than 100 grammar rules in Korean… (Why am I learning Korean…Anyway !) But as i mentioned earlier, what is important in my example is the group of words !
First, how can be selected the words than we want to group :
1.Shortcuts keyboard : / “CTRL”+click on words /
2.A little “+” sign on the top of the first word selected (image coming)
And now, how can be marked the group of word : Bold text (or Italic text) the group of words. Okay, it might not be the perfect way but i can’t really see a perfect one. For a text, you have 3 majors ways to modify it : Underline text, Bold text or Italic text. With LR, we already using the underline text for tags each word, so we can’t use it a second time. The Bold text and Italic text are good because we can combined them with the underline text ! To be honest, I didn’t decided what’s the best between the Italic and the Bold for our using (Maybe using both ? Agrh i don’t know…) Anyway, here is an example of what it can be :
As you can see, the group of word isn’t perfectly distinct but it still can be seen but users ! But now, imagine, you can combine my 1 proposition and this one : Be able to mark a group a word and add a note on them ! Let’s keep this example to show it what it can be :
As I mentioned on the picture, the color of the note is different. And this is normal, because we want to make a difference between a note on the word AND a note on the group of word ! And the openbox can be seen as below :
To finish all this feature, we can find the group of word on the webpage. Thanks to it, can allow us to modify it, add or remove it !
And there it is
Don’t worry developers, from now on, it might be only easy feature, not like before lol
4.Possibility to add a description to a saved sentence
Here I’m not sure if I really need to explain what I’m thinking about : all is in the title ! As to do it, simply have the possibility to add a description to a saved sentence (image incoming) :
As you can see, it doesn’t change a lot for the page, it’s also a very easy way for users to write “why” we mark the sentence !
And that was the point of my idea : when I was watching a movie and a full sentence expression popping, I marked it to remember. But few days after, when I checked on the website, I totally forgot “why” did I marked it… But now, I will be able to remember it !
5.Possibility to change the name of the tags
The feature is for me a MUST DO. And to be honest it almost doesn’t change anything on the website : Be able to rename the tag’s name. Easy explanation : If you did take a look on the conversation on pictures that i used upper, you can see that I do have “green word” with a “Blue” tag. Personally i’m using the “Blue” tag for personage’s name : When we using latin alphabet, it’s easy to recognize when the word is a name (or a place) ! But for other alphabet, it isn’t ! So I choose long times ago to dedicate this color to “personage’s name”.
By the way, i’m using the “green” tag for words i need to add to my Anki app (which we need to take about later), the"blue" for personnage’s name and the “red” tag for word i need to search more about in dictionary or online because of specific usage. I do still have the “yellow” tag unused so i do believe that devs don’t need to add more tag’s colors.
So where is my point ? Here it’s simple : when i’m using the website, the name’s tag are only defined by colors : red, bleu, green and yellow. So i was thinking "why can’t i change the name of them ? it would be more clear ! So that’s what i came up with :
So, as you can see on this image, a little clickable emote on the right of the name’s tag to modify it wouldn’t be a lot to add, but can make more clear the using of the tags for users.
6. Possibility to change keyboard shortcuts
When using LR every day, as a user, you must used the keyboard shortcuts if you don’t want to lose a lot of time or i should say “if you want to EARN some time”.Btw this is a tips for new users : get familiar as soon as possible with the keyboard shortcuts to earn time on your listening study. Left hand on the keyboard, right hand on the mouse or pad ! So first, a big “Thank you” for the dev to make keyboard shortcut ! But I do believe it need to be improved to really make it work even better. My most used keyboard shortcut are " A,S,D,Q". And this give me difficulties very very often because if you try to put your 4 fingers on these letters it difficult. Well A,S,D are very easy because there on the same line but the Q is complicated to reach !
So this is my idea : changing the keyboard shortcuts letters. I’ve seen most of game let player choose the keyboard shortcut ! And based on this, we can make the change on the settings as follows :
As you can see, i just add an column of setting button to be able to change the letter of each command. Thanks to this, we could be able to, for example, choose the Q,W,E,R in order to keep all in line (And of course for the left hander can be a HUGE changement !
Go to next point !
7.Communicate more with users
Here is the easiest point of my list which doesn’t imply to change any line of code for the devs ! As we can see on the front page of this forum, the subject pined is the progress that you did and also plans that you’re doing. And this is good BUT I would like to have news more often. And to be honest i don’t want you devs to waste your time every week to make a list and point of work that you did. What could be good is maybe every 6 to 8 months, an update about your work. Of course, as users, we don’t need to know all points that you’re working on but maybe some points who can be communicate with us. I’m also aware that a company need to keep stuff private in order to work well it and to make business. I’m not asking neither that you’re giving us some date of a new feature release or stuff like that, but just some news. Maybe same as a newsletter but every 6-8 months: this could be nice also for you ! If your communicate a bit more with us, we might be able to give your point of view about it, maybe some amelioration who can be added,…
Sorry no images for this point 
8.Simplify the process to export with Anki (or create your own flashcard)
Giving informations before making the point is crucial ! Since I’m using LR for a long time, they were some features that I wasn’t aware of. 10 months ago, I also discovered Anki and to be honest, it did change my study language’s life ! *Who’s not using it, i do recommend it for SURE if you wanna remember words for a long period of time. So at first I started to add word by word in Anki the “learning orange word”. But fews thousands words to add is veryyyyyy long to add ! So maybe after few hundreds added by hand, i found the “export to Anki” feature that Normally export words. But it never worked for me : it was loading for 2-3 minutes and gave me an error message. I still believe that it was because of the HUGE number of words that i wanted to export that couldn’t worked (at that time, around 30.000). Finally i just decided to not adding the words previously marked and i just started adding it ONE by ONE as soon as I saw a new word in series/movies. And actually, it helped me to remember them easily ! Don’t know exactly why, but anyway that’s how i’m working with Anki.
Also, as a member active on this forum, i can tell that this “Anki export” is causing troubles to users, for others reasons, but i can see this topic coming often.
So now that i gave you information we can go to my point : this “Anki export” need to be review a bit. Of course, it’s very useful for a lots of users and it really need to still be existing ! But i do believe, with some hardworking on it, it can become even more useful and easy to use !
BUT while i was reading some topics on the forum, i came with a message from a dev who gave me some happiness but also sadness. Here is the message :
When i read this message, I thought that they’re making a kind of “Anki” app but inside the website ! Which, when thinking about it, it’s very cleaver : doesn’t need to make export anymore, so no more problem ! Except I saw the date of the message (2022/03) and i realized that this feature is existing : PhrasePump ! And, i’m sorry devs but, it wasn’t good. Well, there is one point who make me crazy : it’s just bringing randoms words (which is good) but this point is not enough : i want to be able to choose special word to see it today, or tomorrow, or later ; i want to be able to access. to word that i review and learned (not only the number) ; etc…
To make a final point of it, I think PhrasePump can become way better compared to what is it now ! But as i mentioned upper, this idea to make your own flashcard system is a very good point !!
CONCLUSION
And that’s all ! Actually, when i started writing this, of course I made a draft with a plan to follow but it was short ! And more i was spending time on it, more new ideas was coming, or other way to present the feature I was thinking about and I did spend sooo many hours trying to make all the pictures to make it understandable for everybody. Am I out of idea ? Not at all ! Do i need time before writing others of my ideas ? YES So if you’re reading this, it does mean that you read all, and thank you for that ! I do believe a lot in LR and I also believe that all ideas that users have, maybe good or not, need to be told or written. It can only give new ideas or new point of view for the devs to improve the content of LR. Before leaving you, I want to remember you : All points written upper are ideas (good or not) which can be modify or improve by other user if you wish to complement my work !
Please everybody, don’t hesitate to tell me what you think about those ideas. I’m really impatient to see what are your thinking about those.
Have a very nice day and I wish you good luck on your studies !
I’m very active on the forum, so I will be able to answer you within fews hours
Sorry for my english, it’s not perfect but i tried to be careful on my words