Arrows don't work without shaded words on the page

When I am doing stuff line by line it easily happens that a line has no shaded word. In that case the arrows left or right both do not work. I have to reach for the mouse to get to the next page. The same happens if I am not in a line-by-line mode, but all the words are status 4 or known.

The behaviour I would expect is that the right arrow would move to the next page, and the left arrow to the previous page, if a page does not contain a shaded word. That way I can browse even the finished lessons with arrows.

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Pressing “Shift + Arrow” in this case will page you over to the next page.

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It seems “shift + arrow” throw me into review. Anyways, would make more sense if arrow to the right would either go to the next shaded word, or the next page. No longer working is … well not what I expect.

I have noticed the left/right arrows work moving to next shaded word, but the up and down arrows don’t move to the next blue words

That appears to happen when you have “Review LingQs when paging” option selected in your Reader settings. Without that option selected shift-arrow just goes to the next page. I hadn’t known abouth the shift-arrow before, so I never knew what that option really was for. Now I know.

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While it is true that you can turn pages using shift+arrow, I definitely agree with what you wrote here:

I often find myself expecting this to happen, and have to remember to use shift-arrow instead. Perhaps the team can consider implementing your suggestion as well, to allow turning pages using the arrow keys when no shaded words are shown.

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Reviving this thread to add the following point: Regardless of whether there are shaded words on the page, the arrows don’t work whenever you do not have a word “selected” (ie, when you see the “quick start guide” on the right rather than details for a selected word). What this means is that, when you reach the last blue word on a page, if you turn that word into a LingQ, it will remain selected, allowing you to use the arrow keys to move to the next page. Whereas if you mark that word known, it becomes deselected, meaning you cannot use the arrow keys to move to the next page, and you must use shift-arrow (or the mouse) instead. (The situation is the same when in sentence mode.)

This current behavior is rather confusing. It often distracts me when I am trying to concentrate on the content of the lesson. Why should the interface behavior change depending on whether I marked the last word as a LingQ or as a known word? It seems like a meaningless distinction. I realize there may be reasons that this is the way things are, but if possible, it would be preferable for arrow keys to allow moving between pages (or sentences) when no word is selected. Thanks.

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I agree with your post, but I have one question. When I use a lingq and set it to either 4 or k (both are concidered words you know, but K is never queried in reviews), the word stays selected. When using the keyboard keys, I do not have the symptom you describe of losing focus on the word.

So the question is: how do you declare a word known? Do you use the mouse in stead of 4 or k?

Good point. The difference is whether you are dealing with a yellow or blue word. When setting a yellow word to known, the word stays selected. When setting a blue word to known, the next colored word (yellow or blue) gets selected … unless you are dealing with the final colored word on the page, in which case the word loses focus (and the “quick start guide” pops up). And at that point the arrow keys stop working.

Edit to answer your question: I almost always use the keyboard. But it actually doesn’t matter; the behavior is the same. Hopefully the explanation above makes it clear why you were seeing something else.

Ah, that does explain it. I always do enter some kind of defition, or if I like the one offered, I will press first. That makes the word orange and it stays selected. So you could do the same, until fixed. As I understand it, November should reveal some new software, although this was not a formal promiss. Literally it was “for now we are shooting for november”. That was in september I think.

Anyway, just make the blue word orange first, by pressing enter or entering your own definition. Hope it helps.

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The problem is: When you do that (as I do), it counts for your daily LingQs, which doesn’t make sense.

Not sure it does not make sense. Whether you immediately make a word known, or first phase 1 and then known, it is still the same lingq you created., and thus should be counted. I may have misunderstood you. If so, please explain.

That would make sense, but that’s not how it works: The word that was added as phase 1 and then known still counts for your target of new LingQs created per day. It shouldn’t.

The word that was added as phase 1 and then known still counts for your target of new LingQs created per day. It shouldn’t.

I may be too thickheaded to understand.

If you change a word from new to 1, you create a new lingq, so it should count for your target of new lingqs created per day. I don’t see why it should not count.

Not sure what happens if you make it known straight away. Maybe you don’t create a lingq that way.

OT: I wonder if it is worth worrying about. Does it really matter?

I would guess that the confusion here is about what “should” means. Changing a new word from blue to white gives you “credit” for knowing a wod. Changing a new word from blue to yellow to white gives you “credit” for creating a LingQ and then also for making it known. Someone who wanted to climb in the rankings would never mark a new word known directly, because that forfeits a potential LingQ. Instead, they would always change it to yellow first. It does “make sense” that the system works this way, but it also feels like something you “shouldn’t” do. Of course, the rankings don’t matter, and so this detail doesn’t matter either. (As for me, using shift-arrows is an easy enough way to turn the page, so I have not been marking words yellow just to keep focus on a word, as you suggested. But I still think there are better ways that the arrow keys could handle page turning.)

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Nice. Thanks for the explanation. The funny thing is I have always made words graduate through the yellow stages to the known stage, even if I was fairly sure I might recognize them: I want to be sure I really do. Sometimes I have to degrade a word back to 3, because it turns out to have a meaning I had forgotten. In Finnish many words have very different meanings depending on inflection of other words, so I am very careful with a move directly to known.

Of course if you already (partially) know a language, you could use the page facility to promote words to known without creating a lingq with definition.

Thank you all for your comments.