

A better, prettier, cross-browser OK plateau typing tutor - trishume
http://thume.ca/keyzen/

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jfarmer
I think most people who type quickly anticipate the words they're going to
type in the middle of a prior word -- I know I do. The "unit" of typing is
something larger than a word. I think most typing tutors give you the words
coming up to simulate that anticipation.

Being presented a sequence of random, isolated nouns, verbs, and adjective
doesn't seem like typing to me at all, or at least no kind of typing I've done
in practice.

Example sequence: swat repetitious defensive tousled pimpled rerun closure
poke weigh

This seems more useful for improving, say, my typing dexterity and my
vocabulary. :P

Here's a fun one for programmers: <http://typing.io/>

_Edit_ : I see now I can change the number of words displayed at the bottom of
the page. Not great affordance.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance>

~~~
DanBC
> Being presented a sequence of random, isolated nouns, verbs, and adjective
> doesn't seem like typing to me at all, or at least no kind of typing I've
> done in practice.

That's the point. It's to build up muscle memory in the fingers so you use the
correct fingers for typing. It's to bypass bad habits you may have learned
with regular typing.

It is much harder to type those typing drills, but they do help when you're
building your rhythm and speed.

~~~
jfarmer
That's fair! I didn't understand the design considerations. The author should
clarify those considerations, then.

That would help me, the user, know what to expect and therefore avoid an
unpleasant first-time experience. It would also help differentiate this typing
tutor from all the other ones.

I'm a reflective guy so I was able to think of a scenario where this tool was
useful, but _still assumed it was meant for another scenario_. Most users will
just pattern match this against all the other typing tutors they've used, find
it unusual, and never come back.

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SeanLuke
This tutor has a problem. When presented with a new test, people naturally
have a short but significant cognitive lag until they clue into what they
should be typing. But this tutor's timer starts immediately, including the
lag. As a result, if used as a speed test, the tutor's measurement of typing
speed is _very_ inaccurate.

The basic issue here is the length of the word string. Normally speed tests
have long documents, and as a result the cognitive start-up lag is a constant
lost in the noise. But with a very short word string the lag is perhaps as
much as a third of the allotted typing time.

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antiterra
There's no word wrap when you add multiple words, the large size of the text
requires an unnatural scan of the eyes, and the single word default is of
questionable utility to someone training for 100+ wpm. Typeracer is more fun.

Keyzen itself actually has the benefit of training typing on all of the
symbols on the keyboard, something that "Keyzen Words+Plateau" seems to throw
away entirely, unless I'm missing something.

~~~
edgeztv
I'm the creator of Typeracer. When I launched it 5 years ago I had a similar
UI - one line of scrolling text in a larger font, but based on user feedback
ended up with the more natural UI of static text in a smaller font. Thanks for
the compliment!

~~~
dergachev
Just tried Typeracer... It's so awesome! Definitely much more fun than OP. Did
you ever make money from it? Maybe consider making a social mobile app?

~~~
edgeztv
Thanks! I got it to ramen-profitable after a couple years. Would be cool to
make a mobile app. I'm sort of looking for a partner for that.

~~~
dergachev
Man so far I've been spending 10 minutes a day on typeracer, as a morning
warmup. You did a great job on making it fun!

Some random ideas I have about it (since it's easier to talk about stuff than
to build it): * Your quotes are all from famous books and movies, and you have
affiliate links to Amazon... brilliant! * Do you have a mechanism that
minimizes repetition? * Do you ever need to fake competition? * Could you
visualize mistakes as crashes, to keep things exciting? * Consider making a
keyboard UI for the site (Although I use vimium) * Build a mechanism to
challenge your friends. * Analyze history and plot it. Take into account
difficulty of paragraphs (come up with difficulty rating based on your user
data). * Give typing tips; perhaps it's enough to analyze words that the user
mistyped, and offer them more passages with them. * Improve the CSS. The UI
should reflect the incredibly high level of polish in the gameplay.

Maybe I'll have more random ideas when I play it tomorrow. ;)

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farnsworth
Might be prettier, but I find the text shadow, low contrast gray-on-gray, and
the diagonal background pattern distracting from reading/typing. Also, this is
a typing tutor but I can only see one word at a time? I always read/think
ahead when typing.

~~~
trishume
There is a setting for that, look on the bottom. The setting doesn't make it
perfect but it is certainly better.

I used the design from the original key zen which is fairly pretty but I now
realize not optimal for typing.

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JMill
I like it.

Suggestions: As a user commented on another post, it's a bit tough to type
fast without seeing more words on the screen. I settled on 3 words at a time
which was okay('ish).

I'd be interested in trying it with the timer bar going from left to right
instead of growing from the center. Would give things more of a 'race'
feeling.

The sound effects are nice.

Nice resume site, btw. You're very accomplished!

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iamthad
There seems to be a bug: when you reach the end of a line, you can no longer
go back and correct letters, even though you have not yet advanced by pressing
space.

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richforrester
I'd be a LOT better at this if my brain didn't convert the ⎵ into a _ all the
time.

Which kind of makes sense, because "⎵" is more like "_" than like " ".

~~~
trishume
Fixed in latest push.

~~~
richforrester
Awesome, I'll attempt it again :)

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dergachev
Generally if I type a wrong lretter, I prefer to type out the correct one
immediately and then delete afterward finishing the sentence. Perhaps you
could offer a scoring mode that counted only 1 mistake for it?

Also I didn't realize backspace was supported.

Aside from that, fun little game, well done!

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crazydiamond
Seems to hang (stop responding if i make a couple of errors), I am able to
backspace, but unable to type further. This happened both on Firefox and
Safari (OSX ML). On FF, i got some error about javaac or javacc. However, by
pressing space, i could start a new page.

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JoshTriplett
When capturing keyboard keys, please don't capture anything with modifiers
other than shift. Trying to hit ctrl-r (refresh) or ctrl-t (new tab) captures
the letter as though typed and blocks the browser action.

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nicholassmith
One thing I'd suggest is having a big 'sounds off' toggle somewhere. Aside
from that and the unfortunate thing of shouting "You're spelling things wrong"
due to UK/US deviations, I thought it was quite nice.

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zacwest
I got better at typing with my right hand by making my password a long string
of words typed exclusively by the right hand. It's helped a lot.

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mkrecny
@trishume are you collecting data around what errors people are making ...
would really love to see what that looks like.

~~~
trishume
No I don't collect any data, it is all done with localStorage. I agree it
would be interesting though.

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nvr219
Only 70 WPM? Talk about a blow to my ego.

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sltkr
Bug report: if I hit backspace at the end of a line, I'm not allowed to
correct my mistakes!

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iamtherockstar
As I punched out a few of these, I found that I had a hard time just typing
letter by letter. I'd stumble over letters and make mistakes. If I read the
words, I could type them consistently without mistakes.

I use the US Dvorak layout, but I can't imagine that's relevant.

~~~
trishume
I actually designed this when I hit the ok plateau learning Dvorak, so semi-
relevant!

