• Logged in versus anonymous use
• What are the Options
• How to put Learnhanzi flashcards on your own site
• Configuration
• Ajax portlet - how it works
• Evaluation
• Report problems and feedback!

Type the correct pinyin in the text box, with tone number at the end, and press "OK" or just hit Enter.

When you are logged in, you work against your own personal database of character knowledge. Every answer you give while practicing is stored in the database. This is used to serve you the characters you need to work on. According to your progress the system will decide if it is time for you to taste some new hanzi or if you need to keep on beating on your constant troublemakers. In the future we will be more democratic and give the user a bigger influence over the study process, but for now Learnhanzi Flashcrads in logged in mode is an old-fashioned, authoritarian (but hopefully wise) teacher.

Know your knowledge
The real advantage comes after you have been working in the system for a while, and built up a virtual representation of your knowledge of Chinese characters. You get a constant count on how many characters you have mastered. And you can get reports on your level, with a detailed description of where your difficulties are. You will be able to tell how many characters you really recognize, you don't have to guess about it. Your practice will be immensly more efficient, since Learnhanzi will always keep track of which characters you tend to miss.

Anonymous mode
Anonymus mode is like Learnhanzi Flashcards always has been. Just select your level in the options dialog and hit the Start button. You will be served random characters selected for frequency and complexity corresponding to the level you have chosen.

Learn mode or Test mode
You can choose to just browse through the flashcards, seeing the definition and pinyin - "Learn Mode" - as opposed to just see the hanzi and having to input the right pinyin - "Test Mode". For Test Mode you have the further option to see or hide the English definition of the hanzi. You always have the opportunity to "turn the card" or cheat, through a link in the top right corner.

Level
There are five different level options, plus "Personal level" which requires log in. The default level is "Intermediate". The levels are defined mainly by character frequency. The lower levels also take stroke count into account. Note that even if the lowest level is called "Just starting" Leranhanzi Flashcards is not really intended as an introduction to Chinese characters but more as a tool to practice and expand your knowledge. We will add a section for complete beginners to this site sometime.

Mixup
The mixup option under the Advanced tab allows you to practice on selected features. You will get sequences of varying lenght of hanzi that have the same pinyin except for on a specific feature. These are features that learners of hanzi (and sometimes native Chinese speakers too!) tend to mix up, like similar initials and finals. There is also a choice to practice on hanzi that differ form one another only in the tone.

The flashcards application is an ajax portlet, which in this case means that it was designed to be easy to add to another web site and that it will load content in the background, without reloading or blocking the page. There are two pieces of code that needs to be added to the page where you want the flashcards: one piece of javascript - lhfc.js - and one piece of css - lhfc.css. Both of them can either be linked to the page or cut-and-pasted into the head element.

Link code to your page

To link the code to your page, first get the two files lhfc.js and lhfc.css- in the download section. Then link to the two files using the "link" and "script" tags respectively:

<link href="lhfc.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="lhfc.js"></script>

Cut-and-paste

Get the two files lhfc.js and lhfc.css in the download section. Select and copy all the code in the two files and paste it inside the "head" element in a "style" and a "script" block respectively:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
The css code goes here.
-->
</style>


<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
Paste the javascript code here.
</script>

Note that you must include all of the content in lhfc.js, with the header and all comments, this is an absolute requirement for permission to use the code.

In the javascript file there are a few important configuration settings:

Positioning

"lf_x", an integer,
"lf_y", an integer and
"lf_relative", true/false

This decides absolute or relative positioning, default is absolute positioning. The portlet layer will positioned relative to the upper left corner at lf_x, lf_y.

If you want to use relative positioning, set lf_relative=true, and add this html to your page where you want the portlet:

<div id='lf_div'></div>

The portlet will be positioned at lf_x, lf_y relative to this element

NOTE: If you want the portlet center-aligned with relative positioning you must use this element:

<div id='lf_div' align='center'></div>

Otherwise Firefox/Mozilla will display the small feedback-cards incorrectly

Region

"lf_region"

This is to control from where the portlet will load data, to make it faster. Set this to "cn" if most of your visitors view your site form inside mainland China, otherwise leave blank.

CSS

The styles in lhfc.css provides a default style for the flashcards application. You can change the styles as you like to fit your site, but be careful with the sizes, you can definitely break the application with the wrong values.

The javascript code from lhfc.js that you link or paste in your "head" element is a "hook", that will load further javascript code to your page from the Learnhanzi.com server. The chinese characters are then loaded on demand through javascript, as gif images, when you press the "Start" button and in the background as needed when you continue.

The character buffer are garbage-collected as you go along and if you are dedicated enough you should be able to practice through all of the 7000+ characters in the database without experiencing any particular delay. The application might display "Loading..." now and then for a moment if you are on a slow connection.

Feedback is given when you press the "Eval" button. The server evaluates your answers and shows you which characters you missed with their correct pinyin and a lexical description.

The feedback function is one of the most important parts of the application It is very simple at this stage but I will work on it soon, to make it much richer.

If you encounter any errors in the flashcards application, anything you think should have worked in some other way or if you have questions or just want to send us a message, send a mail to feedback@learnhanzi.com.