John,

If you're still reading this thread a km or 2 below the start, any chance of fixing the RSS feed problem sometime soon?

Phil, the RSS feeds are still a big mess. Basic run-down:

• In NetNewsWire (Mac product from the NewsGator family, and the feed reader I normally use) mostly nothing works. I just get the initial posts, and then the links are broken anyway - I just get taken to the "Me" page, whatever the feed.
• Two things do work in NetNewsWire: the User Conversations RSS feed, and the Grammar Conversations feed. They do however seem to be about four hours late. The new posts appear, and the links work.
• In NetVibes: "All Conversations" feed does NOT work - I just get the initial posts. Like in NetNewsWire, links just lead to the "Me" page.
• In NetVibes: the other feeds do seem to work: User Conversations, Lesson Conversations, Extra Conversations, Glossary Conversations, Grammar Conversations all seem OK. (These other feeds are accessible when you use the pull-down menu for "Show" at the top of the Conversations tab; when you choose different things to show, the RSS icon link also changes.)

LostInAsia, has there been any progress with the RSS conversations feeds problem? I've been away again for a while but I still get only the original thread starter post or lesson intros.

Inner Mongolia was very interesting. Unfortunately I was there for business but since business is wind turbines I was out in the hills and staying on the wind farm! It is quite picturesque at this time of year with rolling green hills with sheep and lambs dotted around amongst the hundreds of turbines. A colleague there has a Mongolian girlfriend and they were presented with a horse as a gift during a visit to her home!

Thanks, Adii, appreciate the reply. It may have sounded like I was being a pest. But it was only because to me it went to the fundamental matter of whether we should rely upon or integrate into our studies ANY new feature announced by ChinesePod, if just a few months later that new feature may be eliminated without explanation. So good to hear that the technical team is aware of the issue and is working on it. Thanks again.

Hi Lordstanley

The technical staff still working on the Vocabulary manager. Once it's finish you should be able to edit the Chinese character, pinyin and English fields and be able to choose display 20, 50, or 100 vocabulary words per page.

Dave gets a response.

I received an email from ChinesePod yesterday which cited the Vocabulary Manager as one of two example features (the other being Audio Review) accessible to Premium subscribers (which I am). So that prompted me to check in and ask when the "lost" features of the Vocabulary Manager, as politely pointed out by Lazy Pupil and Jane and which I also noted, are going to be restored. In summary: a) list by more than 20 words at a time; b) edit pinyin; c) edit definition; d) link to related lessons; and e) import vocabulary. Awaiting a response. Thanks.

Thanks for working so hard on the upgraded site. I'm really liking it, especially the Lesson Manager. I've been on the site almost all day trying to knock my 426 bookmarked lessons down! Maybe someday...

I just discovered that you fixed the sound problem in old lessons.  Great!  Now I can go back and fill in the lessons I skipped.

kait,

They were once premium content (available during your free trial), but have since been made free.

were the downloadable pinyin pronunciation chart and online guide always available?  either way, i hadn't found them until recently...  incredibly nifty, and i spent most of an afternoon driving my boyfriend nuts while i worked on getting all my z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, j, q, and x sounds straight!  thanks chinesepod.

jane,

The loss of sound on many of the older lessons was a result of a backwards compatibility issue when we upgraded our system. It was quite complicated to isolate and correct the issue, but we have finally done it today.

We are really sorry about the issue, and are working hard to get all the backwards compatibility issues solved once and for all so this kind of problem cannot recur.

Where can I find some explanation for the lack of sound in any lesson and though it is of minor importance the lack of any pictures with the lessons?  I hope work is in progress to restore the facilities available prior to May 27.

I agree with the points made by lordstanley especially point b).

What is the explanation of the loss of sound in many lessons today?

I can open the "comments" tabs in the Grammar Guide and read the comments now, no problem. Thanks CPOD! 

While I like much of the new look, I was a bit surprised that 3 features of the Vocabulary Manager that had been added last year seem now to have been dropped: a) ability to display more than 20 entries per page; b) ability to edit the pinyin translation or the definition; and c) total count of how many entries are in your vocab manager (was a good way to check whether a vocab you tried to add has in fact been added).

Grammar Guide: I am still getting only this kind of code whenever I try to open the "Comments" tabs;I want to keep this on CPOD's to-do list as we are now approaching the 3-week mark since the launch of V4: 

); return false; }else{ $(this).val("Waiting...").attr("disabled", true); $.ajax({ type : "POST", url : "/resources/grammar/addcomment/"+pid, data : "cmt="+encodeURIComponent(comment), success:function(msg) { if (msg == "succeed") { $("#addComment").val("Add Comment").attr("disabled", false); tinyMCE.getInstanceById('comment').setContent(""); get_comments(); } else { $("#addComment").val("Add Failed,Please Retrieve!").attr("disabled", false); } } }); } }); }); // get lesson comments function get_comments(){ $("#vocab-ajax-loader").fadeIn(); var param = window.location.href; var index = param.lastIndexOf('#'); $.ajax({ type: "GET", url : "/resources/grammar/getcomment/"+pid, success: function(response){ $("#vocab-ajax-loader").fadeOut(); $("#ajax_comment").html(response); if (index >0) { var anchor = param.substr(index); window.location = anchor; } } }); }

Why are the trad. characters in the vocab popups so small?

John

I too have problems printing the expansion sentences. Today I got 3 pages for 1 page  with the sentences on it.

Why not have an "environment friendly" option ? (we don't need all the useless information such as "topics", "ID", "date" and "affiliate program".... We can have those just on the computer.

By the way Cpoddies don't try to help me by telling me to click on this and that! I'm a basic computer user! Everything seems difficult for me to do as far as my computer is concerned !!!

That's why one "environment friendly sign" would be just what I need !!!!

Can we please have the option of 64k files with the transcripts and without the ads for paying subscribers? I'm guessing what i'm getting is off the free feed and i'm finding the lack of trascripts and the ads kinda annoying

Today's lesson should be in your feeds now. That was actually a separate issue related to the publication time. It shouldn't happen again.

As for why we don't include easy links everywhere for the traditional PDF and HTML files, yes, it's because of the clutter. The site is already quite difficult for absolute beginners, and more options means more complexity, i.e. a harder to use site. Of course, adding more options for "power users" without increasing complexity for regular users is always a good thing, so we're very open to that kind of thing.

Yes, the itunes author in the feed is fixed (the actual ID3tags in the MP3s that you download directly never changed), displaying ChinesePod.com again.

I'll look into the rating issue, wolson.

More changes soon!

LostInAsia:

maybe it's against CP's business model making things THAT easy. Why? I dont know. One of the biggest secrets of CP is, why those links to the HTML files are not in an easy manner accessible.

And traditional script may be politically incorrect in CP's point of view (ties to Confucius Institute. or maybe some kind of (unwritten) law in the PRC?), so no easy access?

Issue: today's Elementary Lesson (Hungry Traveler - Hong Kong) didn't come through on my feed. So I guess the feeds are still a little unstable.

Ah, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? You need to know the secret handshake for copying and pasting the lesson text:

1. Copy the "Lesson Transcript PDF" link.
2. Paste that link into your browser address bar.
3. See the ".pdf" at the end? Replace "pdf" with "html".
4. (Extra step if you want traditional: replace "###.pdf" with "###trad.html")
5. Now you're at the html, which is much friendlier for cutting and pasting. (Formatting tip: on my Mac, I find TextEdit easier to work with than MS Word - fewer odd formatting issues.)

As for copying the expansion sentences: that, alas, is now a royal pain. It didn't use to be. But who wants to be studying Chinese when you could be deleting messy bits of code from the lesson document you've just made on your terms?

Of course, ChinesePod COULD also add little icons for "Traditional PDF", "Simplified HTML", and "Traditional HTML", but that would... uh... add clutter? Make things clearer for new users?

Yes, I sound bitter about this, but it's been an issue for a LONG time.

"Learning on your terms" - that's CP's slogan.

But why is it so difficult to copy and paste the lesson text and the expansion sentences into a file on my computer?

Please make it easier!

Thanks for returning to ChinesePod.com in the podcast metadata.

On RSS feeds: in NetNewsWire, the feeds seem to work only when first added. Refreshing then brings up only the thread-starting posts, not further posts. I haven't tested this by re-adding feeds because I'm tired of re-adding feeds. Please let us know when we should try testing again.

In Netvibes, the All Conversations feed has the same problem - the starting-post reappears when any new content is added.

However, most of the other RSS feeds do work for me in Netvibes (but NOT in NetNewsWire): Lesson, User, and Extra conversations are working. Grammar, Glossary, and All are not.

Phil, I can't believe I didn't comment on your going to Inner Mongolia - that must have been interesting. I've been vaguely eager to get to Mongolia (OK, outer) ever since I met a Kiwi couple that had bought a horse there much the way they'd buy a second-hand car in Australia: a good way to get around for a few weeks or months. 

John,

You might want to check the rating stars: when I click on rating a lessen 5, I get a return that I have rated it a 3.

Thanks for keeping up the feedback, guys. I'm still working on getting everything working perfectly.

Correction to the above. Netvibes worked once. After a reload (and a log out/log in) it is back to lesson intros and initial posts

I've opened up Netvibes for the first time in months, replaced the All Conversations feed and as far as I can see that is working fine and lines up with the conversations on the Community tab. Replaced the feed for a second time on Bloglines but just the same as before. Tried Google Reader too; that appears to be almost working but whilst posts (as opposed to lesson intros or initial posts) are appearing, they don't line up quite so well as Netvibes. Yes, weird.

Hmm. Weirder and weirder. I'm on a Mac and use NetNewsWire and NetVibes - and the RSS feeds are now working fairly well in both. Just to reiterate (probably unnecessarily): I had to erase the old ones, and add them again. With NetNewsWire, drag and drop with the icon; with NetVibes, copy and paste the URL. I'm not sure what to suggest... I've never tried using Firefox's newsreader or Bloglines.

Remaining RSS issues on my system:

• date stamp on NetVibes tells me 7 hours ago for things posted a few minutes ago (obviously very minor, but may indicate a deeper problem)
• refreshing the stream still seems a little strange... things aren't coming through quite right, I think. But still too early to say.

LostInAsia,

Tried that, no change for me (Firefox RC1 and Bloglines)

My apologies... RSS feeds ARE working now. However, for those who use RSS feeds, you'll need to erase all the old ones and add them to your stream again. Even if you already added the correct "new V4" URLs (as I did), you'll still have to delete and re-add. 

The RSS feed is indicated by the little orange square that you can see... well, all over the place actually. The main ones of use to me are when I go to Community tab. There's the little drop down menu "Show: All conversations" with an orange box beside that. Drag and drop that box into your feed reader. Also, if you change the drop down menu to "My Conversations", or any of the other ones, each has its own RSS feed. It's quite good for discovering any unread content - Bazza, this can give you a way to see all unread posts, in whatever conversation.

The feeds now seem to be stable - I'm getting the Qing Wen and I believe also the Newbie lessons. Thanks for sorting that out.

All other issues I listed above remain a problem.

An additional issue: why is there such an addiction to multiple pages at this site?! I've been adding a bunch of lesson sets, and now there are two pages of lesson sets - with an apparent maximum of ten sets per page. Why so small? Why not 20 or 30 or even 50? It's not as if they take up much real estate on the page - the full ten sets pretty much just take up one "page view" in my browser window, but I've still got to click again to look at the next few sets. ChinesePod must make browsing easier and less reliant on clicking through again and again and again.

Okay, this is the kind of code that I see in the "comments box" -- reproduced here in its entirety -- when I open a thread from the Conversations menu; hope it displays alright here (instead of becoming part of the code for this comment):

@LostInAsia: You're probably on to something there. I am using Leopard because something terrible happened to my old Mac, and the only solution I could afford was a new Mac Mini. This set-up is not giving me problems anywhere else; in fact, most applications (including browsing with Safari) seem to work better. 

The next time I run into that code, I'll copy it and post it here just in case CPOD's tech guys can get some clues from it. Hang in there, CPOD.

auntie68, I haven't had that problem, and I seem to be posting an awful lot lately - I'm using Safari 3.1.1 with Tiger. Perhaps it's a Leopard vs Tiger issue?

LostInAsia, thanks, I get that "Keyword is Empty" message frequently too. I know what you mean.

Another thing I notice is that when I select a particular thread from the "Conversations" page, when the page opens up there is some strange code in the "Comments" box where you are supposed to type your comments.

Simply deleting that strange code and going straight into typing my comment is not enough, I have to refresh the page first before writing, or else the page will freeze. I could have typed a comment, but selecting the "Add Comment" button will not do anything.

Am I the only one out there who is experiencing this? I'm a Mac user (Leopard) using Safari as my browser. Many thanks, CPOD, for looking into this after you've finished sorting out the urgent issues.

I combine the html transcript with the expansion sentences - so in my own text file for each lesson, I copy the expansion sentences "into" the vocabulary list from the html.

Thanks bluejay for the tip, but I do like having the expansion sentences and dialogue in the same file, because it's then searchable and also accessible for other things (flashcards and so on).

jwosmun, you're right it doesn't take much time, but it does take a few minutes every time, and it's a pain. More importantly, it seems unnecessary to me - this is a problem that didn't exist before, so presumably whatever's causing the problem can be undone.

I suppose the pasting is now a little bit more complicated because they've changed the order of the expansion sentences - I think the vocabulary is now listed alphabetically by pinyin, rather than by the order of appearance in the dialogue. So I have to hunt in the transcript a bit more for the vocab. Whatever - that's fine. But I get annoyed by problems that don't have to be there. (Like not being able to link straight through to the html!) It seems like every upgrade makes my workflow MORE complicated, not less (e.g. the new flash players).

Additional issue (I should have numbered the ones in my earlier list, oh well):

1. Sometimes, when using the Search box, I'll get "Keyword is Empty!" and have to hit enter twice to get rid of that warning. I then have to open another window to be able to use Search. Sometimes this happens, sometimes not - I can't see a pattern yet. This is in Safari. I haven't yet noticed this problem in Firefox.

The pdf that I get does not have the Expansion section, and if it did, the html version is easily available. Copying the whole Expansion section, pasting, and then deleting the parts not wanted only takes about 1 min., which is not really a big problem.

LostInAsia, Calkins, instead of cutting and pasting the Expansion sections I just print a pdf to the computer - this may not be very convenient for formatting purposes, but it is functional and pretty quick.

Hi. I would like to suggest a couple of things that CPOD might want to look at after the urgent needs of the Premium subscribers (RSS issues etc) have been ironed out:

Grammar guide: Quite a lot of this seems to be "under construction", or still "beglitched". Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any signposts to warn users.

Eg. When I click on "Particles" in the Grammar Guide's home page, it brings me to a page containing several links to different types of particles ("Oh good!"). But none of these links seem to contain anything, in fact all of these links bring me straight back to the home page ie:

http://chinesepod.com/resources/grammar

What a waste of my time. Why should your users have to click their way through successive screens and/or try out half a dozen promising-looking links just to find out for themselves that what they're looking for is actually a dead link? This is the kind of testing that CPOD should do, not the users.

There is also some technical glitch which prevents me from viewing any comments whatsoever under the "Discussion" tabs, even though I can see the first line of latest comments in the "Conversations" page.

I appreciate the idea of a Grammar Guide, and I am really impressed by the clever idea of including user comments/ discussions. However, I hope that CPOD will not let the idea of including brief "grammar notes" of some kind in the lesson pdfs simply die.

Putting a grammar note in the lesson pdf itself has one simple, but very practical, benefit: It ties the grammar point to the context in which that point was first learned. And it would also go some way towards addressing the difficulties that some users have reported in adapting to grammar explanations in the Mandarin banter as they try to break into the next level up.  

Lesson Sets: I went into that thinking that I might -- say -- be able to find a quick way to all the "Lili love saga" or "Beauty Pageant" lessons. To my surprise, the lesson sets seem to include contributions by users. That would be great, except that I couldn't (and still can't) find any information on how to contribute/ submit a list, or how this feature is supposed to work.

Eg. There was one set which consisted of 120+ lessons with no theme save for the fact that they were lessons which the contributor had "studied little" (or something to that effect). Is this a feature which will be in the hands of the users, or can we present our sets to CPOD for vetting? At the moment, I don't have a clue because I can't find the information.

This is not intended to upset anybody at CPOD. I know that you have a lot on your plate now, but I honestly have no way of telling if you are aware of these "non-urgent" issues. We're already 10 days into V4, and it still feels disturbingly like a "soft launch" in many ways, even though you've seem to have decided to treat it as "business as usual" rather than a soft launch. 

LostInAsia,

Just to let them know that there are at least two of us annoyed with the RSS feed problem. Been away in Inner Mongolia for the week with no internet and surprised to find RSS feeds still not working today. There doesn't seem to be the same focus on the RSS feeds as there was with the v3 upgrade. The latest update was from John, 5 days ago, stating that RSS feeds "should be working much better"...and they're not.

Hey John! Thanks for the grammar guide! It really helped me a lot on conjunctions and prepositions.:D

@LostInAsia: Thanks for including the (small but annoying) MP3 metadata change, which I had brought up too, in your roundup of current issues.

Since the change from "ChinesePod.com" to "ChinesePod" is fairly recent -- only since the 27 May "Billiards" lesson -- I hope that CPOD will consider reverting to the old field label. That would save me A LOT of time changing the label for the MP3s on my Mac, as well as for the double backups on my external drives! Thanks!

• Community RSS feeds still aren't differentiating between All/ User/ My/ Glossary/ Grammar...
• Community RSS feeds are still just feeding out the initial post, not later comments.
• Community RSS feeds link only to the "My Lessons" page, not to the conversation.
• When copying and pasting from Expansion sentences, there are still big messes of code (for the audio) that need to be deleted. This has rapidly gone from "Oh, that's odd" to "[Expletive] pain in the [expletive]."
• Getting to the html transcript remains more of a chore than it should be, what with copying links, pasting links, and overwriting parts of the URL.
• Glossary results aren't working. For example, I enter "computer" and it tells me there are no results, then with lots of example sentences and some relevant lessons.
• Keywords and searching are either next to hopeless or I'm missing something. "Korea" doesn't bring up the "Seoul" or "Korean Pop Culture" (in advanced) lessons; entering "Macau", "Macao", or "gambling" doesn't pull up the Advanced Macao Gambling lesson; NOTHING in English seems to pull up an Advanced lesson. Suggestion: let users add keywords and tags.
• "My feed" and iTunes subscription feeds are unstable. Despite repeatedly checking off the boxes, I can't seem to get Qing Wen or Newbie lessons; others seem unable to get Traditional PDFs.
• Minor but annoying issue: MP3s downloaded from iTunes now have "ChinesePod" as the artist, not "ChinesePod.com". As others have mentioned, this has the potential to really mess up playlists. Now I'm either going to have to rename the Artist in every new podcast, or hang my computer for a couple of hours by renaming the 2000+ old ones. But I don't want to do that because the metadata may change again next week. Suggestion: Please try to at least keep the metadata consistent - these changes can lead to a royal pain for some users. (To ChinesePod's credit, this is the first metadata shift in a while; back in the early days of the site, such changes seemed to be happening every week or two.)
• Traditional Plug-in for Firefox doesn't yet work for Firefox 3. This will become a big issue in a few weeks, when Firefox 3 becomes the "main version".
• Often the most efficient way for me to find a lesson on ChinesePod's site: open iTunes on my system. Search in iTunes field for the lesson. (If this fails, use Spotlight on my system to find the lesson.) Note track number of lesson. Now I finally go to ChinesePod. In glossary, type the lesson number, which must be preceded by a zero, to call up the lesson. There has GOT to be a better way.
• Suggestion: big page of all lessons. Just the name, level, number, and link (And with English translations of Advanced titles.) No changing the page after ten lessons, no clicking clicking clicking clicking to get to a lesson you knew was a few months back. If this would be too big for one page, make it something like 100 items, filtered by level or date or whatever. Call it "Master List".
• General concern: how on earth do new users, who don't know what's available on this site, react?! I've been here a long time, I know most of what's here, and I find moving around a royal pain. How about the new users?

Yeah, sorting by Channel (used to be Difficulty) in Manage Archives is working... YEAH!

Thanks John & CPod folks!

Another (small, insignificant) one:

On the mobile site the "remember me" checkbox in the login window does not seem to have any effect. At least not on my MDA.

bazza,

Hmmm, I wouldn't say there's no chance, but new features like that certainly aren't at the top of the tech team's priority list.

And Henning, penben, and auntie68, you're welcome! Just doing my job...

John, thank you much for working so hard on the tweaks, and for finding the time to even keep us updated. It's much appreciated. As a Basic Subscriber, I'm already taken care of now that the lesson counts are back. Yay!!! Again, thanks.

John, any chance of a "Posts Since Last Visit" filter?

Thanks John.  I appreciate the update.

Hi John!

特棒了， 谢谢! I guess the "lesson count" is what you internally call a "make Henning stop whining fix"

Love the band cassielin!

penben,

The items we're working on are many, and constantly being updated. We're continuously testing fixes and existing issues across all three LanguagePod sites. I think the best thing to do for now is to keep you updated through this thread.

Latest change: lesson counts now appear on the Channels page.

Working on: "No Data" audio issue, better profile page, lesson archive manager usability tweaks, better lesson sets page, flashcard usability tweaks, lesson topic/function tags, Community RSS feed link issues.

henning,

I got to know cpod in Nov,2007 so that is why i don't know cpod once had smilies before. Thank you for telling me this.^_^

And Bazza, 哈哈，thank you very much for those funny smilies, they are very cool.

Still hope Cpod will get the smilies back, b/c i am a little lazy, I don't want to go to the forum just for copy this smilies and paste on my comments here.

Chinesepod band? (Ken, John, Jenny, Amber, Clay, Connie)

哈哈

we are poddies!

How funny! But maybe my chubby dog would be scared.....

Bazza, Wild!

You can select them all at once and drag them across all together.

You can actually drag and drop them from the forum popup window.

Can I just copy them via copy&paste from your post, Bazza?

Cool, I can!

We need to prepare a smiley stone pit post!

cassielin says

4 hours ago

John, how about add another function into comment board. I hope we can use some facial expressions表情 when we do a comment.

Cassie, do you mean smilies?

Feel free to steal them off the forum.

Hi Mayue,

I too am having a difficult time with the dictionary. There aren't as many words in the new glossary as in the previous version. I find that certain words that I was able to look up in the old version are not defined in the new version. (Such as the word "reply", only one sentence comes up.)Hopefully these words will be added in the future.

Cassie,
yes, CPod had smilies up to a year ago (May 2007) - that feature has been temporary disabled for the switch to V3. They were used rather intensively (someone here still remembers Tsin_Ping?).

Should not be too hard to bring them back, although I admit it is not top priority. Right after Memory Isle (only practice, without that "story").

John,

Is there any way you could share with us the list of issues that are being worked on?  I realize there's no way to provide dates and meet them (being a software engineer myself, I'm well aware of the variability of bug fixing), but it would be comforting for us to know the feature fixes we're so eagerly awaiting are going to be worked on.

Thanks!

John, how about add another function into comment board. I hope we can use some facial expressions表情 when we do a comment.

呵呵，that's my wish. I know you and all chinesepod crew work very hard for giving our poddies a better new chinesepod and a better learning experience. Thank you!

Thank you very much, John and CPod tech team : ) I really like the bigger font size. I like seeing more conversations per page. A minor point: it seems to me that there is a lot of wasted space between posts.

The fixes are still underway. You'll notice:

• There are now 20 conversations displayed on the Community page.
• All RSS feeds should be working much better.
• Words added by clicking are encoded correctly now.
  

Thank you John for the bigger text. Much better.

Hi Chinesepod,

Thank you very much for big font. I'm sure that everybody is satisfied with that. And there is one more thing I'd like to ask you of.

Is it technically possible to change the rule for line break so that you can reduce "wasted space" often seen in comments?

Otherwise, already long thread, just like this one, would become so much longer, especially after font size became bigger.

Since I could not save the vocabulary to the manager, I left clicked some words from the dialogue with the following result:

å

gùdìng

fixed

西è£

xÄ«zhuÄ

Western-style suit

ä»·æ ¼

jiàgé

price

ç

yóuyú

since

Thank you for changing the fonts! Now, I really like it.

The What is This Newbie lesson has no sound for practicing the dialouge and expansion.

I am having difficulties using the Dictionary feature (i.e. looking up words) -- a search result comes up as "There are no entry for this term" sometimes even when the word is in your database. For ex: I looked up "yiqie" and got back a blank, but when I looked up "all" I got 一切 among other responses. When I looked up 一切 I got a list of lessons (or examples, I forget) where the word is used but not the translation ("all").

I am hoping these are just momentary bugs.

By the way, can a user ask for additions to be made to the dictionary? (or propose an addition that would be vetted by someone at your end)?

Hey!

I was trying to take the tour of the "me" section.  I got a box that said 1 of 6, but then it just stayed there.  No matter what I clicked, it just went away. 

I wonder what's in 2 of 6 thru 6 of 6?

Charley

I was trying to add the "Jizhou " set that Bazza created to my lesson list. 

It is not clear how to add it.  Instructional video says "add it with a single click".  Not sure what to click.

Also, how does one create a set?

Hi,

previously I could mark in the vocabulary manager those vocabulary, which I had learned already, to "not show again" in the next session. This tick-box is now missing under the new design. How can I achieve the same in an easy way (I do not want to go through all my hundreds of words, but do it during review)?

thanks

Roland

oh, cool, thank you joannah!

And again, thank you chinesepod crew for this awesome new cpod.

the search box at the top of the page brings up both dictionary and related lessons

Oh, guys, I have a question!

Where is the chinesepod dictionary!

There was a chinesepod dictionary and I really like it! It helps a lot!

哈哈！　对对！　我意味了十个页面。。

@light487: Hmm, that makes sense to me too. I have to agree with you. Btw, you mean "... limited to only 10 conversations per page", right?

@jimkahl: Agree that lesson counts for each level would be useful. This has been requested by other users too, so let's hope CPOD will agree.

@CPOD: Oh no. Now that we've reached the weekend, the decent loading speeds which I was so happy about yesterday have reverted to a crawl...

I really like the new look.  Was elated that the grammar guide is back.  I also like the most recently added "Guided" level, for those of us that can not afford the "Executive" Level this provides an attractive and affordable alternative.  I do have a couple of complaints however, first, there should be a way of knowing how many lessons are in each category like there was before.  Also, there should be a way to sort in a category as before, by popularity, date, etc.  I like the idea that you are willing to make continuous improvements.  Keep it up CPod.

I find it useful to have the original poster's avatar there to be honest. It helps me locate the post I am looking for quicker, since now that we are limited to only 10 conversations per post, I need to quickly sort through each page of 10 at a glance... Since the large amount of room is being given to each conversation, may be a smaller avatar icon next to the Last Poster's post can be displayed.

Why have i started to get ads and incomplete transcripts on my lessons mp3s? Both are kinda annoying

Hello. Here is a request which is not urgent, but which I hope will receive consideration at some point:

A couple of days ago, when V4 first rolled out, the "subtitle" (can we call it that?) for each user thread in the "Conversations" display consisted of the OP's first line in that thread.

That being the case, having the OP's avatar as the bullet made sense.

Now that the "subtitle" has -- very sensibly -- been changed to the last post in that thread, which may not be by the OP, having the OP's avatar there seems a bit jarring, illogical. Quite often in the past few days, I would revisit this thread and think (momentarily), "John actually said that?" simply because his avatar was right next to the latest comment.

Thanks for considering this!

Sorry to present another urgent problem. Next week I will have to prepare A trip to the dry cleaner's.  

I always save the vocabulary to the manager section. I then edit the pinyin and put in traditional characters and phonetics.

I have tried several times without success to save the vocabulary to the manager. I use the flash cards at least once a day to prepare my lessons. In the happier days of February 2008 I wrote:

jane says

February 3, 2008

ChinesePod is the best thing that happened to me . The next best is the New Vocabulary Manager. Well done to all!

I really loved the following features:

• Display 20, 50, or 100 words on one page
• Edit-in-place for definitions and pinyin (just click on the text)
• Add your own words

Is there any way they could be restored to enable me to prepare my lessons?

Many thanks

the original format for the web pages was clearer and faster to use.  it was much easier to get to particular lessons through as lesson level, say newbie or elementary or whatever

I LOVE the new My Archive section. Here are some ideas that would make it even more brilliant!!! :)  These ideas apply to all XPod sites.

* Bug fix: My Archive -- sorting by Difficulty doesn't work.

* Enhancement request: Include the My Archive summary view (small box) on the My Archive working page itself.

* Enhancement request: Ability to add a label to a lesson when viewing the lesson. For those of us with long lists of lessons in our archive, it would be really nice if we could add a label to a lesson when we're viewing the lesson itself.  It can be hard to find a specific lesson from our archive list and get it tagged. It's generally while working on the lesson that I'm most likely to want to give it a tag.  (Also very helpful for the odd lesson that should be in the My Archive list, but due to a quirk, isn't showing up.)

* Enhancement request: Ability to search for a lesson in our My Archive list -- most often because I want to find it and give it a tag... Less need for this if the prior request were implemented.

* Bug fix: My Archive page -- The Previous/1/2/3.../Next buttons at the bottom of the page go away if you do a Show All after Show [label], they come back if you ]do a F5/Data Refresh. 

* Enhancement request/bug: Retain Show [label] and Sort selection when doing a F5/Data refresh.  Context: If I'm looking at the My Archive page, and I've selected Sort by Title and/or if I've done a Show [label], if I now do a F5 (data refresh), the list is no longer sorted by title, and it's back to showing All.

* Enhancement request: Retain my My Archive settings (Show [label]; Sort by ) for the duration of my browser session (or even better, until I change them).  Right now, if I'm in My Archive, and I'm looking at the lessons I've tagged a certain way, and my list is sorted by title, if I then go view one of those lessons and come back, I have to reapply all those settings...

* Enhancement request for My Archive: Show me how many lessons I'm currently viewing.  I.e., if I've selected Show [label], how many lessons are in the list I'm now viewing.

* Enhancement request: This is a site-wide request.  The new larger font size is great, but I still have to use ctrl-+ in Firefox to actually read characters.  Ctrl-+ in Firefox pretty much breaks the XPod template, and I'm generally OK with that, except... It would be really fantastic if at least the top black bar could be fixed so that it always stays on a single line (in response to Ctrl-+/-.)

The newbie lesson Please Speak Slowly no longer has audio for the dialogue.

Hi CPod,

I don't post much but I want to make a couple comments about the new version. I can tell it's faster and I'm looking forward to using the grammar guide.

I saw some other comments to this effect - I wish the display was bigger. Especially when you scroll over a Hanzi, and the box pops up with the word's meaning and Hanzi. They are way smaller than before, and they were too small before! I am also using CPod to learn how to write, and it would really help if those boxes came up bigger.

This leads me to my next comment - Any plans for a section on Hanzi? I would love a section that shows stroke order. Because I know some already, I'm getting by, but it would be nice.

Oops, I think the audio for the Glossary examples was a Premium feature after all... it's gone now. Still, reading the Chinese characters used in the example sentences is not a problem, so I'll survive. And it was fun playing the audio when I had it.

Yesssss!!! The download and response times have suddenly -- literally in the last 15 minutes or so -- gotten dramatically faster here in Singapore, too. Once again, thanks CPOD.

And I've discovered the Glossary too, and am loving the example phrases with audio. Now I only hope that the line-by-line audio isn't a Premium feature that I won't be able to access once somebody at Praxis closes some system loophole! 

It's also a relief that I'm still enjoying downloads of the dialogue-only MP3s and "Qing Wen" via my RSS feed despite being a Basic Subscriber. I don't know whether this is a loophole/glitch or if it is because these features were considered to be part of the "Basic" package when I signed on, and Praxis has continued this all along on this basis.

All I need now to be a completely happy Auntie is a simple list of direct links to the different lesson archives in that curiously blank grey area on the right of the screen...

Thanks CPOD.

For me the download and response times have gotten way faster (Germany, both Cologne and Stuttgart). Even this 200+comment thread arrives within 2-4 seconds.

Someone wrote:

2) Adjust the technical design of the web page HTML.  At the moment, many pages force the browser to call the server far too many times before the page displays.  I counted 10 for this page.  If only one was needed, the page would load nearly ten times faster.  This could be to do with having too many separate script files on each page, talk to the technical team about it.

I'm not a tecchie, so I don't know if this is the issue, but I agree that almost every page takes way too long to load, and I've got a decently fast connection in Europe. I too suspect something is clunkily configured in the way the site is coded. It's a borderline deal-breaker for me. Especially because there are several mouse clicks from arriving, signing in and getting to the lesson I want, and I have to wait for scripts and media players and similar gunk to load before even being able to click the next link.  It takes over so I can't even scroll in the browser while it's busy setting up a page I don't want. It would help if the "me" section could just be shut off as an option, or if I could always be automatically signed in so that I could bookmark the elementary lesson channel and skip the signing in process.

I don't need a whole page splashed full of lessons and media players and icons for all the lesson features before I actually get to the lesson I want to study. It's a waste of time.

It's a shame because I've paid to use the site and love the lesson contents, but often don't bother coming in any more because of these issues. It just feels like trying to maneuver a supertanker instead of a quick little boat.

Sorry for sounding negative, but the disappointment is greater because the actual lessons are so fantastic.

Yay! Bigger text is great. So much easier to read the characters

Yes, I appreciate the bigger fonts too. Thank you CPOD. 辛苦你们。。。

thanks for the bigger text!!!

Also like the bigger text in the posts.

Yeah I was having problems posting in FIrefox last night. But now it's all good, so maybe ChinesePod where fixing it, so Firefox posting was wasn't working.

字体的大小现在很方便,我的睛很舒服,打字也很快,谢谢你们的努力! 你们最近辛苦了,希望你们可以很快休息!

Is it my imagination, or did the font size for the comments just get a lot bigger??

(Answer: It is not just my imagination. The font size for the comments just got a lot bigger!)

jmcorp2001 says 3 minutes ago just wanted to ask what happened to the english to chinese dictionary that has complete pronuciation, pinyin etc...

I think it's supposed to be replaced by the glossary but the old one is still available here.

just wanted to ask what happened to the english to chinese dictionary that has complete pronuciation, pinyin etc...

I have to agree partly with user6836... I don't want you to stop making lessons, but I have noticed at least one or two mistakes on almost every lesson (usually in the "vocabulary" tab, but sometimes in the "dialogue" tab, etc.) Do you think you can get a quality control guy or gal to carefully go through the lessons?

I would like to search for lessons, but have an option to exclude lessons studied. Or can we already do that...?

Like others, I have lost my ability to post messages from my usual browsers, getting the false report that my message is empty. I have had the trouble on:

• Mac OS X 10.5.3 / Safari 3.3.1
• Mac OS X 10.5.3 / Firefox 2.0.0.14
• WinXP SP2 / Firefox 2.0.0.14

I was just able to post in this thread from:

• WinXP SP2 / Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.13

I can post a message in a lesson thread using Safari, so I can confirm penben's experience with that.

For about a day, my lesson feed in iTunes has been offering me Traditional PDF downloads for all my bookmarked Qing Wens. There are no PDFs available, so this is something of a tease.

I find myself no longer able to post in non-lesson threads from Firefox.  It gives me a message telling me I'm trying to post an empty message.

However, Clearly from Internet Explorer, it worked ok.

Also, I'm still waiting for the flash cards to be fixed.  They are not of much use without the randomize and remove features.

I cannot get the diaologue mp3's to play in Elementary Travelling around China and Elementary Directory Assistance .It says "no data"

I like the site.  I create web sites for a living and you have simplified the index page.  Navigation is easier particularly to the Users page.  Look forward to finding and using the new features.  Also better pictures of everyone.  It will taking some getting used to but overall I think you did an excellent job.

Posting comments on this page is a really crap way to report bugs. Could you guys please open up your bug tracking system so we can post bugs directly?

Thats really odd. Firefox was working just fine for commenting on the new site earlier but now its not for me too.

Edit- apparently i can edit comments in firefox just not post them

Tried to add a comment on two seperate threads via Firefox (v 2.0.0.14) and got the same pop-up error "Comment is empty".  Went to IE7 and added the comment without problems.

Yes there seems to be a problem with commenting under Firefox...

Found a minor glitch under the Auxiliary Verbs section of the Grammar Guide in the Example 3 sentence " I would like to leave ".

When I mouse-over the hanzi for "zou3" the English translation in the pop-up appears as " him " rather than " leave/go/depart ".

If you want my opinion, and maybe you don’t but I’ll offer it any way, over 1000 lessons is enough for now.

Cpod would do much better taking a break from making new lessons and instead carefully going through all the existing lessons (testing and using each feature the same way a student would) and fixing and adjusting all the glitches and mistakes as you go.

And make sure you do it on a slow connection, like the ones lots of us are stuck with in small-town China

In Firefox 3 when I try to submit a comment here I get the message: "Comment is empty!" even though it's not empty.

Using Firefox 3.0b5 on Ubuntu 8.04

Great that I can finally change my name, but which one do I change? In my profile I have both a "name" and a "username". Normally I would expect the username is my unique identifier and the name is used as my signature, but since I use my email address as my log in name I don't see why both of them are needed in my profile. I'm guessing that changing my "username" is what I want to do since that's the one that shows up on my posts. What is "name" used for then?

what happened to the old Dictionary? It was simple, practical and easy to use. Now I can't find anymore anything that even resembles it...

Hello,

I think the new site doesn't only look great. It is also great. I just discovered how I can manage all my lessons, with labels and all. And I really like it.

Marc

In the Dialogue tab (e.g. http://chinesepod.com/lessons/billiards/dialogue), each person of the dialogue was identified by letters A, B. For example,
A : ......
B : ......
A : ......

These letters have disappeared. This was great though to copy/paste a couple of dialogues in a text editor and print them out. Could it be possible to put them back ?

Also copy/pasting now will paste html links as well. Not cool.

Ah, thanks to the other CPoddies and their comments.  The issue must be on my end, somehow tied to the recent revamp.

I opened the vocabulary section this morning to battle with the weird flash cards. To my great delight and relief the pinyin is back and the characters were the normal size. Many thanks for that!

Please restore the facility of altering the pinyin as soon as possible. This is particularly important for me. 

I would also like the random to be restored.

Many thanks in advance

oh,

One more thing, I am using Linux, and Firefox 3 beta 5, and it works perfect, without any problem.

Hi,

Cpod, is great, Only thing that i am really missing, is a good flash cards, for memorization. where you could be tested in characters, pinyin, and english. Which could be also done to test from english to chinese. and also have the  Randomization support. also some kind of exercise, that cpod already has, but where you can put more lessons together.

@buckaroo, I use a iMac G5 and OS 10.4.11 and have not had problems posting or reading 汉字。 没问题阿。I'm not computer savvy so can't help you. But, there are lots of others smarter folks in the community who can.

I can see my own 汉字. Yay!

哎哟！我也是用 Mac OS 的... Let me see how my hanzi displays here...

Is anyone else having a problem with the hanzi being displayed in the comments?  I can see the characters just fine everywhere else.  In fact, when I click on "Community" (where you can read the first few sentences of a person's comments), the hanzi display just fine.  But if I open up that particular lesson, all the hanzi in the comments turn into gibberish.

This only happens in Mac OS.  When I toggle over to Windows, everything is fine of course.  I tried futzing with all the "international" settings in the OS Preferences as well.  Hmmm.

On top of that, I could not leave comments when I was using the Mac OS!

It,s like coming home and all the locks have been changed.

everett says 

7 hours ago

Is there still a handy list of, for example, all elementary lessons? One that just has the titles of the lessons so that there are a lot of them per page? I can't seem to find it.

 

Hi everett. The lesson archive for each level is now one of the links on the "Channels" page which is hidden behind the "Lessons" whatsit on the main banner above. One short cut is to click on the red level label -- eg. "Elementary" -- next to the title of any lesson, to get directly to the archive for that level.

Previously we would click on "Lessons" to be brought straight to a page offering a tab for each of the 6 main lesson levels, with the extra material (eg. Qing Wen etc) on a page behind that.

John Pasden, will CPOD please consider providing an additional (not alternative) route to the lesson archives for the various levels? Something very simple, like a list of direct links somewhere in the right column, which has rather a lot of empty space viewed on my Mac (I use Safari). Good example at JPOD101.

Another reason to give users a way/option to bypass the "Channels" page is that the massive amount information on that page devoted to describing each "channel" (eugk!) sort of loses relevance once the user has become a regular at CPOD. Thanks for being so gracious and patient in your reply above.

Good morning, guys.

I see more wasted space in comments than before, for example, between lines and at the end of comments. Maybe the rule for "line break" has changed.

Light, henning, calkins

you may also want to chec k this out

http://chinesepod.com/files-redirect?v3id=0895 I found it using frenchpod (mouse over the hanzi). I like the new site but I have already been using it for a few weeks. Much easier than the v2 to v3 conversion. I am having problems with the dialogs in the glossary eg for me none of the sentances work on this page

http://chinesepod.com/resources/glossary/entry/%E6%8B%98%E6%8D%95

I am not sure if this is just because I have not payed for a premium account yet. I have been holding off waiting for V4 before jumping in.

I was able to update my username (finally!) Except it looks like the capital T and B became lower case. Otherwise looks great.

Regarding the PDF things - The current example

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0895/pdf/chinesepod_D0895.pdf

For text version simply change the pdf to html

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0895/pdf/chinesepod_D0895.html

For Traditional, as henning pointed out:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0895/pdf/chinesepod_D0895trad.pdf

Again, for the text version simply change the pdf to html:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0895/pdf/chinesepod_D0895trad.html

I looks like ascending/descending sort is not yet implemented in this version.  It is not made obvious, but you can restrict the list of lessons to a single level by clicking on the red level designation immediately before the name of a lesson.  At least the resulting list is smaller, making it easier to go back in time.

Can we still search for lessons ascending and descending or has this function been disabled?

A simple fix for character readability is to not use bold font.  The bold font in the Vocabulary section is hard to read even when the size is increased.  The Dialog and Expansion sections do not have the problem, at least in the few lessons I have looked at since the change.

One more minor issue:

When you receive a message from another user, then reply, it still says that there's a new message in your inbox.  You are forced to go back to your inbox and "archive" the e-mail.  A bit counterintuitive.

A suggestion regarding the top banner:

I think it'd be nice if the banner always stayed in place at the top of screen, so that when you're at the bottom of a page (last comment) you don't have to scroll all the way back up to the top to navigate elsewhere.

I think the height of the banner, as well as the fonts within the banner, could be reduced a bit as well.  I know that's the look these days, but IMO it takes up a bit too much real estate.

The prominence of BLACK is shocking (dare I say ugly).  Black/Red/White doesn't work well.

Additional features may be nice.  It will take some time to tell.

The key to a good site will be how well a new person to the site can figure out the navigation and make it work for them.  With a re-vamped site, all your old patrons are once again new users.  Again, time will tell.

A lot of folks find a niche set of features they like and use all the time.  So, things like broken flash cards are painful.

But, like I tell my wife, "you'd have to try real hard to be ugly, even then I doubt you'd succeed".  Your dedicated fans will soon find beauty in everything you all do, and then rush to be the first to add a comment on the lesson telling you so;-)

The additional level between "Premium" and "Executive" looks real promising.  You should put up a little more info (or make the info more prominent/easy to find) explaining how it works.  Maybe you could even offer a 1 month free trial to the premium subscribers to kick the tires.

Looking great.  A few glitches here & there.  Misisng (flash) audio from various lessons, but I'm sure that will be tracked down & fixed.

In Manage Archive, sorting by difficulty, if it is supposed to put all your Newbie lessons next to each other, your Elementry lessons next to each other, etc., is buggy.

And where do I go if I want to see the list of lessons I've studied?  Shouldn't that be in Manage Archive somewhere?

Using the Ctrl-+/- feature, as someone else said, breaks the template -- at least in FireFox.  I think it's OK in Explorer.

Any way to do a search for lessons within the subset of MY lessons in My Archive?  I.e., I want to find a particular lesson, and give it a label.

The new site is awesome!!  Way to go guys!!

bazza says

 

The quote tool just adds an indent, you have to copy and paste the actual text in. At least that's how I do it.

Thanks Bazza!

Overall I like the look of the new site. Though I am finding it difficult to navigate through in some areas.

Is there a way to view lessons by difficulty level? Can't seem to find a way.

Also, when I search for the lesson "Chicago" it doesn't come up in the search window. I am finding it difficult to find some of the lessons.

Also, just a thought, it would be great to have a printable version of the expansion sentences. Currently I cut and paste, just takes more time.

If anyone wishes to indulge in an old fashion design at Chinesepod, please visit http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/. The blog still has the familiar look & feel. (It's in German only, though.)

henning:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Becel, Hare, Hare, Hare!

(Klingel, Bimmel, Bimmel)

Is there still a handy list of, for example, all elementary lessons? One that just has the titles of the lessons so that there are a lot of them per page? I can't seem to find it.

Also, when logging in is it possible to have set your profile so you go somewhere else than "me". I don't use "me" and it takes several clunky slow-loading  mouseclicks before I can get to the elementary feed and starting looking for a lesson.

In general I'd appreciate a low-graphics, low-scripts version of the site for quicker and simpler navigation. That would be a nice option.

The site content is excellent, but the interface has always been easy to get lost in and clunky, and with the upgrade my sense is that it's gotten worse in that regard.

Duesseldorfer,

take the URL from the PDF, add a "trad" and you have the traditional version of the PDF, e.g.:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0895/pdf/chinesepod_D0895trad.pdf

From here click on "Text version" on the bottom and you have the HTML of the vocab and the text in traditional as well.

Work around for the font size: Press "Ctrl-+" on your browser one, two or more times.

John posted that the feed of those files will come back only and the default font size will move up, so that should be a me a matter of days.

It would definately be easier to have the simplified HTML and the two traditional files as direct links on the lesson page (lots of space left there), but at least there are work arounds.

P.S.: A Kölner helping out a Düsseldorfer. If that is not a harbinger of global peace...

Sorry, I am not impressed either.

Where is the traditional character support?

The font size is too small for my old eyes.

I thought about a premium account, but the two points above .....

Yeah, sorry, not impressed. The old site was FAR more intuitive.

calkins says

2 hours ago

Hmmmm, I need to figure out how to use the blockquote tool.

 

The quote tool just adds an indent, you have to copy and paste the actual text in. At least that's how I do it.

And the characters are also appearing now on my mobile device.

I bet as soon as they restored the old Conversation list logic, brought back the formatting in the old comments, and fix some of the smaller bugs, the turtle will be willing to come back to us.

Now that Calkins showed me the traditional PDF trick and English translations for flash cards are back, I'm happy.  I don't seem to have the problems with the dialogue not working, but I'm in the U.S. using a Mac. 

Auntie68, I didn't understand this part of your post.

...some of their clumsier responses then implied that paying users were only dissatisfied because they didn't share the kind of exciting vision that the "suits" were gifted with.

I am a paying user, but don't recall any responses along those lines.  Who are the "suits" that you are referring to? 

As a basic subscriber, i am happy with the changes so far...It's a refreshing new look and the audio/PDF's are loading fine for me. Keep up the good work Cpod! I love the new pics for the channels section. It's nice to put some faces to the familiar voices i hear everyday! You guys look maaarveleous!

:)

-Adam

Personal vocabulary lists can no longer be displayed 50-100 characters per page. Also, the introduction for that section claims one can select subsets of your vocab to be used in flashcards (as one could do before), but every time I try that now it just makes use of my entire vocab list. Vocab imports also no longer seem possible. I think I was happier with at least  the vocabulary section in the old version.

Not a big priority at the moment, but maybe eventually once the other kinks are worked out......having a help button for using the tools in the comments box.  Or maybe having the rollover function state what you need to do to use the tool.  Most of them are self-explanatory, but a few aren't (like the blockquotes).

Also, I miss the auto spell checker from the last version.

Hmmmm, I need to figure out how to use the blockquote tool. 

I always make my own transcripts by cutting and pasting from the HTML file and from the Expansion Sentences. Now, copying from the expansion sentences copies over all the links for the audio, so there are lines of coding everywhere that I need to delete.

I agree with LostInAsia, I also copy and paste the expansion and the additional mp3 info. is included.  Seems like the sound clips are causing problems for lots of users.

Thanks for keeping the feedback coming, everyone (yes, you too, user6836 and Auntie68). I understand the motivations behind the criticism. I'm not going to argue, I'm going to keep working hard to make the site as perfect as it can be. We're all going to do that. Clearly, we're making some mistakes, but we are learning from our mistakes (I hope that is clear) and moving forward.

I'd like to report that the flashcards are fixed. English is back.

(Scottyb, I will look into the random feature tomorrow.)

Overall I like the new site, it's nice to have a fresh look, 加油！.  However, I second comments made above about SPEED INSIDE CHINA.  And it's not to do with our internet connections as user6836 says.  I'm using a 4M connection: baidu, cctv, e-jia etc come up instantly, but chinesepod is dead slow.  This really ties a stone around the neck of an otherwise excellent site.  IMHO, there are two things you could do, either of which would improve this drastically:

1) Rent a mirror server inside china - I think you're mostly using Amazon Web Services hosting in the US at the moment, right?  If so, every request needs to go through the great firewall...

2) Adjust the technical design of the web page HTML.  At the moment, many pages force the browser to call the server far too many times before the page displays.  I counted 10 for this page.  If only one was needed, the page would load nearly ten times faster.  This could be to do with having too many separate script files on each page, talk to the technical team about it.

The new site looks great.

To repeat what others have said: the fonts are too small, especially for some of the Chinese characters, and the font choice (boldface?) needs work... characters either look like small blotches or magnified blotches.

A point I haven't seen mentioned: RSS feeds are really odd. In NetVibes I seem to be getting only the first post, bumped to the top of the feed whenever any new post is added--but NetVibes only shows the very first post, not the new one. I have no idea what's going on in NetNewsWire, but then again, the feeds haven't worked in that program for months.

Probably related in the mysterious world of RSS feed workings: I have no idea where the lessons in my "Me" page have come from. Can I somehow get the "Me" page to be just the same as the "Lessons" page?

I always make my own transcripts by cutting and pasting from the HTML file and from the Expansion Sentences. Now, copying from the expansion sentences copies over all the links for the audio, so there are lines of coding everywhere that I need to delete. I don't know how many people cut and paste from the expansion, so maybe this is just an issue for me.

Audio buttons are often slow, as many have said. Tip for others: in both Safari and Firefox, I do see a little "activity" thingy at the bottom of my window, and that at least tells me something's happening and I should wait.

I'm not clear how the Forum searching is supposed to work. I can just search by user?!

And thanks ChinesePod for a transition that's MUCH smoother than the V3 mess last year.

PS: I still miss numbered lessons, and actually, I'm still counting. Up to 中高级94, 中级166, 初级194, 菜鸟272, and 高级127.

I'm not rank 1 for 2008 hehe.

Hi all.

Overall, I think I like the new changes.  I haven't had a chance to read all of the comments above so sorry if this has been addressed already.  The only problem I've noticed so far that I haven't seen mentioned is the missing random feature on the flashcards. I use the flashcards almost daily, and I rely heavily on the English translation and the random feature.

Vocabulary: I understand that fixing bugs will take time, but I am not even sure this is a bug, or a decision of sorts not to have the function anymore to be able to use flashcards from English to Chinese. Please reassure us! (I became a premium subscriber mainly because of the vocabulary section...)

Hi light487. Just to help you understand the more impatient posts: When you read words like "once again", chances are the user is feeling a horrible sense of "dejà vu" from the genuinely traumatic transition from V2 to V3.

Even a lowly "Basic" subscriber like me felt bewildered, frustrated, and even insulted. Insulted because Praxis didn't do their PR half as well that time round, and some of their clumsier responses then implied that paying users were only dissatisfied because they didn't share the kind of exciting vision that the "suits" were gifted with. The only services I pay for, and depend on, are pdfs and MP3s of the podcasts, yet after nearly three months of chaos even I reached my limits. Three months, Luke. 

During that transition, I had to re-name and re-number perhaps 300 MP3s already in my iTunes because they changed the file-naming system a few times without any warning or explanation. Many of the interface "improvements" (eg. doing away with headlines, for messy learners like me who merely want to download this basic content in a fuss-free, predictable, way so that I could study it in my messy way) ended up reverting to V2 styles anyway. Maybe one quarter of the "innovations" ended up having to be junked because they just weren't useful enough to justify the pain and suffering and dislocation.

At the time of the V2 - V3 transition, Praxis' only real competition out there -- JapanesePod101.com -- underwent a similarly deep transition but they handled it well. What JPOD101 did was: Apologize in advance, explain that they were taking the entire system off for three or four days (to get it right), and they also credited every single subscriber with a full week of subscription extension without being asked.

In case you are wondering, I believe that JPOD101 have about as many lessons in their system as CPOD, covering about as many levels of ability. And they also tackle grammar, have a test preparation section devoted to the Japan equivalent of the HSK (ie the JLPT test), and address Sino-Japanese characters as part of every lesson. When I pointed this out on the Praxis blog, this was not well received, of course...

This time round, at least my (very basic) end of the features is still just about okay. Thank goodness. I am not averse to change, by nature. I am still optimistic that things will settle down in days, rather than in months like in the V2 - V3 transition.  

One suggestion:

On the Praxis Pass graphic with the 3 multi-colored Praxis insignias, the order is ChinesePod, SpanishPod, FrenchPod.  Makes sense as that's the order they came out.  But IMHO, the ChinesePod red and SpanishPod orange are too similar and with their proximity, hard to differentiate.  Maybe switch the position of the SpanishPod orange with the FrenchPod blue??

Of course I understand there are many other more important things to take care of right now though...

Or may be 铁臂阿女孩 (Astro Girl) :)

i'm just getting familiar with the new features but here's a quick comment. after looking at the channels tab and seeing jenny's picture appear in almost every channel, i concluded that jenny is 超女人 （superwoman)！

Personally I haven't had any major issues with the new site so far. As for user6836's comments (of which the same post has been made 3 times now), all I can say is to be patient. No amount of testing is going to make certain that the new site would be flawless upon delivery. The new podcasts, SpanishPOD and FrenchPOD already had this overhaul but they didn't have the vast amount of content and userbase that ChinesePOD has, so please..give them a break and be patient. It's only been 1 day since the launch of the new site... 1 day.. and they are obviously working overtime to make us happy. Keep up the suggestions and constructive criticisms, tell them what you don't like, why and how you would prefer it.. but there's no need to be nasty about it.

There was nothing wrong with the old site, it worked great.

The new one is possibly better but has to prove so.

Not too happy , yet !

Once again, I don’t know what you folks at Chinesepod are thinking about when you make these changes to your web site. You used to have a good thing going. Some how you seemed to have been compelled to continually meddle with it and each time it gets worse. There was nothing wrong with the old site, it worked great – have you ever heard of the saying “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.?” I studied Chinese in Collage and did very well with written material but very bad with listening and speaking. Chinesepod represented to me a way to overcome those difficulties but at this point I’m left feeling I should seek out other resources. The sound bites are delivered so slowly that I find myself play the guitar while waiting and forgetting that I’m supposed to be studying Chinese. I just tried to use the vocabulary flash cards and realized there’s no English to be found, which for me has rendered them useless. Do you all actually have website design professionals working on these things? I can’t believe what a bad job they are doing for you. Jenny and Ken are quite endearing, yes it’s true, but maybe you should hire some professionals to take care of the technical aspects of the site.

codexus,

Yes, the tech team is working on the search index now.

I've successfully created a songs lesson set. :)

Just an idea: it would really cool if I could use the search box at the top to quickly locate a lesson (currently it searches the glossary but not lesson titles/desciptions).

Gosh, all change since I've last logged on. Looks pretty swish, though haven't looked round much.

Bazza,

It's true, "Studied" lessons are a bit inaccessible at the moment. Expect an update soon, though, that will make it easier to manage ALL the lessons you've ever bookmarked or subscribed to, be they "active" or "studied."

john says 6 hours ago Bazza, Can we create and share our own lesson sets? Yes. The process is a bit confusing for now, though. 1. Bookmark lessons. 2. Assign a label to the lessons you want in a set 3. On the Lesson Manager screen, click on [Edit Labels] 4. Share the label, and add extra info Another problem is that you can't reoder the lessons in the lesson set. They will display in the reverse of the order that you added them.

Can you only manage unstudied lessons?

Features - Yay!

Design - hmm, no. Too goth-bloggy, too crammed.

The BitTorrent downloads on the Channels page are not working yet.  That is, there is no actual link, just the text that says "Lesson 1-100" etc.  I downloaded the first 100 lessons off of SpanishPod via BitTorrent and it was quite handy.

When I look for "autism" or "Klingon" the dictionary brings up the traditional results only.

How do I directly and efficiently search for lessons?

Will those formating issues be addressed so we can enjoy changye's contributions again?

Thanks for the the Ctrl+,Ctlr - tip

Thanks John with the Ctrl= trick. I never knew that and it helps. But I am hoping that when the dust settles and all of the bugs are swatted that all of C-pod gets BIGGER. Looks like a lot of us have this problem. I am in the trifocal crowd and things aren't like they used to be....

Changye- I refuse elderly but am mature-most of the time.

hi kaiselin08,

You can find a link to "Profile" in the bottom left area of the page here.  There you can change it.

To Jenny, Ken, Amber, Clay, John, Connie and the rest of the gang,

CONGRATULATIONS! I can't contain my deepest thanks for the upgrade you guys have made, loved the Glossary, Grammar Guide, bigger pics on the forums... There is so much to do!  I know you guys are still doing something finishing touches, so more luck to you all!!!

john says

How can I change my username and email address?

I wonder if any one at Chinesepod is actually going to explain why they changed the sound bite delivery system in the expansion section, and if they realize it's not as good, and in fact a pain in the rear for many of us. For me, that is the biggest draw back of the changes and their silence on this issue is a little suspicious. I’ve sent some emails about it in the past and haven't received an answer. someone said it was a matter of internet speed. It shouldn't be a surprise that many of us live in small towns in China and our internet connection is slow. Chinesepod should be aware of that and accommodate for it. blaming it on my connection is a sorry excuse. I’ve bought my last memberships a month at a time. If I’d bought a longer one I’d be trying to get my money back.

At least they could have made the old format available while they come to the realization that the new one stinks!

Thanks Joannah!  You were right!  On the Me page, is there any way to set it so that it lists lessons from the most recent to the oldest, rather that all the Qingwens first?

bazza says

Very enjoyable website. 很 好 得!

What's up with the "ME" tab at the top?  The lessons in there are my most recently downloaded or what?  I tried to remove those, but they just came right back when I browsed away from that tab and returned again later.   Is this ideally a section for me to add the lessons I'm currently studying?  I tried to use the "What's this..." help section, but every page after page 1 gave me an error. 

Kind of stinks being a beta tester with no choice of using the old site while the bugs are being worked out on the new one.  I love testing new things, but sometimes I like to go back to what's comfortable for actual use and interaction.

I really agree with User 6836 comments. I also feel the new site is awful in so many respects. The more I use it the more I hate it. I agree with Hoggins. I preferred the white site. But that is only the beginning!

Last night I sent my first reaction.  I have not used the actual lessons yet but this morning I used the vocabulary manager and flash cards, and found the following:

1.        As I live in Taiwan I use traditional characters and ㄅㄆㄇㄈ.

     I was able to change the pinyin in my vocabulary lists. This important facility is now       gone on the new site. Please restore it as soon as possible.

2.        I was quite happy with the old dictionary.  Has that also gone? I put in two characters in the Glossary to find out the meaning as there is no English in the flash cards.  The glossary gave me the lessons where they could be found but no English translation.  The Dictionary gave both.

3.        The size of the characters in the Flash cards is too small.

4.        I went to the grammar section this morning and I was amazed the entries were so brief.  I have more grammar on my hard disk that I got from the old grammar section before it disappeared, quite some time ago.

5.        I feel that too much attention was given to the jazzy presentation rather than the content.

6.        The slow response on sound made me give up using the vocabulary in the lessons.

I appreciate that after an upgrade there may be some problems but such major problems regarding content are not acceptable.

I also feel that if some of the excellent features are not restored I may not renew my subscription

Sorry Sparechange, didn't mean anything by it.  It definitely sounds like an issue with some users.  I just wrote that because I miss your turtle so much :)

Not a big issue, but a little weird.  When typing characters into the comment box, while using an IME (QIM for me), the popup character box is all the way at the bottom right of my monitor.  It's usually right next to the cursor.

Again, not a big deal, but I've only noticed this with the new comment box.

I agree about the font size, I also think it's too small thanks!

Why is everything in italics highlighted in yellow?

So just what are you trying to imply, calkins??? ;-)

They certainly don't play instantly for me, especially full sentences. I'm running at about .5 Mb here at home. It's not great, but it's way better than dailup (it's also the fastest I can get out here in the middle of nowhere). They don't take that long to load, but it's long enough to make me wonder what the heck is going on. With CPod v3, you could see the little circles filling up as the page loaded, so you knew the audio was there. If you couldn't hear it, it was likely a problem on your end. Whereas now, I click and then wait for several seconds before I hear anything. And just as I'm about ready to pick up and move on, here comes this audio out of nowhere.

The delay is a little shorter at work, where we have a 20 Mb synchronous fiber connection, but I still get several hickups because the audio isn't loaded until I click the button. Of course, it's instantaneous for every play after the first one, but still...it was just so much smoother when it was loaded up front.

I can live with it, but it kinda feels like a step backward to me.

The site looks great. I'm liking the idea of the grammar section as thats an area i was struggling with. I am however, disapointed by the loss of the 32k download option

I'm not sure I understand what the sound clip issue is.  I've listened to a number of clips (dialogue, vocab, and expansion), and they all loaded instantly.

I wonder if it's a user internet speed issue.

I just want to say, after a few hours of getting used to the new site, that it is awesome!  It was really thought out and planned well, easy to navigate, clean and graphically pleasing.  Sure, there are always going to be tweaks with such a huge upgrade, but it should be expected...and no doubt CPod will resolve any issues with time.

Thanks yet again CPod, for taking our Chinese learning experience even further and for making it that much easier for us to achieve fluency!

user6836: I'm sure they'll get a lot of this stuff fixed, just give it some time. Any major change like this will have its share of bugs.

John has already mentioned that the font issue is on the to-do list, so I won't hammer on that one any more. However, I will agree that the new method of delivering the sound clips can be a little irritating. Like you, I was hoping this change wouldn't make it out of the Vocab section alive. At the very least, I would prefer some sort of visual feedback to let me know the file is loading after I click the button. Otherwise, I don't know if it's loading, preparing to load, or preparing to melt my screen.

I love to see the Grammar section is back -- for good this time, I hope!

Thanks!

john: I tried the test a few times (a bit demoralizing, but that's beside the point), and I occasionally got presented with the same sentence twice. That is, after I already told it that I do/don't understand. I don't know if this affects the accuracy of the test, but I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it up.

The +/- browser text trick works, but it breaks your template...like hardcore.

Overall, I'm very impressed. There are a lot of great new features here (some of which were a long time coming), and I'm sure I speak for most of us when I say how much I appreciate all the work that went into their implementation. Go team.

I think what you’ve done to your web site is pretty much awful. The system for delivering the sound bites on the vocab, expansion, and dialogue pages doesn’t work very well at all. There is a delay between when you click on the icon and when you can actually hear the word pronounced and this makes going through the lessons very slow, really too slow to be useful to me. I was, albeit begrudgingly, willing to put up with it when only the vocab pages were like this but all the pages are being like this is just too much, way to slow. Is it imposable now to have the lessons ordered from the earliest lessons to the latest? That’s how I was using the site. I don’t see a way to do it now. This has really interrupted the system I had going for myself. Also the character fonts are so small, and with the lines being so thick on the characters in the vocab page they become squashed together so you can’t even read them. I really loved Chinesepod the way it used to be. I don’t think any of the changes have improved anything, actually the whole site is much worse. At this point I might stop using any of the premium services.

My lesson feed got a little bit scrambled too. My regular lesson subscriptions were okay, but it took me a while to figure out why I wasn't getting the new Qingwen... I had been unsubscribed from all the extras except News and Features.

I'm enjoying some of the new features quite a lot. I like that many of the features that never seemed to work right before are now working wonderfully. I can finally unbookmark individual lessons, and level test and flashcard modules work too (though as already mentioned, without English). Is the flashcard module supposed to keep track of which words you've gotten correct/incorrect in the past? If so, I haven't been able to figure that one out.

I noticed that on the Subscription Information page there is the text, "Be sure to send us some prove of your full-time student status some types of proves are:" This should read "Be sure to send us some proof of your full-time student status some types of proofs are:"

If I go into my profile and click "Update Subscription", then "Click here for the product comparison chart", the product comparison chart pops up over the page. Each feature has a little blue question mark to click for more information, but they don't work. (They do work on the regular chart available directly on the subscription information page.)

The Grammar guide is an exciting start. I'm eager to see how it develops. A really minor point... the "verb" page lists 走 twice on the list of common chinese verbs. I'd almost bet that one of these should have been 去. I hope that eventually users will be able to connect lessons with grammar points in the guide, similar to what Henning has been doing all this time.

I like the random lesson link, but I'm not sure it's new. I may have only noticed it now because I'm exploring the new features.

Thank you, ChinesePod, for everything!

calkins,

Sorry about the loss of data, but the Listening Test is actually different now. We edited/cleaned up/added to the previous bank of sentences we were using and rewrote the logic of the program (we discovered it was actually making some bad level pronouncements before).

Bazza,

Can we create and share our own lesson sets?

Yes. The process is a bit confusing for now, though.

1. Bookmark lessons.

2. Assign a label to the lessons you want in a set

3. On the Lesson Manager screen, click on [Edit Labels]

4. Share the label, and add extra info

Another problem is that you can't reoder the lessons in the lesson set. They will display in the reverse of the order that you added them.

Hey guys...

I agree that the font size is too small. I will try to get it increased ASAP. I'm afraid it's going to have to wait until some other higher priority bugs are fixed, however.

Are you all aware that most browsers support "increase font size" for any text on web pages? Just hit CTRL = to increase, and CTRL - to decrease. I use this a fair amount, especially for Chinese websites.

One comment, my lesson fead on the web got messed up in the transition.  This is not a really big deal, but in only showed me as subscribed to "News and Features" (when sorted on subscribed). 

I would finded it helpful to be able to sort my lessons by date and level as well.

Other than that I like the looks.  And the lessons seem to load faster. 

Thanks for all the hard work.

Bill.

Patty, You wouldn't have grabbed sparechange's turtle would you?;)  Mostly satisfied here.  I would like a bigger font size too.  What does it say about us that  so many of us miss that turtle?!

Hi Guys,

I just love your website, great upgrade! I was kind of worried yesterday, when your webpage says ...."upgrade..." the wait was well worth it (the wait was like 1 day only, but i missed it much)!!!!

Congratulations Chinesepod ! I am looking forward to your add ons, but even so, this new look is just awesome! YOu guys have outdone it!!!!!!

The listening test loads much more quickly...nice.  I did notice however, that your test history is no longer available.  I just took the test and it's the only date in my history.

The test also seemed easier than the other 4 or 5 times I took it.  But maybe that's another sign of CPod's greatness!

Regarding the 'expansion' page.

Previously the sound files seemed to load as little Flash applets; when they'd finished loading, you could click them to hear the sentence.

Now this doesn't happen. I clicked the arrow that you can see, but it was quite a long time before I heard any sound, (and then it was like half a sentence with the other half about 20 secs later.)

I live on a college campus and use the college internet. There are times of the day when the speed is right down I guess.

Anyway I thought the old way was better.

I’m happy to know other elderly (or matured?) people also think the new font size is too small. Selecting proper colors and font size is vital in making websites. Young guys, the same thing would happen to you in a few decades.

Joking aside, I actually often use a magnifier to see tone marks on the screen, and that’s why I usually use numbers (1,2,3,4) instead of tone marks.

One more grumbling, it might be more recognizable if you use a different color for user names in thread titles on the conversation page. Currently, they are all indicated in red.

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations?page=2

I love it! the design is much more intuitive and logical. I thought the previous version of the site required several too many clicks. Even my 93-year-old mother could figure out how to go wherever she wanted. Now that's good design! I must admit that the colors are a bit sober/somber, but they also seem more professional, like a well-established company. Congratulations, you guys. I'm impressed and so will be your new users.

Hey, I like the new look, but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out where the option is to have the lessons sort in "descending/ascending" order. If that option is not available, would it be very difficult to add it in again? I really liked being able to dig through the lessons that way, and it's really convenient when there's so many pages of lessons.

hi amber, thanks for your quick reply, I've appreciated, it seems it was a busy day!

Thank you calkins, I'm not sure I've fully understood your suggestion; at any rate you gave me a good hint, at least for the major part of the problem.

Having read your comment I've discovered that I still can access to all the traditional PDF .

I copy the link of the PDF,

Afterwards I open a new window or, more exactly, a new "scheda" (how do you call them, card? board? or what? I mean those that you can simultaneously open in the same window of the browser)

Then I paste the link into the address box, finally I edit the address, simply adding "trad" just  before the final ".pdf",  so  I get the traditional PDF. In other terms I realized they still are all present in the server of ChinesePod, even though they disappeared from the RSS .

Regarding the html version of the text (the only one I can copy, paste and edit as a text file in my word processor, being impossible, as long as I know on my computer, to do so with the PDF) I can get it from the link of the "text version" on the bottom of each page of the PDF. In addition, now I've discovered that I can access to html text version with the same little trick, i.e. editing the address and changing ".pdf" into ".html". But this seems not particularly usefull, as long as the link on the pdf is it still working...

but the lesson of today SBTG: Confucius yet has not its html text version... I'm sure soon or late it will come back!

Hope not to add too much confusion!! and a good night to all you.

...I was wrong. Updated avatar and still no turtle.

At least we've narrowed it down to avatars only, and not images placed in comments. Good work, people.

I'm going home.

Can we create and share our own lesson sets?

I think a friend's list would be handy, similar to the old watchlist.

I love the revised character rollover feature with both traditional and simplified characters!  Brilliant.

calkins: I'm guessing that the new pixel dimensions for the avatars caused the issue with the animated gif's. It was probably an automated process that resized all the avatars, and could only output a standard gif.

I guess I'll find out for sure here in a minute...

One weird thing that I noticed: My subscription history starts in 1999 and all my renewals happened on the same day in the last millenium. Does the Y2K finally raise it's head here??

The updated chinesepod looks good, but I am a bit disappointed because I cannot use the flashcards randomly anymore and there isn't an English translation either.

I hope you've just forgotten to do this and you will change that!!

One other thing I've noticed about avatars since the upgrade.  Not a big deal, but since the new avatar pixel size is larger than before, you might notice that many look blurry at the new size.

I'd suggest re-creating your avatar at 160 x 160 pixels, then uploading it again.  I'm sure most people don't care, but I'm an anal photographer so I do ;)

My apologies to CPod if that would create a bandwidth issue.

Nice new look

BUT

I can't access my archived studied lessons!

When I press the 'manage archive' button, I'm only shown the one current lesson I'm on.

Well, not sure what my last post proves, but maybe if you haven't already done so, try re-uploading your avatar to see if that works.

For me, the font is much too small for the chinese characters.  It's hard enough discerning a difference between them without them being small. 

Sparechange, your avatar is like a blank canvas...so lonely!

I'm going to do a test to see if an animated gif will be recognized within a post...

only one word COOL

Hmmm... I guess that shows how active I've been with the comments lately. I didn't even know of the GIF issue until this morning.

I must say I'm humbled by the outpouring of support to get my turtle back. And of course, we want to get wolson's gears spinning again too.

Joannah and Light, to access the text version of the PDF, all you need to do is right-click on the PDF link, then click "Copy Link Location."  Then paste it into a new browser window.  Then you can easily copy and paste the dialogue and vocabulary.

Light, you could do this on the old site.  Fancy smancy eh?!

請問,我們的詞典是不是失去了?

Sparechange and Bazza, animated gif avatars hadn't been working in the old version either, for a few weeks.  I remember because Wolson's brain gears weren't working.  At the time I checked Sparechange's turtle, just to see, and it wasn't working either.

So it must be a different issue CPod should look into.  As if they don't have enough things on their plate now!

and don't forget sparechange's turtle...

I love the new site!  It really looks modern and fresh!  Love the darker colour-scheme!

I see someone has already mentioned it...I really hope the Random feature gets added back to the Flashcard page (as well as the english meaning above the Pinyin) 

You guys rock!  (^__^)

will be we able to do flashcards from english to hanzi again? I need that!

Love the new design and features!

One day, once you've fixed the inevitable bugs*, might it be possible to add a feature that allows us to tweak the layout a bit, for example, change the background colour? Grey may be professional and "clean" , but it's also a dull colour. And Chinese(Pod) certainly isn't THAT.

*You've had some practice after all. Glad to see it's not as bad as an experience I had with our school's website. Whenever you clicked a button, your computer would get stuck and the server would crash after a few attempts. Not pleasant, I can tell you!

bazza: That's what I figured too. No big deal; I know to expect a few bugs with a major change like this.

goulniky: I think the bad omen has already been manifested in the fact that I have been stuck on the Intermediate Plateau for several months now. Not unlike a desert, it's hardly suitable climate for a turtle. It could be for this reason that the turtle has gone on strike and refused to march up the page until improvements can be made to the working conditions.

Cool link, by the way. I knew there was a good reason to like that character.

I had a problem before with the characters in the dialogs being TOO small. now whty are even smaller. And as I type this it is miniscule and I dont see a way to change font size here either. I am not a young poddie and really have some problems with the tiny characters. It is often that I can't decipher them until I put them into vocab and view them as a flashcard. Sometimes the mouse over would size them up sometimes to where I could figure out the strokes, but even that is smaller now. Bigger is better!

And give back the turtle- the best avatar ever!

Yes, bring sparechange's turtle back! Bring it back, it's sorely missed.

The pull down menu under conversations "My Conversations" does not work the way that I expected it to work ... that is it does not find the conversations that I have contrinuted to in chronological order.  It seems to be pulling down coversations that I visited but I am not sure what it's search logic is.

The number of conversations per page is too limited:

I would like the option of seeing a full day or perhaps two days worth of converstation on one page. I was searching to see if anyone responded to some comments I made a couple fo days ago ... it was very difficult finding which subject it occured in in!

and, yes, the font size is rather small. Very tiring for my eyes.

We want sparechange's turtle back!

Another thing about links - links within old posts no longer work (comments posted before today). They now appear as text within the post.

Even more annoying, all formatting seems to have gone, including line and paragraph breaks.  This is a little annoying, particularly with posts from uncle-scholar changye who takes great pains to lay things out very neatly.

see this example : http://chinesepod.com/lessons/ping-pong-nation/

I really love the fact that you've taken the format that works so well for SpanishPod and FrenchPod and converted it to CPod. It also looks a little more professional, and hopefully with a quicker loading time and data, this will make it more accessible to everyone.

For those of us who are visually challenged, the new font size is too small I need help reading the materials, particularly the characters! Please, oh please, increase the font sizes!

Like the edit feature though. But why have my gears stopped turning?

Can you make a change so we can use Chinese characters for our usernames?  i.e. so I can use 史马克 as my username instead of shi3ma3ke4 ?

Video test

Image test

I have a suggestion for the flashcards.  The hanzi cards give an answer of pinyin and audio, but there really ought to be an english translation with it.  I could quess that a hanzi was "zhangkai" but damned if I can remember what it means in English.

hi everybody,

Thanks for all your suggestions/input.  We will be going through them all and fixing any bugs one by one!  Thank you for letting us know, and please know we appreciate your patience and input.

As far as the audio on the older lessons, we are slowly going through and fixing / updating them all.  So will just take a little time!

We're going to bed now in Shanghai, but will be hard at work in the morning getitng everything running tip top.

真棒!  Can we consider this version V4?  The transition from v3 to v4 was so smooth and seamless. Very nice and comfortable for us poddies.  I am sure it wasn't so easy on your end there in 上海 however.  Thank you for all the hard work.

May you have computer screenless dreams tonight Amber and the rest of Cpod.

I have to agree that the new font is too small.  I have trouble reading the english and no chance at the chinese characters, and that's on my 22 inch screen!  Also, the ability to remove words from the next flashcard run is gone! Randomize is gone from flashcards as well.  Arrgh!

The new site was a surprise.  Once I got over the shock, I toured most of the features.  I think it is organized well and I was able to navigate easily.  Overall, I'd say the update is successful and there are a number of new features.  I didn't read all of the discussion comments in detail, so forgive me if the following comments are repeats.

In the Pinyin Introduction, the first paragraph is repeated.  I thought I was experiencing deja vu when reading.

In the concentratin game, the selection of Hanzi and English gives you Hanzi and Pinyin.  The selection Hanzi and Pinyin gives you Hanzi and English.

By the way, the edit comment feature is really nice.  I think it will eliminate a lot of the "oops" comments we have seen in the past.

Hi,

I really preferred the clean, white look of the old chinesepod.  Is there any way you could make it available?

Thanks!

Wow, I was impressed!

I did try to sign in this morning, but obviously the website was upgraded at then.

It is very cool and nice, I had changed my username yet! And we have some other new things and functions. Thank you chinesepod crew, thank you for your hard work.^_^

I like this new feature although I had missed the old one yet! It will take me time to get used to it. Hey guys, let's start something new together.o(∩_∩)o...哈哈

One feature of conversations that I've always found useful was not just looking at "all conversations", but specifically at "my conversations" as well.  That way, I could quickly see if there have been any responses to a query I have posted.  This function still seems to be there, but when I click on "my conversations" I don't get a list of the conversations to which I have posted in the past.  Many of the conversations that come up are ones I have never been part of.

sparechange, apparently, The turtle is a symbol of longevity, strength, stability and prophecy in Chinese culture - must be a bad omen that it's gone after this change...

apparently, the pop up to insert links doesn't work either... pop up comes up, but then [insert] doesn't do anything... well it did't work the first time, seems to work in the 15 minutes of the 2nd edit for some reason

• 第一
• 第二
• 第三
• 第四
• 第五

Like the bulleted lists. We could do with a selection of smilies to choose from as well. :)

sparechange says 10 minutes ago It did win me a CPod Oscar. That little turtle has been good to me. I haven't received any demands for ransom yet.

I'm guessing the change over has convert your avatar into a non-animated gif, so it's just showing the 1st frame.

It's nice to see a new subscription level (between premium and "Executive"). I always felt like that gap was a little wide.

It did win me a CPod Oscar. That little turtle has been good to me. I haven't received any demands for ransom yet.

All "returns" in my small Grammar Point collection have been erased which renders the list unreadable.

Well, nothing lasts forever.

Oh no, didn't it win you a Cpod Oscar as the best avatar?

Although, it would appear someone kidnapped my turtle.

I think I'm going to cry a little... I never thought this day would come.

The Exercise section on some of the earlier lessons

have yet to be updated.

Also, how can you sort by ascending/descedning?

That was a feature that I liked.

Overall, I like the new look and feel.

If you click on a name you are supposedly getting a list of that users's latest conversations. Most of the liested entries are coming from someone else, though.

Love the new look. :) FYI, I tried out the Newbie Grammar section, and selected "Particles" and then, each time I clicked on the links for the different types of particles, expecting to find more information about each of the particles listed, I was instead brought back to the main newbie grammar page.

Also, the "tool tips" that pop up when I hover over the particles listed, provides the pinyin but not the english meaning for the particle. So I see that there are 3 different "de" particles, but have no information as to when each would be used.

Most things are working great and I really like the new site. However, as jwosmun pointed out, there's an audio problem with the older lessons and this affects the sample sentences in the dictionary as well.

不错, not bad at all! :)

I like the new look and the new features seem great. Lesson sets could be a great way to provide a little more structure to guide us newbies.

The glossary is amazing, it's now really easy to find where an expression was used. Really great for those things that we know we know but can't really remember what it was and in which lesson we learned it.

In the old lessons, where I spend most of my time, the sound buttons in the Dialog and Expansion sections only yield a "no data" message.  I hope fixing this is on the to do list.  Listening to these is a major part of my learning process.

Right.. I think they should add a link for it, most definitely, to the main lesson page. I'm going to be using that from now on and not even bothering with the PDF format unless I need to print it.

Yes you could, but i think it was only linked from the bottom of the pdf files

calkins says 8 minutes ago Michele, you should still be able to get to the traditional PDF directly from the lesson page.  Or you could copy the PDF link and paste it into a new browser window to get to the text version....example:   http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0893/pdf/chinesepod_C0893trad.html

Oooh.. I didn't know you could do that! That makes it so much easier to copy and paste the Hanzi and Pinyin directly from the PDF! Could you do that before, on the old version of the site? That's very handy.

Michele, you should still be able to get to the traditional PDF directly from the lesson page.  Or you could copy the PDF link and paste it into a new browser window to get to the text version....example:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/chinesepod/0893/pdf/chinesepod_C0893trad.html

I'm impressed!

The feedreader URL has changed again though:

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/feed/All

But there seem to some problems with the feed. Instead of seeing posts, in many cases (50%) I am seeing the lesson introduction e.g.

Pricey Beer

When you can get take out draft beer poured into a plastic bag for pennies, it's easy to get incensed over the price of pijiu. In this podcast, learn how to use your Mandarin Chinese to get picky about your brew. But no Bob and Doug hoser jokes please.

From a very brief look it seems that user conversations are working OK but lesson posts are not.

However, the problems with Firefox and no sound with >15 flash files in vocab etc seems to be fixed...for me at least

Loving the iPhone site, makes it incredibly easy to catch a lesson at the airport or anywhere else with wifi.

Would be a plus if the lyrics showed with the mp3s on the mobile site - other than that, nice work!

I think new font size is too small.

The site got an upgrade. Yay. Sorry, my keyboard is broken. I have to reformat it. *sad face*

Looks like you need to go through them all and mark them as studied where applicable, then it just shows the ones you need to study.

Linfeng2008, i found all of mine were there, they were just in a different order with all the qing wen first. Go to the bottom of the me page and see if you have the option to select the page number.

Looking very sexy CPod, thanks!

The My Lessons section is not displaying any of my lessons.  It is only displaying Qingwen.  How do I get them back?

There was a way of goign through the lessons in the order of which they were released - i.e. ascending. This feature doesn't seem to exist any more. I was moving through them in that order. Now I am lost. What's the story here ?

love the new site. keep up the great work guys! i've been studying chinese and wish i would have found your site earlier! best site on the web for learning chinese!!!!

I think the ME section is the same as Home used to be now. I think it is based on your RSS feed settings and whichever lessons you have bookmarked.

A font size thing would be handy actually...

Hello! I don't understand the function of the ME section, how come old lessons are shown when I click ME? what will happen if I mark it as studied? On the community section, when I press My Conversation, it also shows other conversations that i didn't comment on.

Thanks!

john says

2 hours ago

Did you guys notice that you can edit your usernames and e-mail addresses again?

 

Still only lowercase names though?

That's neat. :)

Looks like we can only edit comments once.

changye says

5 minutes ago

 

Wow, the characters used in my above comment are bigger than those in other guy’s. I usually write a comment in a large font with WORD first, then after that I copy and paste it. Looks like I have to adjust the font size before posting.

Quoting test.

Wow, the characters used in my above comment are bigger than those in other guy’s. I usually write a comment in a large font with WORD first, then after that I copy and paste it. Looks like I have to adjust the font size before posting.

I've already sent an email about these issues - but haven't heard back yet....These were happening before you did the upgrade to the site

In some of the elementary lessons:

1. There is the link for "The Fix", but when you click on it - you get an error message. . eg. Mild Swearing.

2. There is no 'dialogue' and no 'fix' eg. Basketball

3. There is no 'the fix' eg. China's Most Famous Tourist Destinations.

Adi originally responded saying that all lessons were supposed to have a dialogue and the fix... and asked me to send him the particular lessons which were a problem (which I did in a huge excel spreadsheet)... but I don't know what's happening with it now...

Has anyone else not found this?

I agree with light487. I also think that being able to see only ten conversations each page is not convenient enough, especially when many comments are coming in, but on the other hand, my chubby dog seems to be very happy to see her bigger avatar on the screen!

Under jennyzhu's Recent Comments:

Aren't you.... （不是.... 吗）(0)
Isn't Qing Wen supposed to come out on Monday? Ha, now you can say that in Mandarin Chinese. Enjoy the new website, and enjoy this useful pattern that enables one to call someone out, or just pose an obvious contradiction.
posted by jennyzhu 38 minutes ago

But she never posted on that page. Also the amount of comments on that page is more than 0.

I have just spent a few minutes on the vocabulary flash card section and I must say I feel everything has just gone crazy!

1 no English available on the flashcards.(Amber has explained that.)

2 I tried to find my current lesson 0082 and the result returned no lesson existed. I could not believe that so I went through the numbers and finally found 0082. Please check out the find facility as otherwise a lot of time is lost.

3 I went to the third exercise but it looks as if no correction was made.

4 The little mikes on the voc.list don't sound.

Sorry that after all your work I have nothing but complaints but hopefully when I have time to explore further I will appreciate the changes you have made.

I have just spent a few minutes on the vocabulary flash card section and I must say I feel everything has just gone crazy!

1 no English available on the flashcards.(Amber has explained that.)

2 I tried to find my current lesson 0082 and the result returned no lesson existed. I could not believe that so I went through the numbers and finally found 0082. Please check out the find facility as otherwise a lot of time is lost.

3 I went to the third exercise but it looks as if no correction was made.

Sorry that after all your work I have nothing but complaints but hopefully when I have time to explore further I will appreciate the changes you have made.

Hello,

I am wondering where is the 'English' test menu at flashcards?

I need it very much

Another weird thing.. the post by Henning that was done 13 hours ago is appearing at the top of the conversations list and then hank's post 2 hours ago etc. That is, out of order.

It looks like my suggestion to clean up the lesson tags (Topics, Functions) has been taken very seriously, to the point that most seem to have been scrubbed away!