I suppose now's a good a time as any to post the list of
suggestions I've been compiling.
I understand many may not be desirable or possible; they're merely
suggestions.
I've added stars to the ones I personally find to be of highest
priority.
Thanks for reading!
• Specify default output directory for stats exportation.
(It currently defaults to the desktop, and I don't use my
desktop.)
• I take a day off each week. I wish Anki could account
for that somehow in spacing reviews / generating stats.
• Under deck options, when specifying maximums: set to "0"
for unlimited, or have an "unlimited" checkbox.
• The deck/preference options are in great need of
tooltips on mouseover.
★★★★★
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm in dire need of
card-specific marking.
Currently, there's not a single way (tags, marking, etc) to
label a specific card during reviews. As a new quarter begins, I'm
at a loss as to how to make cards and study them; discovering the
flexibility of fields/cards, I made a note type template to save
myself the trouble of typing "Disease definition? Disease
pathogenesis? Disease treatment? Disease complications? Disease
prognosis? Disease presentation? Disease signs/tests/findings? etc"
for each disease (and drug, and bug; along with fields for whether
to ask the card's reverse), but there's no way to mark the most
important ones to study later; marking a single card will mark ALL
its siblings (a single one of the disease notes I mentioned can
generate DOZENS of cards), meaning pretty much all the cards in my
library will end up marked, since there's some aspect of each of
them that's important.
Another example: while studying drugs, many of them will have
the same indications, but only a few will have unique ones - and
those are the ones I want to review specifically before an exam,
without marking the entire note which would also mark the trade
name, class, actions, mechanisms, side effects, misc info, etc and
all their reverse sides. Not to mention that at the end-of-the-year
finals, I don't want to go through nearly every card in my entire
collection, only the things I deemed high-yield throughout the
year!
When using 1:1 note:card generation, marking allowed for
targeted studying; however, with notes that generate multiple
cards, it actually has the opposite effect. It's unfortunate that
Anki encourage usages of multiple fields for related information
but doesn't offer the same support as with single-field notes
(w/r/t spacing, burying/suspending (now fixed, thanks!), and
marking).
Honestly, if card-specific marking and nothing else on this list
were implemented, I'd be entirely satisfied!
★★★★★
• Is there documentation on keyboard shortcuts?
• Can we add all possible card operations
(Mark/BuryCard/BuryNote/SuspendCard/SuspendNote/Again/Easy/Good/etc)
to the right-click menu?
• Ability to name filtered decks upon creation (but have
the the Search field contents remain highlighted by default, of
course). This would help cut down on the number of nondescript
"Filtered Deck #" in the deck list, as well as eliminate the
inconvenience of having to rename them if you want them to be
identifiable; especially since renaming is currently cumbersome (no
F2 or right-click options).
• Re: http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#exporting-packaged-decks
- "When this file is later imported, Anki will delete all the
current cards in the collection, and replace the collection with
the items in the collection.apkg file."
Does this mean that if a friend exported all his decks, and I
imported them, my entire collection would be replaced (rather than
the contents of his collection being added to mine, as
expected?)
• Why does Anki use max-width: 95% instead of 100%? It can
make images blurry without a user-discernable cause. Manual states:
"Anki shrinks images to fit the screen", but I believe this should
be explicitly-declared user preference - e.g. having non-blurry
images isn't something the user should have to declare in the CSS
and having the images fit the screen should be opt-in, not
opt-out.
• Perhaps clicking on a resized image could expand it to
full size, like in most modern browsers.
• Since the position of cards changes with new
additions/repositions, use .cardName selectors instead of .card1,
.card2, etc.
• Shortcut (perhaps Ctrl+Shift+V) for "paste plain text",
or whichever option isn't the default.
• In Browser, have a toggleable (or autohidden) tag panel
that displays the tags of all selected cards (with an x next to
each), as well as a box to add new tags. This would greatly
expedite/simplify tag management.
• Since cards are always made/edited from the desktop,
it's pretty cumbersome to always select "Upload to AnkiWeb" on my
desktop and "Download from AnkiWeb" on my devices. A "don't ask me
again" checkbox would be appreciated (on any prompt that requires
user input, actually).
• Some more text editing options would be nice. e.g.
Bulleting, ordered lists (there's an add-on that I believe should
be core functionality), strikethrough, font sizes (up/down arrows
would suffice). Some of the shortcuts in Notepad2 are very useful
and could be adopted as well (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+D deletes a line;
Ctrl+Shift+C copies it; Ctrl+Shift+Up moves the line up).
• Customizable/toggle-able toolbar in the Add window. I
use the keyboard for everything, and the toolbar doesn't need to be
there. It's strange to have to use an add-on to remove
things.
• ! and @ should suspend card/note in the browser as
well.
• I know I suggested this earlier, but a way to clear all
fields (and preferably simultaneously set them to "don't remember
last input") would be nice. Soren suggested hitting Esc then A, but
in practice, it ends up being Esc, Enter, A, Ctrl+D, browse to the
deck, Enter. A keyboard shortcut would suffice / be preferable.
★ re: "Revert a change made in 2.0.9 where Anki would
switch the active review deck when a different deck was selected in
the add screen. This caused issues where the note type would change
invisibly and some people objected to the new behaviour. " I object
to the old behavior and its reinstatement, as it frequently causes
cards to be added to the wrong deck. Could this be made optional,
so that those who wish to have the deck selections be consistent
can select it and know about it (and therefore wouldn't complain
about it)? It'd be nice if "deck:current" were more useful when
accessed from the Add window. If it can't be made optional, since
the code already exists, how hard would it be to make it into an
add-on?
• I understand the desire for simplicity, but an "advanced
options" section would satisfy everyone.
• If an apkg is imported manually, I'd love to be able to
specify how/what is imported manually. e.g. import into a certain
deck, be able to discard fields (like tags), reassign note types
(so I don't have to change note types and delete the old one),
etc.
• Is there a way to strip all tags from selected cards?
(exporting to a text file and reimporting doesn't preserve deck
hierarchy, scheduling, and other things.) Having a tag list of
thousands of tags because you imported a deck is rather
useless.
• Add "Preview" to Import.
• A way to convert Tags → Subdecks would be
useful.
• Where did Anki get its name? Would be a nice addition to
the manual :)
☆ Manual: "When you select random order, Anki will randomize
your notes, keeping the cards of a given note close together."
That's not what "random" means to most people. Expected behavior
from "random" is to randomize all content, including siblings and
subdecks. In other words, when a person selects "random order",
they don't care about prioritization.
• However, an option to attept to place siblings within
3-5 cards (user-definable?) of each other might be useful. At any
rate, a "keep siblings close" option would satisfy everyone.
• Perhaps "::" in tags could indicate hierarchy (and this
would be reflected in the Browser)?
• When a new deck is created but no cards added, the deck
list doesn't immediately update/refresh to show the deck.
• Dragging and dropping an apkg onto a deck in the
decklist should import with that deck as a parent.
• "Don't show me this again" checkbox on warnings for
changes that will require full uploads; "fields mapped to nothing
will be lost" dialog; basically any errors or confirmations.
• When "check database" is run, remove unused note
types.
☆ Perhaps have a single "Clean up" item that presents
several options, a la hitting Ctrl+Shift+Del in Firefox: checkboxes
for Check Database, Check Media, Empty Cards, Remove unused note
types, Find duplicates, etc. and hitting enter would perform all
selected actions.
★ Perhaps have two different categories of note types:
user-created and imported. Imported note types go into the
"imported" category and are hidden/unselectable when adding notes;
they can be moved into the user-created category if the user
wishes. I believe this would greatly cut down on the number of
extraneous/unused note types in one's library. (I look at my
friends' note types and tags, and they have several hundred (no
exaggeration) from various imports; as such, they don't/can't use
different note types when creating notes because they're impossible
to differentiate and select.)
• manual: "When importing an .apkg file, existing notes
will be updated if they are newer in the .apkg file, and the note
types are compatible." Often, my friends will use my note types to
create notes. If they inadvertently alter one and I import one of
their decks, does that mean it will overwrite my own note types? Is
there an option to turn this off?
• When importing a deck, if the note IDs match
pre-existing notes, will their content be updated (regardless of
their position in the collection - e.g. if they were moved to
different decks)? If not, this would be very useful for
distributing content/updates.
• Is it possible to have card styles apply to field
inputs, for a WYSIWYG-like experience?
• I've been manually find-and-replacing all the divs with
line breaks, and haven't had a single problem or crash so far. The
problem is that the divs break a lot of formatting and cause a lot
of unexpected behavior. Can this be made optional?
• There's undo (Ctrl+Z) but not redo (Ctrl+Y)
• When pasting, pasted text takes the style of preceding
text (should retain its own styling).
• What is the limit on the # of undos?
• I'm trying to add {{#is field
NONspecific?}}{{#suppress}}{{/is field NONspecific?}} at the
beginning of a card, where "suppress" is a nonexistent field and
should suppress card generation if text is entered in field "is
field NONspecific?". However, it simply results in the card never
being generated (even when no text is entered in field "is field
NONspecific?"). I know the manual addresses this. Is there any
alternative way for a field entry to suppress generation
of a card?
• Preview on Add screen (with Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut)
• After selecting a deck via / (search), have an option to
autoexpand parent folders so the deck is visible if you return to
the deck list.
• I think this may have been mentioned before, but there's
still a a need to be able to select decks (without entering them)
somehow. The most intuitive ways would be via the arrow keys or
clicking on the cell padding. A right-click menu would eliminate
the need for an options column containing the same icon in each
row. Keyboard shortcuts while a deck is selected would be welcome
too (Del for delete, F2 for rename, O for deck options).
• In Browser, a menu item for Sort (that presented a
dialog of options but remembered the last-selected preference).
This would help quickly switch the sort order (and particularly
quickly restore the preferred sort order). I'd envision something
like Alt+E → S → Enter would restore the last-selected
sort order. An option to revert to the preferred sort order upon
exit would be nice too (I temporarily want to sort by something
else when looking for something, but I almost always want to sort
by Date Added).
• Manage card types doesn't need an X on each tab; it
takes up way too much room. Could be moved to More and duplicated
in a right-click tab menu.
★ Checkboxes for binary fields. For many fields, I use
conditional replacements to ask whether to ask that field, whether
to generate the reverse of that card, and for some, whether to
include that field's information in another card (e.g. including
signs along with symptoms in a patient presentation). This means my
note types end up with 2-3 times as many fields as I need, half of
them usually empty except for the occasional "y".
Could binary fields appear as checkboxes next to their titles? What
I envision is, when right-clicking on a field, a menu option for
"make this a binary field", when selected, would prompt for "make
this a subfield of..." along with an option to "check by default if
parent field has an entry". These checkboxes would remain
hidden/collapsed until the parent field had text entered in it.
Here's an MSPaint
mockup.
• The items in the left panel of the Browser are not
collapsible, despite their appearance.
• I feel the deck list in the Browser would be more useful
/ easier to browse if everything but the current deck were
collapsed by default (but uncollapsible and browsable via arrow
keys, a la regedit), and decks could be located via searching via
/.
• Browser option: auto-expand up to current deck (a la
Windows Explorer).
• Ability to rename tags from the Browser.
• Votebox for ideas/suggestions to see what users want
most.
• Sometimes adding a card to a deck or changing a note
type will cause a study session to advance.
• A pop-out preview option in Card Types would save a lot
of repetitive scrolling in that tiny window.
• In Card Types, selecting text and hitting tab replaces
the text with a tab (instead of indenting selected text). Shift+Tab
doesn't work either.
• PgUp/Dn don't work in the Study Deck (/) selection.
• When returning to the deck list, arrow keys and PgUp/Dn
do nothing (deck list isn't given focus). Same with reviews
(there's an add-on that fixes this; I believe it should be default
behavior, or at least optional if there's a reason it's
omitted).
• I'm not sure why, but some fonts look significantly
different/worse in Anki. Perhaps ClearType / aliasing don't get
applied properly? I suspect it's a Webkit issue (Googling found
that some people used to have problems with Webkit as well). And
I'm not 100% certain, but it seems like the rendering engine has
trouble finding the bold/italic versions of some fonts, and instead
renders pseudo-bold or pseudo-italics.
• Font linking doesn't seem to work (setting multiple
font-face with the same font-family).
edit: I think
this article sums up the problem.
• Anki's memory usage on startup is around 35MB. However,
after some usage (particularly card style editing, in my
experience), it can get up to 200+ MB until it's restarted.
• styled text is able to be posted in the Card Types
boxes; it should post as plain text.
• syntax highlighting for CSS and Fields in Card
Types.
• Allow resizing of the input boxes in Card Types.
• "Customize Fields" from the Add window doesn't appear to
have a keyboard shortcut.
• Option to keep notes together when moving cards (e.g. in
the Browser, moving a card to another deck would move all its
siblings as well; it doesn't make much sense for a note to be
spread acrosss several decks).
• I still get stranded siblings that appear in the Default
deck when a new card is created from a card in a filtered deck, and
there doesn't seem to be a way to figure out from which deck it
came from / move it back there.
• When encountering an empty card, have a button that will
empty cards upon clicking.
• Is review time paused when the back of cards is shown?
Could there be an option to not pause the timer for "review time"
when the back of cards is shown?
• Option to pause scheduling of cards when the back of
cards is shown. If I'm not mistaken, their due time keeps "counting
down" even when cards are not being reviewed. e.g. right now, if
one leaves the back of a card shown for a few minutes, all the
learning cards appear when resuming reviews.
• In Card Types, retain scroll position in Styling box
when switching tabs; retain scroll position in the previews when
refreshing.
• Ability to copy notes (inc from one deck to another).
Often, the same content appears in lectures across 2-3 different
subjects, and I'd like the same note to be available when studying
that lecture. Even better would be the ability to add a "reference"
(~ a symbolic link) so that the note wouldn't have to be
duplicated, but could still appear in multiple decks (and edits
would apply to the original note and be reflected across all links,
but reviews could optionally be kept separate). edit 11-26: There
already seems to be a discussion about this.
• When changing note types in the Add window, exiting
doesn't apply changes.
• I have a lot of duplicates of the exact same image files
in my media folder. Is there any way for Anki to consolidate them
automatically (e.g. maybe by checking filesizes or something)?
• Ability to select more than one deck/tag in the Browser
(via Ctrl+click or Shift+click).
• The timebox notification completely disables
the rest of the program, even when it's not the thing that has
focus.
• The timebox notification only appears when trying to
progress to the next card.
• The timebox notification makes a loud, annoying sound. I
know it probably uses the default system sound for a notification
box, but it's rather unnecessary (and compounds the disruptiveness,
as it's the only part of the program that makes a sound).
• Reorder fields by drag-and-drop in the Add dialog would
save a lot of counting/guessing/time.
• Editing cards: doesn't allow Cloze deletions in
non-Cloze note types (shows a notification); should be updated to
be like the Add dialog (inserts Cloze w/ popup tooltip
message).
• Preview window in browser: It'd be nice to be able to
configure which part of a card is shown (front/back) - it'd be a
nice, easy way to skim through information / study in a more
"traditional" style (since I put all a note's info on the
backs).