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Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

We are not Duolingo, we cannot solve any problems directly, but we can provide community-based advice.


User avatar
Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

Hello,
For me all came back to normal today. D+2.
I use only the web page on a PC. I now can choose between keyboard and words bank.
I can do my daily training and it's just fine.
Thank you to the Duo volunteers. It seems that they fixed the problem.

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User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Gottogetout[/mention] I tried strength yesterday and I notice something similar. At first it only let me use word bank, but then it did offer me a keyboard switch at some point which I used. After that there wasn't an option often to switch back to the word bank. I use the word bank on new lessons but when reviewing I like the keyboard. I suppose it thought I wanted word bank because I was using it before.

Something to note, Duome can't fix Duolingo's problems. We can offer advice and observations though! :)

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b05aplmun.ca
United States of America

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by b05aplmun.ca »

For what it´s worth, I had normal access to the button that changes a response from Word Bank to typing today. (For a day or two prior to that, my lessons started out with no option to change over to typing and then at some point switched spontaneously. )

User avatar
Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

Hi,
Yes, someone told me recently that the forum allows us to communicate with each other, but that the moderators cannot communicate with the developers. They maybe take a look at the forum sometimes? Who knows.

I have decided to intentionally break my streak. I do not want to depend on this thing anymore. Like "Oh it's 11:45 p.m., I'm going to 'lose' my streak, I have to do a lesson right now". It did happen once or twice. Rare, because my favorite time for training is in the morning. It wasn't 's really a stress but I don't need that. Using Duo daily and training : YES YES YES! Daily immerge in a language : YES.
Streaks : Can be funny for some time, but I don't want to care about that anymore. Freedom :)

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User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Gottogetout[/mention] Duome has no affiliation with the Duolingo programming. We are like a forum that fills in after Duolingo closed theirs, but we can't fix of Duolingo's problems, because this is a separate website. Maybe Duolingo staff read this forum, I don't know. You need to send a bug report to Duolingo if you have a problem with them.

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User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Mobile browsers on Android still have the same symptom.

  • Chrome Dev (after relogin): No typing, only word banks

  • Firefox Nightly: Only typing, no toggle switch

On the PC I need to retest with Firefox or Edge and clearing Duolingo.com cookies didn't help either.

I won't clear cache and cookies for ALL domains on mobile.
Can't access or reset specific domain cookies there it seems.

Need to test Kiwi and Yandex Alpha browsers once again on mobile.

Staff clearly has touched something on 23. January 2023 and/or before as the web code suddenly acts so strange.

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User avatar
Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

Yes, Corinnebelle ,
It's normal, logical.
I did report the issue. But as usual, I got no answers or reaction at all from them after reporting, but a mail from someone from here, (may be you?) that's why I was doing kind of a small confusion.
Of course the forum and the developers are two separate things.

Okay Thomas,
Luckily, for me, on my PC, all came back to normal. I'm able to continue using Duo with the keyboard access. That was my concern. I really believed that I was may be to stop using Duo.
Sorry to ear that some people still experiment issues.

By the way, as I said, I've broken my streak in order to get free of the concern of thinking daily about "not losing my streak".
I've decided to not care anymore about that from now on :) Not important

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Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Gottogetout[/mention] We use this forum to share tips, tricks and user experience with each other. Can't fix the thing, but can give moral support and tips from our user knowledge.

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User avatar
Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

Yes, and it's a lot. Thank you.

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

Hi,
The keyboard 's access vanished again tonight, on the duo page, on my PC.
That bothers me, but I know, now, that I not the only one. Let's hope that this will be resolved one day.
I wanted to intentionally break my 369 days streak, before yesterday. A message was telling me late at evening "You only have 30 minutes left to do a class and not lose your series". I did not do it.
This morning I resumed training because I felt like it, and I noticed that the 368 days streak was there and incremented.
Now there is no keyboard. I simply won't use Duo without my keyboard. It's like that. I will break the streak this way then, no problem.
Have a good evening dear languages fans fellow )

OKAY, LAST MINUTE :
In order to investigate, I gave a try doing some exercises and MY CONCLUSION is that this seems to have been an unfortunate choice of the developers :( As told by some people here, and they were right, it seems. Because after two answers I had to use the keyboard in order to type a word in a sentence !
This is completely silly in my view, I hate to click on words banks.
But that's the choice that has been done, apparently.
I'm going to try to do one lesson and if it lasts too much I will definitely give up Duo.

(later) ... Okay, I've just discovered now that they introduces a new feature. at some point you can click on "make it harder", all the words of a sentence disappear, and you have to type the whole sentence. Exactly the way I like to train. The will to do this kind of changes is maybe the cause of all our problems :(

(Later) ... In the next exercise I have finally access to the keyboard typing mode.
I won't congratulate the developers for this changes, personally
.

MY CONCLUSION :
This is probably what happened to me 7 days ago, at the beginning of this post. They wanted me/us to click on words on some exercises and I didn't understand it. I believed that it was a bug ! It wasn't!
I'm very sorry for people you read this, and believed that there was a bug. It appears that there's no bug, at least not in what I'm experimented now and probably 7 days ago.
It was a (stupid) choice of the developers, that surprised me and some others.
voila.

Last edited by Gottogetout on Tue Jan 31, 2023 9:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a word bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afraid

Post by Gottogetout »

He was right

duome wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:22 pm

Regarding the missing keyboard option: I noticed that within a single lesson I get both "word bank only" and "keyboard alternative available" kinds of sentences, i.e. there may or there may not be an alternative depending on a specific sentence. It might be based on what sentence is being shown to you, but as soon as you get the chance to select the keyboard for one of the sentences where the keyboard option is available, it will remain enabled for all future sentences as well and you will never see another word bank ever. Just wait for the first sentence where the keyboard option is available and you're good to go.

Edit: I'm not entirely sure if it really works like this. Yesterday it did, but today it doesn't...

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gottogetout »

Here is my interpretation of what has happened over the past week :
Apparently for the developers, it's normal imposing the word bank on us, and removing access to the keyboard, here and there. They must have thought that we were going to find it normal and follow the imposed path, like lambs, and without thinking.
No need to warn us, but it's true that it's not easy to say "Careful, guys, from now on, don't be surprised if you no longer have access to the keyboard here and there, AND EVEN AT THE BEGINNING OF A LESSON. It's only for a while. It's normal. Just do what you're offered, as it comes to you on the screen, without thinking"
I must have a problem : I use to think.
I'm sorry! It's been several years that I train daily on the keyboard, only on PC for my part, with Duo. Not just since a year. always with the keyboard, never with the bank words. Big advantage : it allows me to learn listening, speaking, reading and WRITING, letter by letter. (I hate word banks)
So I did not find that normal AT ALL, I thought of a bug of maintenance or development in progress.
Too bad, isn't it? :)
That's what happened, I believe
(Actually, at first I thought the thing was maybe related to my 365 days streak that just happened. It wasn't. It was a coincidence)

The big big change in the structure of the course which took place recently was not easy to accept, we tried to understand and to accept it. They thought they had to do that in order to strengthen the way we learn, in my view. Okay. Even though it didn't pleas me a lot, I understood and accepted that
But here I didn't understand at all what happened. I needed a week to understand.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

The next person is complaining with Welsh listening exercises and missing of a true typing option:

viewtopic.php?p=41841-exercises-showing ... red#p41841

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gottogetout »

Thanks, I have read.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

@gottogetout

Tapping of word banks "with a mouse" hardly makes sense on a PC...too time consuming.

For a new Laptop I'm somehow still not searching for a dual tablet device...maybe I should go for something else - more hybrid.

Same issue what Mondly currently has (including Web), but at least they are more open-minded for improvements and are specifically asking us for our suggestions.

Maybe their Duolingo Web code maintenance update just has gone wrong or there's a new bug on a rewritten or changed server module.

FYI: I still do get typing on Firefox Nightly 108.0a1 (old tree skill started by Duome progress page) but probably only because of previous stored cookies.

Have the cookie names or A/B variables in the user account have changed?
If yes, we all run into the issue with random different output.
If not, you and I shouldn't have seen changes back and forth every new day.

Has been several times in the past that developers actually managed to break old working Web code to almost unusability for specific browsers or versions.

So there's IMHO some hope next couple of weeks...

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Deleted User 4833

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Deleted User 4833 »

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:16 pm

@gottogetout

Tapping of word banks "with a mouse" hardly makes sense on a PC...too time consuming.

It makes sense - for me anyway - if you are studying a language like Arabic, with a completely different alphabet. I haven't mastered the location of all the letters on the Arabic keyboard, I would need to print out a paper reminding me what key to type with, and even then, I still haven't learned how to type all the diacritical marks on a computer keyboard. It's easier on the phone, as the keyboard is right in front of me, but even then, it's very time consuming for me to type out an answer in Arabic.

Even though I know Hebrew well, it also takes me longer to type an answer on a computer unless I have a cheat sheet with the keyboard setup right in front of me, as I don't type Hebrew often enough to have the Hebrew keyboard memorized. Though in the case of Hebrew, I have no problem at all on the phone, as the keyboard is shown the moment you begin to type.

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Upps, was only thinking about European languages based on Latin ;)

You know, Duolingo (sometimes even Memrise) supports typing without accents/umlauts and just gives an accent warning which helps tremendously on a normal German Qwertz hardware keyboard.

People said before on the Duolingo community forums for very difficult languages like Irish that they actually need zo through ALL six crown levels per skill and can't go down too soon but need to complete all those earlier lessons sequentially to get a feeling; so for them not so many or zero NEW words per day did the trick.

Too bad, the new path also does it very differently...

Surey I understand your issue very well. Full acknowledge.

Typing in Portuguese or French is easier on the Gboard (Android) where I have access to diacritics and can easily switch the language layout.

But that's the whole point why there i

  • A) a setting menu,
  • B) why a toggle keyboard <-> word bank vs 1-2 letter keyboard builder shall be a FREE choice for ALL learners
  • C) no matter if experienced, a true or false beginner or
  • D) with having any personal disabilities.

Forcing me into tapping for short and easy sentences after 1-6 years of learning progress makes not much sense.
Means I can't use "Speech to text".

Well, Duolingo kinda always failed to introduce real difficulty settings, adding custom advanced user options.
They kinda did a bit, partly (lesson footer, free seirch was removed on Ios app), but never in full depth.
All those efforts with crowns, the new path, golden tree pre-crown Strengthening ideas which help nothing with the wrong translation direction or wrong typing vs cloze-deletion/multiple-choice ratios.

It could be that simple...no need for all of this with the right settings:
Throw unique sentences at me and I will tell the app/website how I want to learn or practice on my own and what style best fits me.

I can understand your feedback, also the needs of learners from Arabic, Hindi, Asian languages or other languages with a different writing system.

But we're speaking mainly about the PC / Web so NOT everybody has a touchscreen there.

Seems like Duolingo testers and developers are equipped with a different system and screen to get their new code working?!?

Hey, I'm actually in need for a new Laptop.
Can I pay with Lingots too? ;)
Do I soon need to buy a hybrid?

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Thu Feb 02, 2023 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Deleted User 4833

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Deleted User 4833 »

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 11:30 pm

Upps, was only thinking about European languages based on Latin ;)

You know, Duolingo (sometimes even Memrise) supports typing without accents/umlauts and just gives an accent warning.

Yeah, I figured that out early on. Duolingo doesn't seem to care about capitalization and punction marks either.

I sometimes take advantage of that if I'm feeling lazy. ;)

Really, I need to pay more attention to accents in French, though, as I have a hard time keeping that straight. It's easier for me in Spanish, as I pretty much know where the accents belong most of the time.

Last edited by Deleted User 4833 on Thu Feb 02, 2023 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Corinnebelle »

I used to scratch around on the keyboard like a chicken to type Hebrew before I learnt the keyboard. Trying to learn a new keyboard layout and a new language is hard. Some of those first listening exercises, I literally wrote them out on a piece of paper because it was so hard type and spell and listen to the Hebrew speaker. The word bank is really good to teach listening. Hebrew has native speakers and there is no turtle, but then we don't have AI voices. I can do a lot of listening exercises with the word bank and get them right now. Before I was stressed trying to type and figure out what they were saying.

Now I feel like the lessons are too easy. Duolingo wants to fill in the rest of the sentence sometimes if I got half of it right and then I just have to type the words I got wrong. Handy when doing a legendary lesson but I miss typing the challenge of getting it right. I want to redo the whole course with the keyboard, because my spelling has suffered since the word bank. Don't know if I'll get to do that, now that the snake is here and I don't like it.

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Deleted User 4833

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Deleted User 4833 »

I could type Hebrew quicker if I printed out the keyboard viewer from my computer to give me a reminder of which key is which. I don't have that problem on the phone, as I mentioned above.

I don't really mind my phone autocorrecting me, I just have to make sure it autocorrected me correctly, if you know what I mean.

Funny thing is, when I lived in Israel (a long time ago) I worked in an office that had Hebrew/English typewriters (and a way to switch the carriage direction), so I did have some practice typing in Hebrew back then.

User avatar
Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gottogetout »

Hello,
For me each language has his own sounds, words and magic!
Languages are magic
I studied the Arabic and Cyrillic alphabet, I also started the Duo lessons, about a year ago. Curiosity.
It is clear that I used the word bank in those cases. and I had zoomed in on the characters too.

INFO: I redid a lesson just now. First sentence : words bank. Next sentence, it was finished, because "Make it more difficult?" showed up at the bottom. I clicked on it and I had the keyboard.
It seems manageable, then, at least for the moment, for my part.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Corinnebelle »

JudieLC wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:58 am

Funny thing is, when I lived in Israel (a long time ago) I worked in an office that had Hebrew/English typewriters (and a way to switch the carriage direction), so I did have some practice typing in Hebrew back then.

Interesting! A typewriter that goes in reverse. I sometimes get mixed up between the keyboards and start trying to use the Hebrew one for English! I suppose this happens when you speak two languages as well?

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Deleted User 4833

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Deleted User 4833 »

Corinnebelle wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:10 am
JudieLC wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:58 am

Funny thing is, when I lived in Israel (a long time ago) I worked in an office that had Hebrew/English typewriters (and a way to switch the carriage direction), so I did have some practice typing in Hebrew back then.

Interesting! A typewriter that goes in reverse. I sometimes get mixed up between the keyboards and start trying to use the Hebrew one for English! I suppose this happens when you speak two languages as well?

It happens to me now, even on the computer, when I've been typing something in Hebrew and have forgotten to switch the keyboard back to English. I start typing and - whoops - I'm typing the wrong language in the wrong direction.

I forget exactly how the dual language typewriters we had in Israel worked, but they were IBM Selectrics, and they had separate "typeballs" for English and Hebrew. We had to switch them out, I believe, to switch between Hebrew and English.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]JudieLC[/mention] I was trying to type a h in English except I was pressing the key for hey and same with alef when I wanted a.

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gottogetout »

OK, I think I eventually understood what's going on since a week.
I'm part of those "people who understand FAST but to whom you have to explain LONG". :D (<- This is a French joke)

My experience is that, now on, developers decided that we have to mandatory use the words banks on several sentences; If you succeed you can choose the keyboard mode, if you wish. Otherwise you're stuck in words banks for several sentences or even the whole lesson.
That seems to be the the change that has been made.
On a computer it's super frustrating, because it slows you down.
That's how it is.
Less freedom of choice. I don't see what this can add to the experience, but that's the way it has been done. Is the goal preventing some beginners to live a too challenging experience? Wow! Great! (<- This is called and ironic comment, and it's universal :D )
Okay, If you get into the habit of typing words, letter by letter, even though it's harder at first, you'll get an ability to type fast, with time, and you'll learn the words much "deeply".

Maybe not so simple on a smartphone? I don't know, I only use the PC version. Impossible for Arabic, Chienese, Russian, Korean... I know.
I wish I could write this at the bottom of my first post, as a last minute info. Not possible, sorry.

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Gentianopsis
Czech Republic

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gentianopsis »

Gottogetout wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:39 pm

... Okay, If you get into the habit of typing words, letter by letter, even though it's harder at first, you'll get an ability to type fast, with time, and you'll learn the words much "deeply".

Maybe not so simple on a smartphone? I don't know, I only use the PC version. Impossible for Arabic, Chienese, Russian, Korean...

There is a great extension "DuoKeyboard" for your PC - at least, if you use GoogleChrome or Firefox: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... klkfniimfa and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... okeyboard/ You simply use the keyboard lay-out you are used to and this app changes the letters for you according to the language in the Duolingo question. I use it for Russian and it is perfect! It has alphabets for many different languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese...) in it. You can even choose to have the cheat sheet keyboard on the screen if you need.

Unfortunately for me, Chinese keyboard is not there, but that is no problem - you can just let Windows to add Chinese keyboard to your computer. Using it is simple: I type letters (which Pinyin is based on) on QWERTY keyboard and Windows always let me choose (by typing numbers or clicking with the mouse = the same way Duolingo questions with matching word pairs work) the correct Chinese character for the written syllable I need.

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Gottogetout
France

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Gottogetout »

Thank you for your information.
I tested a little with German, just to get an idea. This involves special adaptation.
For my part, I prefer to use my French keyboard for German, Spanish... and as Thomas mentioned, you're allowed to type an 'a' instead of an "ä" for example, to type everything in lower case etc. This allows you to type FAST. And if you have to type a mail or a text with an AZERTY French keyboard, you still can type all the German or Spanish characters.
You just have to press the key of the accent before the key of the letter.
I personally find the task of changing the keyboard more complex for my brain.
But I don't know, some people could like that. May be for Russian, Arabic or other languages.
You must test, to have your own idea.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

I meant it more for â, à, á, ã,..

Doesn't make it immediately right if you leave out the ` of a.
In PT there is the a (article) or a as "to preposition" and à simply means to the x (feminine noun).

It's a compromise on the Pc.
Many months ago an accent userscript existed for the Web. Have used it 2017/17, maybe 2018.

For German I suggest to at least using more suitable workaround umlauts

ä: ae
ö: oe
ü: ue
ß: ss (some words use ss according to "neue Rechtschreibung", others still require ß)

a, o, u are NOT the correct replacements for äöü umlauts.

For Português there are words with accent letters like coração or você.

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

A Chrome extension existed to get numbers assisgned to word banks so for each word you just have to hit 1..9..0.

Have not tested it for a long time. Might not work in the new path/snake if variables or Home/Learn variables (like tree) have changed already.

Worth a try...if we can find the repository again.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Unable to use my keyboard anymore, only a words bank, after a 365 day streak! I'll have to stop using DUO, I'm afrai

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

I can type quite fast with two thumbs on a not too wide smartphone holding it in two hands.

Thankfully, there I don't experience no auto filling of word banks into the answer field anymore like I saw it happening a few years ago.
That was a quite bad symptom on some Android app versions, depending on text- and display Accessibility settings and was only going worse with the introduction of screen wasting cartoon characters in lessons.
But the 6.67" display phone size helps.

To be honest:
The small text on the Web ( Chrome Dev) is just laughable. Accessibility in mobile browser gets ignored by the Duolingo html code and cartoons totally corrupted the layout and missing increased font sizes.
I can see a quick change of the text vs layout once a new question starts after cartoons get loaded.
Just horrible...not really usable..

Firefox Nightly behaves a bit better on Android with the text size / Accessibility setting and you can of course remove annoying cartoons with uBlock Origin Firefox addon (debug mode, custom collection _id) too.

There also is the option to manually adjust font size with the Stylus Firefox addon and a custom CSS file for several html div elements.

Chrome@Android just doesn't want to get it right...new Zoom (flag) option didn't really work with the Duolingo forum either.

Gottogetout wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 1:39 pm

Maybe not so simple on a smartphone

Quite simple with Gboard (Android).
Either I click on the language flag button left to the space or long-press on space and choose the relevant keyboard from the popup dialogue.

Annoyingly Duolingo now adds a 5th internal Português (Portugal) keyboard which is set to multi-language typing (Pt, De, En).

The Android app also automatically chooses the correct En vs De vs Pt-Br keyboard (which were installed locally).

Also there is some auto-correct feature or word suggestion strip at a top row and next-word help available.

On the Web:
Clicking the language flag on Gboard only jumps between two languages after you've waited for a while (until next question after the Continue button).
So I can manually switch back and forth between Pt-Br <-> En and Fr <-> En languages.

Only cycles through ALL of the installed keyboard layouts on Gboard if you more quickly push the language flag button several times.

The text over the Space bar also changes every time so you exactly know which one is selected.

And as I said before, voice typing is selected for each keyboard individually but multi-language typing is deactivated in my configuration with the exception to the new (Portuguese course) Duolingo app Portugal keyboard.

Alternatively, Gboard also supports swipe typing (one finger) with auto-completion of the correct letter orders.

With the above outlined I am usually faster with Gboard full typing if I know the answer well than having to search for dedicated on screen letters on any app (LingoLegend, Speakly) or to look for word bank order.

On a big / wide tablet swipe typing with one finger might be workable.

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Sat Feb 04, 2023 12:25 am, edited 2 times in total.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

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