NativShark 0.1.2 Release Notes
Hello everyone!
We’ve been hard at work fixing bugs, improving user experience, and adding a long-awaited feature: custom shadow albums! This is also our first update which lives on our blog rather than in Discord.
We’re going to briefly touch on why we switched to a blogging platform for updates, then move into our big new feature for the update, and wrap it up with usability improvements and bug fixes.
Why did we move updates?
As the team has grown and our internal processes have changed, we’ve realized that our updates and features are quickly growing beyond what Discord allows us to easily post. Not only do we have to break down each message in Discord due to character limits, but it makes it hard to explain nuanced changes or additions to the platform. By switching to a blogging platform for updates we are able to provide more detail, include images with associated features, and write without fear of a character limit. Strap in!
Custom Shadow Albums!
This has been requested a lot and has been in the plan since we first thought of NativShark. We’re happy to announce that it is now available for basic, premium and lifetime members!
Creating a Shadow Album
To get started, go to the Shadow Loops page and click “Create Album.”
Be sure to pick a good name for your album (or don’t, you should see some of our test names)! The nickname field will automatically update as you fill out the name, but you can change it afterward to whatever you’d like.
All you need to do after choosing a name and nickname is pick a color, set up the default configuration option for the album, and you’re off to the races!
Adding Tracks to Your Shadow Album
When editing your album, you’ll see an “Add Track” button. Clicking this will bring up a modal where you can add any track from across NativShark to your album.
You can pick your source and search in either Japanese or English for a track to filter your options down. If you’re not sure whether or not you want to add a track to your album, you can preview the track to help you decide. The track preview will play the female audio followed by the male audio.
Changes and Enhancements
General Account Settings
- We have changed how we store and handle user time zones in the database. All current users who set their time zone before have had them adjusted accordingly, but they will likely be different than what you want.
** Please set your time zone at https://www.nativshark.com/settings/general to ensure that the progression system and SRS work how you want them to. **
Flashcards and Reviews
- You can now press the E key while reviewing your flashcards to edit them on the spot. After spending some time with the system for our own studies, we realized this was a much-needed improvement.
- You can now press the A key to archive a card!
- There is now an assortment of buttons beneath the flashcard that allows you to quickly edit or archive the flashcard, or undo the previous review/archive. Mobile users without keyboards plugged into their phones are no longer being punished for not doing so. 🤣
- We’ve made various adjustments to the SRS algorithm that we are using in order to balance it better. This is going to be an ongoing system that we tweak as we get more data, so we’ll do most of the heavy lifting here, but let us know if you feel like it isn’t working in your favor.
Shadow Player
There are almost too many changes and tweaks to list here, so we’ll highlight a few key things instead:
- The shadow tracks now have English! You can toggle the English on and off in the bottom bar while you are listening to the album.
- You can now quickly change which album you are listening to by clicking on the album image in the bottom bar and selecting a new album.
- You can now see the tracklist for your current album from the bottom bar.
Bug Fixes
General
- Fixed various typos throughout the site.
- Fixed an issue where the kana in lessons would render strangely when kana mnemonics were turned off.
Flashcards and Reviews
- Fixed an issue where deactivating and reactivating a deck would immediately give you the “daily new” amount of flashcards to learn right away, rather than respecting what the “daily new” amount actually is.
- Fixed an issue where the system would improperly calculate how many cards you learned in a day from a deck.
- Fixed an issue where the scheduling system did not respect Daylight Savings Time.
- Fixed an issue where new cards were appearing before reviews during the flashcard sessions.
- Fixed an issue where review cards were not shuffled while reviewing.
Shadow Player
- Fixed various issues with usability and appearance across mobile and desktop.
What’s Next?
As always, we’re constantly listening to the community and evolving the platform based on your feedback. Have any suggestions for anything included in this release? Let us know here or on our Discord.
It’s time for us to dive back in and push forward on the next big update! Stay tuned, stay excited, and keep swimming.
What is NativShark?
If you came across this post on accident or through some other means and you don’t know what you just read about, then this is the section for you.
NativShark is a comprehensive online language education platform.
We’re committed to making high-level fluency and multilingual-ness accessible for everyone — no matter where you are — and helping the world become a more connected, friendlier place.
Meet the team here.
