So, Surface Texts now mainly works.

Surface Texts is my (initial) attempt at a foreign language reader. The idea is that you :-

1. Read a text.

2. Click to translate words.

3. Learn the words using flashcards.

4. Export the words if required (into ANKI, quizlet or whatever your favourite flashcard app may be).

Number four isn’t yet complete. I’ll look at this after christmas when I know exactly what I want it to do.

There are other language readers out there. Two which spring to mind are lingq and readlang. I’m sure that there are others.

And now of course, we have Surface Texts, and I’m sure you are wondering why I have added another language reader to the rash of these sites flooding the internet.

Essentially, because I found that the other readers were overcomplicated (most of the time) for my needs. I don’t always want to listen to audio. I don’t always want to import books. I also know that while I create flashcards using these apps, I very rarely review them.

So, what then did I want?

I wanted a reader, primarily for reading web pages, which would enable me to quickly create/discard and learn flashcards. And so, I have written Surface Texts.

It is now usable, and does what I need. Over the coming months, I will add additional features (starting with export) that seem useful to me – having used it for a while. I might even add a related App.

How does it work?

It is a very simple site, making use of javascript, jquery and jquery ui. There is currently no server side coding although some of the enhancements I intend to add will use a bit of php.

localStorage is used extensively to save the imported files and saved flashcards.

How have you written this so fast? Do you have l33t coding skills?

Obviously (smirk) I have l33t coding skills 😉 Actually, you may question this statement if you look at the code – which you can do as it is all un-obfuscated javascript. But more importantly I made some design decisions meaning it was straight-forward to write.

1. I decided to use localStorage to store data. This made life much easier as there was no coding required for login, userids, associated admin and so on.

As most people tend to use the same pad or computer this shouldn’t affect most users. (Note to self. I need to improve the export to overcome this for users who flit from machine to machine.

2. It is a free site, and I haven’t needed to worry about support of all browsers. i.e. Surface texts won’t function with any browser that doesn’t support localStorage (which is an html 5.0 feature). I’m assuming that more and more browsers will be fully html compliant over time.

3. I wanted Surface Texts to be minimalist. I didn’t want a vast number of features and functionality. Any additional functionality will be hidden from the users.

PS. As I use a Mac, I’m not sure that it works on IE. If it does’t, I will fix it!

Pax,

MF