The update has been submitted and will hopefully be making it’s way out to all of you within a week.  Unfortunately I can’t get it out any sooner, and I’m sorry for any problems.

This site, as well as http://flashcards.red5dev.com had some unexpected down time earlier today.   I use monitoring services to make sure my apps are up, but I was unable to to reboot the server until this evening so there was some down time from late last night until a few hours ago.  Normally any downtime would be no longer than 30 minutes.

On a more positive note, FlashCards 2.0 will be released before the start of the Fall Semester in mid August, which will be a fairly substantial feature upgrade of the application.  As always, send in any requests you have and I’ll do my best to get them into the application!

The gestures to go back and forward while running through cards have been improved and should be more responsive.

The update also enables fast application switching, meaning that if you are running iOS4, FlashCards will remember where you left off when you come back into the application.

This also fixes a bug with taking photos on an iOS4 enabled device.

The 2.0 rewrite is still underway and on target to be released later this summer.  It’s a very expansive update and will introduce most requested features.

As always, let me know if there’s anything you want to see in the application, and I’ll do my best to get it in as soon as possible!

I’ll try to keep this as short as possible, because thankfully with the new system, backing up is pretty painless.

I should only need this single screenshot:

After connecting your iPad to your computer it should show up under devices in iTunes as shown above.  Select your device, and then click the Apps tab.  Scroll down to the bottom of that page and you’ll see the File Sharing section.  From here you should see FlashCards in the list of applications.  If you don’t see it make sure the application is up to date, and try turning the device off and back on again.

To back up, select all the files under FlashCards and click the “Save To” button.  This will open a file dialog and will let you save the files to your local hard drive.  To restore a back up, click the “Add” button, and then  select the files you want to restore.

And that’s back up and restore on the iPad (and future iPhone versions).

Stay tuned for more updates on FlashCards 2.0, and as always, let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to go through in these FlashCards How-To articles, or if there’s any new features you want me to implement.  I try to implement user suggestions as quickly as possible!

For details on all that’s in this release check out the release post here: http://www.red5dev.com/2010/04/25/flashcards-1-9-8-release/

The next update will be coming soon, and will add some new organization options for cardsets,  if you have any problems, or suggestions, e-mail me at support@red5dev.com and I’ll do my best to get them into an update as soon as possible!

FlashCards provides several ways to import cards into the application, so in this post I’ll detail what it currently supports, and what’s coming in the future, as well as going through the process from start to finish on how to import flashcards.

First off, I’ll start with what the importer currently can’t do:

1. No sound or pictures.  The Importer currently supports only text.  I’m planning on adding the ability to import pictures/audio soon, but for now it’s only text
2. No formatting.  The importer only imports plain text, so alignment, background color, text color, things like that won’t be transferred into the application

Currently there are two ways to get flash cards into FlashCards, either create the cards on your iPhone/iPod/iPad or use the FlashCard Importer. The basic process to import files is:

1. Create either a csv file (comma separated value) or an excel file (xls or xlsx)
2. Upload the file to the FlashCard Importer
3. Import the cardset into the application

To create your spreadsheet you can use nearly any spreadsheet editor (Numbers, Excel, Google Docs, OpenOffice).  In the first column enter the text you want on the front of the card, in the second column enter the text you want on the back of the card.  Make sure no row is entirely blank.  As soon as the importer encounters an entirely blank row it will stop importing, so make sure each row has at least front text or back text, if not both.

Creating a csv file can be a little tricky, so in general I recommend using one of the excel formats (xls or xlsx) if you can.  Most spreadsheet editors support exporting to excel, so this is a pretty failsafe option, just create your spreadsheet and export or save-as in an excel format.  Most applications can also export csv, but due to inconsistencies in how each application implements the csv format it doesn’t always work correctly.  Still you can use csv, but if you are going to be using any foreign characters make sure the encoding on the csv file is UTF-8.  Again, I’m going to strongly suggest using one of the two excel formats, it’s just simply less prone to problems.

Nearly any spreadsheet program can be used to create these files.  In this post I’ll be importing flashcards for greek gods.

Here is the Numbers document I started with:

Greek Gods (Numbers)
GreekGods.numbers

A Numbers document with Greek Gods. Exporting this document to either Excel or CSV will allow it to be imported into the FlashCard Importer.

Author:	Jason Wentworth
Date:	December 31, 1969

97.9 KiB
103 Downloads
Details...

If you can’t open that document, don’t worry.  Numbers is Apple’s spreadsheet application.  From that file I exported it to a standard Excel format:

Greek Gods (Excel)
GreekGods.xls
Version: 1.0

An Excel document with Greek Gods for importing into the FlashCard Importer

Author:	Jason Wentworth
Date:	September 5, 2010

15.0 KiB
174 Downloads
Details...

And I also could have exported it to a CSV format.

Greek Gods (CSV)
GreekGods.csv
Version: 1.0

A CSV file with Greek Gods for importing into the FlashCard Importer

Author:	Jason Wentworth
Date:	September 5, 2010

4.9 KiB
93 Downloads
Details...

Again, if you have special characters I’d recommend using an excel format for importing.

After creating your document and getting it into either an excel format, or csv, then go to the http://flashcards.red5dev.com which should look something like this:

Click the “Choose File” button and select your excel or csv file to upload.  Then click “Create” and if everything goes well you should see a screen like this:

With that we are done with the website, and can open up the FlashCard application on your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad.

After launching the application you’ll see your familiar list of cardsets.  Here’s what it looks like on a fresh download of the application:

If you are importing into a cardset you’ve already created, you can skip this next step and open up the cardset you already have.  Otherwise go ahead and click the + to create a new cardset.

After creating your cardset, or selecting your existing one, you’ll see the cardset details screen, similar to this:

Select “Import” at the bottom of the list, and you’ll go to the import screen:

Enter in the numbers associated with your cardset.  In this case, mine were 1267, and then click import.  After a few seconds you should see a progress bar:

If for some reason you don’t see this progress bar, or the cards don’t get imported, try exiting the application and going back in.  After the import is done it should return you to card list, with your newly imported cards.

And with that you’ve gone from creating your cards in your favorite spreadsheet program, to having them in your FlashCards application!

Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or problems with importing, as well as any other How-Tos you’d like to see posted here!

Gestures

You can now use gestures to navigate while running through cards.  The current supported gestures are:

• Swipe left to advance to the next card
• Swipe right to go back to the previous card
• Double Tap to flip the card

Another new feature is the ability to go back.  Simply swipe right to go the previous card.  The application will keep track of the cards it’s seen so you can go back as far as when it started.  It will also keep track of the card you went back from, so when you advance you’ll see the card you went back from (even if you are running in smart study, or random mode).

Card Statistics

You can also reset the statistics on any card, putting it back in Leitner Box 1, and the number of times it was asked back to 0.

Choose Starting Card

From any card you can now start running through the cardset.  Regardless of your setting it will start with the card you are currently on, and then use your settings from there.  So if you have your cards set to run in order, it will start with the card you are currently on, and then move on to the next card.  If you are running in random or smart study mode, it will start with the card you are currently on, and then randomly select a card after that.

Start from this card, and statistics example

Import Into Topic

The Topic screen now has an “Import” option which will allow you to import cards directly into a topic.  This will add the cards to the cardset, and then add them to the topic.

Other bug fixes were made to the topic section, including making the switch next to the name of the topic in the topic list work again.  These switches determine whether or not the entire topic will be “skipped”.  If a topic is “off” cards in it will not show up when running through the cardset.

iPad Backup Options

FlashCards will now expose it’s files through iTunes on the iPad version.  This will allow you to backup/restore without having to go through SyncDocs.  Simply drag and drop the files in and out of iTunes to backup/restore.

The update has been submitted, and it should be making it’s way out in about a week.  As always I need your feedback to help make the application better, so either leave a comment here, or e-mail support@red5dev.com with any suggestions!

Also the e-mail is in the process of switching over, so for the next hour or the support@red5dev.com and jason@red5dev.com address may be down.

Update: E-mail is back up, downtime was only about 10-15 minutes, but if you sent an e-mail and got a response that said it was “undeliverable” please try again now!

Admittedly the iPad support right now is pretty basic, it’s more or less just a bigger version of the standard iPhone app, but at least it runs in full resolution, and has a few minor iPad specific tweaks. More complete iPad support, including a redesigned UI for the iPad is in the works, and will be slowly rolled out over the next few updates.

Update 1.9.8 is already right around the corner including the ability to go back while running through cards (the most requested new feature in the application), and to start running through cards from any card (not just the first card, or a random card).