it’s September, start of a new school year for many, and it’s the perfect time for a new episode of the epic series ANF – A New Feature™©®.
We actually had quite a few this year already, with dark mode, the new website layout, the option to slow down examples, my growing dictionary, the voice recorder and the speech recognition AI.
But the feature I have now might be the most useful of them all.
Why? Well, my articles are usually a bit longer and there’s a lot of information in there. And it’s almost impossible to remember everything in one go.
So it would be really great to note down some key points that you can come back to later to review them.
Well… that’s exactly what you can do now, because from now on, you can
take your own notes
Yes, you read that right :)!
For each article, you can now open a note window and take your own notes, while you read.
These notes are saved in your profile then, and when you come back to check on the topic again, they’re there for you to review.
Isn’t that awesome?!
You also have the standard formatting options, so you can make them look really nice and pretty if you want to. And you can also print them out directly from the note window AND you can download them as doc-file, if you want to have them as a backup on your computer.
Pretty cool, right?
So… how do it work?
to open (and close) the note window, just click the note button.
Here’s how it looks on desktop:
And here is how it looks on mobile:
The symbol might look different on your device, but that’s the location.
When you click the button, the window will open and it looks like this:
And you can move this window around on your screen and change it’s size also. So depending on your screen you might be able to just have it open right next to the article at all time.
On mobile, it looks a little different and but the elements are the same.
I have set the note to auto-save mode, so every minute or so, it auto-saves itself and you don’t run the risk of losing everything if you close the browser.
Just closing the note window does NOT delete the note, though… no worries.
I’ll also set up an archive where you can see all your notes pretty soon, and I’ll probably add that to your profile, and maybe also to my new fancy homepage. How do you like that by the way?
have you seen that there’s a button that’ll give you a random article? Someone requested that a while ago.
I actually have some plans for the homepage, as well, and I want to add a real Word of the Day from my dictionary there, too.
Lots notes did work fine when I tested it, so there shouldn’t be too many bugs.
Now, there’s one more important thing I need to mention :
! Notes only works for members !
If you don’t have a membership or you’re not logged it, you will NOT see the notes button and you can not access your notes. (They’re still there, though, even after your membership expires, so don’t worry about losing them.)
So… if you’re not a member yet and you really like this feature, it’s time to sign up :).
And now is an especially good time, because I will actually raise prices a little quite soon. I don’t know when yet, it’s going to be a couple of weeks at least, and I’ll also give you a special discount for long term readers, but yeah – prices will go up a bit.
But there’s more cool features to come, as well, particularly for the dictionary (opposites, usefulness-score) so the site will get even more useful.
So, if you want to become a member, you can find out all about that here:
And that’s it for today :).
Let me know what you think of the new feature in the comments and of course let me know any bugs that you might see. I think it should work for the vast majority of you, and it shouldn’t be as big a problem as the audio AI. That was a lot more complicated.
Anyway, let me know all your thoughts and feedback in the comments, and have fun taking notes, and I’ll see you next time :)
could you add a notification option? I find i keep missing replies on my comments
On top of the comment thread next to the number, there should be three horizontal lines.
When you click those, you’ll get an overview over your comments.
And there is a “subscribe” field in the comment box above the thread.
Also, next to the green “send” button, there’s a cross… when you check that, you’ll subscribe to follow up comments.
I have to made this more visible and clear, but I keep procrastinating :)
Gefunden! Vielen Dank
Mit all den neuen improvements, der neue Preis wird sich lohnen!
Das denke ich auch :)
Du bist der geilste Beliner Deutschlehrerblogger, ever. Was für eine tolle Idee!
Danke :)!!
Hey Emanuel!
Cool new feature! It works for me when I’m logged in, but I noticed some issues as well:
On* Firefox! I should note that on Chrome it renders correctly (I guess, it’s like a double “hamburger” symbol)? It still shows up when I’m not logged in.
On Safari it shows up
Jesus, that is a disaster :D. I thought unicode symbols were the same across the web, but apperantly they’re not.
… On Safari, it shows up like a pause symbol.
Somehow the link was removed in my last message.
I think I need to switch away from using unicode icons to using actual images. These little bugs are annoying!! Thanks for letting me know, though :)!!
Sehr geil! Auf der nächste Version wünsche ich meine Notizen mit anderen Mitgliedern teilen zu können. Das wäre sehr cool! :D
Auf der nächsten* Version habe ich gemeint ;)
*IN der nächsten Version ;)
Technisch bestimmt irgendwie möglich, aber das ist zu viel für mich alleine. Da muss ich warten, ob die Entwickler das von alleine machen :)
Glücklicherweise hat mein Mann Entwickler-Kenntnis. Falls du mit ihm arbeiten möchtest. Lass mich wissen. ❤️
Das ist eine Geldfrage :). Ich kann keine normalen Entwickler bezahlen, leider. Aber schreib mir mal ‘ne Mail.
thank you so much for providing me free membership for a year… YourDailyGerman forum is an amazing work to help encourage the aspirants .. Can’t thank enough !
I’m sure this feature will help us a lot, thank you! Not just for this, thank you soooo much also for giving me a scholarship!! Can’t find the right words to describe my happiness. It will help a lot. I’ll use it well!
Ich hoffe wir treffen uns in deutschland.
VIELE DANK EMANUEL!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR GIVING ME A SCHOLARSHIP I am actually planning to do my bachelors in germany so currently learning deutsch and this gift will be really really helpful in my journey
Neat! I think I’m gonna have fun with this.
I was playing with it a little just now. Was able to create a note on this article and save it, but I’m not sure where it’s saved. I don’t see it on my profile. If I stay on this page, it’s there when I click the button, but not when I go to another page and come back. (Maybe I overlooked something?)
It also seems like there’s kind of a 50/50 chance that the note button will freeze after I save a note. So I save the note, go to another article, click on the button, and then I can edit the title but the text box is frozen. But sometimes it works just fine.
I’m still working on showing them all in the profile.
They’re saved in my database and they get loaded with each article. So when you come to this article, you should have access to the note you wrote for this one.
The note window closes when you reload or load a new page, but you can open it with button.
Does that help?
It’s still hit or miss if the note shows up when I come back to this page and hit the button. I’m just gonna be patient, usually it ends up working out if I just wait a little. Idk what it is, I was even having trouble typing this comment on mobile until I switched to desktop mode. And that never happens. Maybe it’s a PICNIC problem (problem in chair, not in computer).
Anywho, really cool feature, I’m going to get some good mileage out of it :)
Please let me know in a week or so… it really shouldn’t be hit and miss. That’s like the worst option. If it were saving nothing, then that means there’s a systemic flaw, but hit and miss is really confusing :)
I’m back early because I just realized the problems go away when I use a different browser. I use Firefox and totally forgot that it sometimes doesn’t play nice with the site (and the problems usually do go away pretty quickly). Sorry about that.
The feature in the Word doc where it gives you a link to the source is super handy btw.
Here’s a message from the new stuff on the bottom of the mobile version on Safari. Looks great!
Don’t forget to index our notes for us automatically so we can easily find what we were thinking about six months ago. And, of course we’ll want to be able to share public parts of our notes with all the other members, or at least with the ones we’ve friended.
But seriously, this looks like a really valuable addition to the site. Thanks!
No joy here either. Logged into my YDG account with Windows 10 (latest update) and Edge. I get the tip when I mouse over the note icon, but nothing happens when I single or double click it. Tried it on the notes article and also the tragen article. Same result with Chrome. Do we need to give your site permission to allow pop-ups?
No, it’s not really a popup. I just forgot to turn it on for the non-admin users :). IT should work now.
Alles gut jetzt!
Oh dear. It doesn’t work for me either. On my phone there are the symbols but nothing happens ; on the tablet I get the *beta. I copied the takeyour own notes into my browser – still nothing
I’ve just tried it on my pc with the same result. Any tipps ?
I actually forgot to turn it on for non-admins :D. Should work now!
Hello!
OMG, you actually managed to outdo yourself, this is sooooo incredibly useful!
In fact, I already do that, take notes when I read an article, like bullet points on the most important topics as I read and then I can have these notes and read them later…
The problem is, I then have a mountain of paper scattered around and can never find the right note when I decide I want to revise a given word. This feature will allow me to do just that, find the notes immediately just be searching the right article.
It also saves paper, which is environmentally sound (although I do tend to memorise things quicker when I write them by hand).
THANKS :)))))))
Ok, and now I tried it with a different article and the notes window did not open, it appears with a beta and an asterisk :(
And I am a member, as you know, and was logged in… This does work with a PC, right?
It should work on desktop and on phone. Which article did you have issues with?
Currently, the button shows for non-logged in members sometimes, but you said you were logged in, so that’s not the problem, it seems.
Do you know how to hard-reload the page? It’s crtl+f5 on windows and it reloads all the scripts. That might be the issue, actually.
I tried with the article on “tragen” and this article as well.
After the crtl+f5, still nothing…
I have de same problem and I am also a member logged. I am using Google Chrome and tested it on Microsoft Edge as well. On neither one opened the note window.
I actually forgot to turn it on for non-admins :D. Should work now!
I actually forgot to turn it on for non-admins :D. Should work now!
LOL!
It works now :))))