The Daily Click

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Author:	juraj_o	Submitted:	29th April, 2006	Favourites:	0
Genre:	Application	Downloads:	283
Rated:

Edited By juraj_o on 30/04/2006

The keyboard typing test is an application which tests your typing skills. You can do it for fun, to improve yourself, or maybe even in a school environment if you're a teacher! (Contact me in that case.)

While you're typing, the application is measuring time, mistakes, etc. and based on that calculates a grade between 1 and 5, inclusive, 5 being the best grade and 1 the worst. You can practice typing by going after your own scores. You can change the harshness of the grading algorithm and even save the results into a file for later viewing... or bragging.

You can totally customize the text for typing. The text you've typed will be saved too in the results file, and can also be viewed later. If you want a hot start or don't want to bother yourself searching a text, just pick a text to type from a small library of the texts which is included with the application.

I'm planning to include some tutoring elements in the next version, add support for detailed tracking of mistakes and even an editable library. Thanks to Phizzy and David Newton (Wong) for ideas!

If you find any bugs or have a suggestion, shoot me a mail! (The mail can be viewed in my profile or on the main screen of the application.)

BTW, the application has also an anti-cheating system, so you really need to go into some trouble to fake results.

UPDATE 1, 22:27 30. 4.: added a readme file.

Review This Download

http://www.inet.hr/~elintdsl/tp/type_0181_en_rarsfx.exe (578 kkb )

Posted by The Chris Street

30th April, 2006

This looks very, very professional. Will download a bit later.

Posted by steve

30th April, 2006

This is an excellent application; would be ideal for schools.

Posted by Chaoz (Tri-Life Gaming)

30th April, 2006

very nice,but a (rounded) grade between 1 and 5 isnt that accurate,for comparison with a friend(,or foe)

Posted by juraj_o

30th April, 2006

Thanks on the feature, David! And thanks to all of you for (good) critics.

Chao, thanks on your critic. You still get the time and mistake grades as floats - however, if you really think the final grade should also be a float, I'll make the change.

Posted by Odin

30th April, 2006

Pretty awesome. Just did a couple of tests, both were 3. This might win GOTW next week, if you plan to enter it.

Posted by renkin

1st May, 2006

Useful! Got a little over 4, typing Genesis.

Posted by Arneckian

1st May, 2006

i IS getted -3. Is dat goodly?

Posted by Noyb

1st May, 2006

Got 5 on Kafka with 11 mistakes. Fun app.

Words per minute is a pretty standard measurement for typing, so I was pretty surprised that it wasn't there. For mistake tracking, it would be cool if the app contextualized the mistakes, recognizing if the user has trouble with numbers, capitalization, or transposing specific letters for instance.

Posted by Arneckian

1st May, 2006

AHha. I is getterd bettera dan u. U onli get 5. Me gotted -3.

Posted by MJK

1st May, 2006

Very well done app.

Posted by Zethell

1st May, 2006

average chars per second.. 5 ?
What are you? a noob?

j/k man.

Posted by DaVince

1st May, 2006

Looks sweet, downloading...

Posted by juraj_o

1st May, 2006

Thanks to all!

@ noyb: thanks on the comments! I'll have to use tokens object to get the number of words, and I hate using extensions - but okay, added to the 0.2 todo list. And about that suggestion about contextualizing the mistakes, I had something like that in mind, but it will have to wait a bit - probably for the version 0.2.

Posted by Noyb

2nd May, 2006

According to wikipedia, a word in WPM is standardized as 5 keystrokes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute ), so WPM = characters per second * 60 / 5 = CPS * 12?

Posted by juraj_o

2nd May, 2006

Thanks for the info, Noyb!

Posted by NamelessOne

2nd May, 2006

cool u believe in god (from readme), cool, nice to see some christians like me around here, do u go to church and stuff, or just believe, hehe nice program!

Posted by juraj_o

2nd May, 2006

Yeah, I go to the church every Sunday.

Posted by CodeCannon

4th May, 2006

This is a good program! Just give the interface and the icons a polish and you have yourself a professional application.

Looking forward to version 0.2!

Posted by juraj_o

5th May, 2006

Thanks on your comment!

Well, I'm not really much of a graphical artist, icons have actually been ripped.

BTW, what do you think could be polished in the user interface?

Posted by Heart Break Kid

10th May, 2006

and now my wrist is paining

Posted by CodeCannon

10th May, 2006

Alright juraj, here are some suggestions:

Icons
If you take a closer look you will see that the icons have shadows (typical Windows XP). Just erase them carefully with the Continuous Brush tool in MMF, and perhaps make your own with the Alpha Channel object. This way the shadows will look great even when the background colour behind them is different (some people still use Windows 9x or have the classic visual style in Windows XP

)

Interface
Go easy on the borders, simplify the look a little. You don't need a lot of tables and borders for a proffesional look - if overdone, the result is chaotic! Group the buttons and messages according to their level of importance - categories and sub-categories, and make sure the groups don't look like buttons! (try swapping Colour #1 and Colour #2 of the Background System Box objects).
Take the Results & statistics screen for example. Look at all those borders! How about deleting all the Background System Box objects and having just one the size of the whole frame? It would define the window edge well, seeing that your app doesn't have the usual Windows frame. Then to bring out the screen title, put a horizontal line just below it to seperate it from the rest.

I hope this helps. They're just suggestions - it's your program and your style...

Posted by Garth G

14th May, 2006