[APP][4.0+][Free] The Typist: Quick Typing Tests

[bloggert]

Hi guys,

Just released my app called The Typist: Quick Typing Tests! It's fairly straightforward, it measures how fast you can type on a phone or tablet and can chart your typing speed results over time. Also supports Google Play leaderboards. I couldn't find a good typing test app so I ended up just making my own.

Features:

• Test your typing speed with different speed tests based on popular books
• 1, 2, and 3 minute tests for the ultimate in typing test flexibility
• Detailed results page: see your words per minute score, total number of errors, and most frequently mistyped letters
• Track your progress with a chart of your past typing test results
• Compete against your friends with a local high score list and Google Play Game Services leaderboards support
• Compatible with different keyboard layouts - try them out with The Typist and see which ones actually help you type faster
• Works well on both phones and tablets
• Free updates and support for life
• Straightforward permissions: The Typist requires internet, network state, and Google Play billing to serve ads and the ability to purchase the ad-free version. We don't need access to your contacts, location, or your Facebook account! (but if you want to upload your score, you will need to use your Google Plus account)
• Want to support The Typist's development? Please rate it and/or unlock the full version of The Typist (removes ads) within the app. Thank you!

Available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thetypist.typingtests

Compatible with 4.0+/ICS and above. Free/ad-supported and in-app billing for the paid version (removes ads).

Please check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks!

 

[flide]

Nice little app, needs some ironing out to do

Hey bloggert,

Frist of all, it's a sweet app and since there seems to be a famine of good typing test app on touch screen devices, it's a really good one.
I came upon this thread because I was going to embark on the same road to develop myself a typing speed tester.

The UI of your app is "A" grade and I just loved it.

That said, there are also a few shortcomings of your app. You seem to have designed a typing speed analyser for a full machine at it's core, just like the others. Your app tries to keep track of each character the user types, and that actually defeats the purpose of the app on a touch screen device. Also your app seems to disable the predictive auto-completion of many of the keyboards which actually is the biggest selling point of such ones like "swype", afterall typing in a touch screen device is completely different from the keyboard, so why apply the same methodologies?

What I think the app must do?
1. Let the user type-in a whole text and provied a button that says "submit" and the app should just time it all. This is essentially to let the user correct all the words which went wrong with the auto-correct and auto-complete and all other shinanigins. Maybe your app can also keep track of the time taken by the user to enter the last word and hit the submit button, may be help user to clock the time it takes to fix the stupideties( I am not sure though if this is such a great idea) and provide feedback of somekind on the same.
2. Once the user has submitted the text, now your app does what it already does, check for the characters, are all good, what was the accuracy (most probably it would be hundred, if the user is not dumb), and now you can give the speed.

How will this help?
I think this will help user do justice on the various keyboards out there who rely on various methodologies to input text and probably help the creators of various kinds of input methods to judge the usefulness of there methods when speed is the question.

Am I stupid?
Maybe....:silly:

Hope to hear your comments on it all.

flide

 

[bloggert]

Not stupid at all. This is good stuff and I appreciate the feedback.

You are correct in that The Typist tracks every character. However, the app actually only cares about certain characters (namely spaces, since these determine where words start and end, and I need these to know where to highlight the current word and the last incorrect word). So it's okay if a keyboard uses auto-completion (or any other feature that inserts words), as long as it or the user inserts a space to indicate that the word has ended.

With that said, I'm not actually sure why auto-completion doesn't work. It's definitely not disabled on purpose, and I never noticed this before. I've tried a number of keyboards and typing in partial words and then selecting it from a list above the keyboard works fine, as well as swyping methods, but auto-correct never seems to kick in. I'm going to look into this later today but it should be fixable.

As for the going back and correcting words - I'm a little hesitant about this, and the app does prevent the user from going back or selecting old text (beyond using backspace) on purpose, mostly because in testing the potential to mess up the word tracking and cause errors was too great. In the end I figured that possibility of things screwing up was more important than the need to go back and change a word, and so the cursor selection block was put into place. I don't know if this is the right decision, as I still don't have enough feedback really to really judge. This is why I didn't originally go with the option 1 suggestion.

For option 2, The Typist actually does do this already - the real error checking is done after the test has completed (checking all of the words constantly during the test is pretty time-consuming, and so the app only shows you the last mistyped word) as well as the speed counts.

Hey bloggert,

Frist of all, it's a sweet app and since there seems to be a famine of good typing test app on touch screen devices, it's a really good one.
I came upon this thread because I was going to embark on the same road to develop myself a typing speed tester.

The UI of your app is "A" grade and I just loved it.

That said, there are also a few shortcomings of your app. You seem to have designed a typing speed analyser for a full machine at it's core, just like the others. Your app tries to keep track of each character the user types, and that actually defeats the purpose of the app on a touch screen device. Also your app seems to disable the predictive auto-completion of many of the keyboards which actually is the biggest selling point of such ones like "swype", afterall typing in a touch screen device is completely different from the keyboard, so why apply the same methodologies?

What I think the app must do?
1. Let the user type-in a whole text and provied a button that says "submit" and the app should just time it all. This is essentially to let the user correct all the words which went wrong with the auto-correct and auto-complete and all other shinanigins. Maybe your app can also keep track of the time taken by the user to enter the last word and hit the submit button, may be help user to clock the time it takes to fix the stupideties( I am not sure though if this is such a great idea) and provide feedback of somekind on the same.
2. Once the user has submitted the text, now your app does what it already does, check for the characters, are all good, what was the accuracy (most probably it would be hundred, if the user is not dumb), and now you can give the speed.

How will this help?
I think this will help user do justice on the various keyboards out there who rely on various methodologies to input text and probably help the creators of various kinds of input methods to judge the usefulness of there methods when speed is the question.

Am I stupid?
Maybe....:silly:

Hope to hear your comments on it all.

flide

 

[flide]

More thoughts

well thinking about it again, I will say that the idea of allowing the user to correct all the text after it's done is... well not so brilliant, and I will let it go at that.

And about the predictive text feature, for my keyboard the top bar which is suppose to show the possible pridicted words is not visible, so I am not able to use them... don't know if that is a problem with your app or it is a problem with my keyboard (8pen) because it does not show up also when i am trying to use VIM. May be you can check on that if something in particular triggers that kind of behaviour.

Also, you should look up for klavaro. It has 3 criterions for typing : Accuracy, velocity and fluideness, and to tell you the truth I like the concept very much, specially fluidity. Here's the link : "klavaro[dot]sourceforge[dot]net[slash]en[slash]manual-en[dot]pdf"
Will be appriciated if you can think of something to accomodate the fluidity angle, might be difficult but let's try. If something comes to my mind compatible with the touch input, I will share.

Let me know your thoughts.

flide

---------- Post added at 11:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 PM ----------

I more request.

Can you include a few texts in plain english, I mean all small case, minimal punctuation, no symbols or numbers... something message like. just to test how good you can hold for every day tasks.
Just a thought.

flide

 

[flide]

Ergonomics

One more quick idea.

It's a pain to keep looking at three different places while typing using most keyboards (not 8pen though ), namely :
1. What is supposed to be typed
2. The Keyboard
3. What am I typing

I think the 3rd point can be eliminated if app is somewhat modified. Rather than a text box to enter the displayed text, the user can actually override the displayed text... let me try and explain a bit more clearly.

The text, that needs to be typed, is initially displayed in BLACK. Now, rather than highlighting the next word to be typed, the already typed characters should be in BLUE, and all the wrong ones in RED. This mechanism essentially solves the 3rd problem, the user has just 2 places on the screen to strain his/her/it's neck, there is an inherent highlighting as to what needs to be typed (the first BLACK character), what has been typed correctly previously, in BLUE, and what was typed wrong, in RED.

THINK ERGONOMICS!! :cyclops:

 

[flide]

Thanks for the updates

Since you never replied again, I thought you forgot all about your app... But you were hard at work and YES, now my predictive options are visible again. :victory:

+1 for the update and you should not bother to appologise for adding a ad in the app. It's your hard work and you have the right to earn over it.

flide

 

[KyleSforza]

Hi, I was wondering how about like Antutu you could add a leader board to this which mentioned a username(like it already does) and his device and the scores.

I think it'll make the app much more popular and probably turn it into a benchmarking app for one handed usability of Android cell phones. While individuals will battle it out for the top spot, the addition of their device in the table will show which device feels best for typing.

TLDR; Add a 4 column leaderboard
Position -> Name -> Device -> Score

 

[kocheko]

its multilanguage?

 

[typedink]

I thought the auto complete was disabled on purpose because then it would not be accurate on how we are typing, because technically we would be letting the device type for us. I rather like the fact we have to actually type every letter ourselves, because then I think its more challenging and more honest. So I would actually be bummed if you did allow auto correct or auto complete to work in this app.

I found nothing wrong with it aside from the fact you have to manually allow your score to be added to the leader board. The first time I did it, I got my best score since trying it a few more times but cannot add it to the leader board because I did not press the "add to leader board" on the top left, I had not even noticed it, until the 2nd go around.

 

[flide]

Possible addition

TLDR; Add a 4 column leaderboard
Position -> Name -> Device -> Score

I think the leaderboard should also have the "input method" column stating the keyboard used for the test.

 

[flide]

BUG Found!!

Hi bloggert,

I think the a bug/error has been introduced with the update 1.2. I have attached a screen shot for reference.

As you explained in one of your post that "spaces" are monitored to highlight the current word.

You are correct in that The Typist tracks every character. However, the app actually only cares about certain characters (namely spaces, since these determine where words start and end, and I need these to know where to highlight the current word and the last incorrect word). So it's okay if a keyboard uses auto-completion (or any other feature that inserts words), as long as it or the user inserts a space to indicate that the word has ended.

In the input method I am using, there are 3 predictive options available to type when I am not in the middle of typing a word namely : , . ?

After I type a word a space is automatically inserted as soon as my finger up, but if i select any one of these then that automatic space is removed the character is inserted and space is set again in the wait of the next word.
What your app seems to be doing is, whenever i utilize any of the three the current word shifts one step ahead and there is a mismatch between the "actual" correct word and the one being highlighted in BLUE.

Please look into the issue. It's very distracting.

flide

 

[thebobp]

Hey!

This is a cool app; I've been missing a typing test for some time. Some additional feature requests:

• Dark theme (for amoled users)
• Practice mode: an additional untimed mode where we can import our own texts

The latter, in particular, could be very nice in training for the usual tests!

Thanks again for the app!

 

[Haldi4803]

Hi,

I'm using a Samsung tablet with a floating thumb keyboard.
The Text does not recognise that and still says in the middle of the screen, behind the keyboard. (See added Screenshot)

Also would it be possible to highlight the wrong words red in the existing text and not in the written text?
IMHO that would be better....

 

[alireza7991]

Your app got hacked

 

[htc 600]

A good app