Feedback on New 2016 Edition

This morning, I logged on to find that the 2016 version was in operation!  I would like to compliment the creators on the new layout. Although I didn't mind the theme before, I must say that the newest one looks more grown-up. However, the speed on the new edition is quite a bit slower. Especially knowing that I'm not the only one with a PC that is slow just anyway, this could be a problem if one is trying to complete a quiz, study, etc. But everything else looks just fine to me! It will be interesting to see what others will say in their comments. Nice work! :)

Laura

It's certainly made learning languages easier! Some people have made 300,000 points today alone. Even I made over 400 points in 2 minutes flat just by clicking on a few phrases whilst trying, unsuccessfully, to record my efforts.

I won't really be able to comment upon whether it is an improvement or not until I can actually get it to work on my PC. Fortunately it is still working on my tablet.

Hi Laura/Fred - There was a migration issue with the points. We are working on it! Undoubtedly there will be a few teething issues as, while we did a lot of testing, something always slips through the cracks.

Fred - What browser were you using on your PC? We recommend Chrome for best functionality, although it should work fine on other browsers.

Hi!
\nI don't understand how to work within this new 2016 format... I'm\nworking Level 2 Premium; and what I would generally do daily is go\nto my 'Dashboard'; select the lesson then proceed... I'm presently\non lesson 8.2 can you assist?? 
\nRon Malloy [redacted]

Cheers Jason

I was in Chrome but didn't realise that I had to reset the microphone. Recording worked fine after I had right clicked on the record button, gone into the permissions tab and then chosen the correct microphone in the site settings. The initial loading is still as slow as erosion but many of the operations when in use actually seem much faster. Looking forward to giving it a proper workout. 

Hi Ronald - You should be able to go the the Premium Plus Dashboard as before and click on the lesson you wish to access. While the look is different, it works the same way as previous.

Hi Fred - There is still an issue with users historical points not coming through as quickly as they should. Please bear with us!

Unfortunately this upgrade is not working for me yet.  The Rocket Record is inferior to the previous system which worked very well for me.  The audio portion is constantly changing in the sound level.  The voice is not consistent in the sound level.  The record feature is very poor and does not record/type accurately what I am saying.  Even does not get "Hola" correct.  I miss the waveform.  

The system is extremely slow.  I am using Chrome as i did before.  The point system is changed.  I used to get points each time I recorded a statement.  Now I do not get any points when I record a phrase.  After a lengthy period of time i only got about 30 points when I usually would have had close to 100.

Please tell me these  bugs will easily and quickly be worked out. At present I was much happier with the older system.  This new upgrade is frustrating to work with.

As well, I have tried to do the Take a Tour but it quits after only 9 of the 16 slides.  Maybe the solution to my problems is in the remaining few pages???

How are people getting thousands of points when I struggle to get points for using the rocket Record which was where I used to always get my points?  Something is not quite right.  As well it appears that one no longer gets points for posting on the Forum.  Is it just my system that is not working well?  It worked perfectly yesterday.

Hi,

Congratulations on the new design. Love it!
One Suggestion for the "Write it!" section:

Once the spoken part is over you still have to click with your mouse in the empty field you are supposed to write in. That is a minor annoyance​​​ as my hands are on the keyboard and I instinctively start writing after the spoken word/phrase ends. It would be much more convenient if you did not have to do that.

Otherwise I am really happy with the progress!​​
Thank you!

Well, of the primary sections, "Hear it" is about equal, "Write it" is more or less the same except that I now have to close out the keyboard before clicking reveal and punctuation isn't usually counted against accuracy, "Know it" is better due to the voice recognition, and "Play it" is a mess.  The voice recognition is pretty good, but it's not good enough to work consistently through an entire conversation.  The main problem, apart from spotty recognition, is that it sometimes closes out while I'm still talking, and it's clearly not on a timer, since it'll sometimes give 2 seconds for a 6 second line and sometimes give 4 for a 1 second line (estimates, not exact figures).  I also kind of miss the waveform on all of them.

The layout is about the same, but I liked having a "My Dashboard" button on the side; not a big deal though.  I like the collapsible sections, but for some reason, some of the lesson tests I completed aren't showing as complete (only the quiz and "Play it" are listed as complete), which prevents completed sections from collapsing

It's nice to be able to self-grade the writing section on the test for when I get thrown a word or phrase written in kanji, or one written in katakana that's normally in hiragana (or vice-versa), or one with a typo, etc.

Well done Jason. Amid the chaos you found time to beat me into the dust with your rapid accumulation of points in German! (-:

I'm now off to bed. Hope you get the glitches sorted and look forward to having another go tomorrow. 

Regards Fred

What happened to the useful Vocabulary Section?  I can only access my 10 most recent words but cannot access to practice my previous 240 words as they are now in a CSV file.This is extremely cumbersome and now I cannot practice recording all the Vocab that I had diligently saved.

Please tell me this is another glitch and that the previous Vocab section will be properly restored.

Hi all,

I don't know if it is a temporary thing, and will change later, but my vocabulary list is totally gone! I guess my mistake, should have saved it to my computer.
I also miss the fact that the words that I used to put in my vocabulary were shown in the text of the lessons. I could just check them out immidiately by putting my cursor over it.But because the vocabulary list is gone, so are the higlighted words from the lesson. It looks like I have to redo all my words again??

Secondly I miss one feature that I found really great before.
In the "Hear it" or "Know it" part after rating the words they were sorted to a certain category. "Needs work",  "Poor", "Good" etc...
So by opening a certain category I could review all the words that were under it and listen to them again.

In this new version the words are still listed by category, but the audio part is not given any more! That's a real pity, because it was very helpful to practice directly those words that I had trouble with.

Regards,

Nora



 

Hi Hindi-Freak - Thanks for the feedback, that is an excellent suggestion re Write it. Have added it to the list.

Hi Samuel - Can you point me to a specific lesson that does that with Play it?

Hi Fred - Ha! Controlled chaos I think. There are a lot of changes so it's no surprise that there are a few glitches here and there even after extensive testing!

Hi Karen/Nora - Your My Vocab lists are intact. It looks like the pagination hasn't pulled through. In the meantime, you can search your lists if there is a particular item you are looking for.

The word/phrase in My Vocab should still be highlighted in the course text as you say Nora. I will look into that one as well.

Hey Jason,
Just to let you know, the speed is quicker now. It seems to me that I still get the same point amounts on all the sections except for the quiz. Don't you get more for getting a 100 on the quiz with the new edition?

So this morning I went onto my Rocket Spanish and my page froze every time in Chrome.  Then I went into Firefox with the same result--the circle de la muerte kept on going and going.  To my delight about two hours later I logged in again, and all appears to be fine.  My badge points aren't working yet, but all else appears to be functional.  Nice work, RL!
 

Sí , tuve el círculo de la muerte también . Sin duda, ha mejorado desde mi experiencia pasada! 

Hi all - Thanks for your patience. We are working through the issues!

Wow, after all that back-patting we get a huge raspberry. What a disappointment.

Hi David - Unfortunately the (12 year) old system just wasn't sustainable going forward. With the rapid changes to devices/smart phones/browsers/Flash etc we had to redevelop the system from scratch. 

Even with extensive beta testing it was always possible that once we migrated nearly 2 million users data over that there could be issues. Unfortunately that has turned out to be the case.

Anyway, we are working around the clock to resolve issues and have covered off a lot already. Please be patient, we will get there, and once we do it will be well set up for the future.

Some mention the extreme numbers of points people get,  For me it's the opposite.  If I use Windows Explorer, I receive points and my Active Streak remains unbroken.  However, Chrome is another matter; it doesn't remember the points earned, and each day the points counter resets to an Active Streak with zero days.  Until that's fixed, I'll use Windows Explorer,   That's fine with me, as I don't like Chrome.

I am amazed that you had 12 year old code that worked as well as it did. There is no tweeking that - a total rewrite was definitely in order.

I couldn't get on the system yesterday. I only could get the message "We're updating to the new version, we'll be back up in minutes...". It wasn't until I got the message from Jason where I could click on the link and access the course.

Maybe this had something to do with the fact that I was accessing the course when you first brought it offline. No issues now.


 
 

I absolutely hate hate HATE the new version.  It's an absolute mess.  

And it's more than just the dozens of (hopefully temporary) technical issues, like the volume being too low in certain parts and my recordings being cut off mid-sentence.

My biggest issue (and believe me, there aren't enough hours in the day to go over all the problems I have...and thank goodness I don't have to physically write down all my issues on paper, because I would have to kill an entire rain forest for all of the paper required) is "My Notes."  

Taking notes is an incredibly important part of my studying.  Now, my notes aren't even on the same page as the lesson, so if I'm reviewing, I now have to open another window and go to "My Notes" and do a search for them.  And then when I find them, all of the notes are smushed together in one paragraph.  What a mess.  

Also, every time I log out and come back to the lesson I was working on, the notes I took for that day are gone and in "My Notes Purgatory."

I started a lesson last night and planned to finish it today, and of course the notes I took last night are gone.  Yes, I can open another tab or window and do a search for them, but it's incredibly inconvenient.  And of course they aren't easy to find, anyway.  Just not worth the trouble.

And the layout is a mess.  It's just so bland, I find myself scrolling up and down the page, struggling to find the new vocabulary and phrases mentioned in the dialogue.  And the font gives me a headache.

And don't get me started on Google Chrome.  

Thank goodness I'm now on my very last lesson of Rocket Italian.  I probably would have just quit and demanded my money back if this had happened in the middle of the program. I was planning on going  back and reviewing the whole program after I finished, but I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that torture.  

I was actually planning on becoming an affiliate and referring people to Rocket, but now I can't possibly do that in good conscience.  

 

I agree, there's a lot of scrolling in the new version, but that's not the only problem with the new version.

The old version had the English and the target language (French for me) in two side-by-side columns, that way, one or the other could be covered and they could be used kind of like flash cards.  Sometimes I covered the French and sometimes the English, depending on how I wanted to study.  Now the two languages are one above the other, making it quite difficult to hide one of the languages.

Another step backwards:  It was possible to listen to the audio from any point in a sentence, permitting one to repeat a difficult and/or new word before putting it into context.  Now one must listen to the whole audio, from the beginning, even when one wants only to pick out that difficult word.​​

Maybe some of those changes made sense from a programmer's point of view, but in the end it's the learners who must work with the program.​

Hi Steven - Yes, the old version was like a spaghetti junction of code. Just not sustainable in any way going forward.

Hi Scott - I appreciate your strong feelings on the new version. Please be patient and we will get it sorted. My Notes is meant to function exactly as it used to. All your data is there and will be displayed at the bottom of the lessons.

Hi Diana - We had to change the word/phrase layout so that the system works better responsively, on a variety of screen sizes and devices. It may be that we add in a "Hide French/English" toggle at a later stage. 

Such a toggle would be nice.  It's hard to review one's knowledge of the language when it's sitting right before one's eyes.

Hi Diana - Hear it Say it!, and Know it! are Tests designed to do a similar thing. Re the toggle idea, with the previous version that would have been virtually impossible to implement. Not so with the new version.

Scott,
Misery loves company.  I too share every single problem that you so eloquently outlined as well as a few more.

1.  System is slow.
2.  Audio bounces around continually.  Jason Oxenham suggested that I check the mixture level on the speaker icon.  Sure enough the speakers/microphone were at different levels.  When they were adjusted to the same level, the audio was better...only until I went to the next part in the lesson and then the audio would shift again.  I have to constantly re-adjust the audio but at least I can hear the speaker.  Quite the bother though.
3.  The actual recording of my voice works well but slow.  HOWEVER the VOICE to TEXT does NOT WORK AT ALL if the sentence has more than 3-4 words.  It constantly displays written text that is nowhere near what I say.  At times the text is completely jumbled and has a few numerical numbers and website addresses thrown in.  I have tried it on a different computer and the same problem occurs.  As well, the more I try and repeat a phrase to get it right, the worse my score is.  It appears to get tired of me and gives up on my attempts.  This is the most frustrating "upgrade" for me.
4.  Initially I was not awarded any points in the Rocket Record at all.  Even if I tried 10 times to say a 5 word sentence, I gained no points.  This issue was RESOLVED in 24 hours.
5.  The Play It section does not work at all.  The speed is out of synch with the recording.  This option is totally unworkable.
6.  The Rocket Scheduler does not keep accurate track of your Longest streak and Active Streak.  This is not a priority for them at the present.
7.  My Vocab does not work.  Apparently the pagination is not working.  I have about 240 words in this section but can only access the 10 most recently added words.  Like your Notes section, this is a great loss to me as I used this frequently. 
8.  The lessons do not stay collapsed when you choose to collapse them.  Individual ones keep opening up.  I don't know why.  I am always re-closing them to try and make the site appear cleaner.
8.  The overall layout does leave a lot to be desired.  Too much scrolling.  Very unimaginative and uninspiring look and appeal.  Very disappointing to look at though I expect if Rocket Spanish actually worked properly, then this would be tolerable.

I have not had the time and patience to try other features of the site because I have been so bogged down trying to say the simplest sentences and phrases correctly as per the "upgraded" system.  My frustration and disappointment has been high.  Prior to investing in RS several years ago, I tried many other online Spanish sites and this one proved to be the  best for me in terms of the outstanding Rocket Record capability. I was able to get in a lot of valuable speaking practice and was making great strides in my Spanish education. I was having a blast as well.   It is an absolute shame that the system is now not functioning as it was intended.

I would like to say that Jason has been extremely attentive to my concerns and frustrations.  He has been emailing me frequently trying to sort things out.  On the first day he even Skyped me in order to solve these issues.  Despite Jason being in New Zealand and me living in Canmore, Alberta, (huge time difference) he has been working around the clock trying to get to the bottom of these issues.  For this I thank you Jason.  I think the RS  team may have thought that the issues were related to my computer and speaking voice, but clearly with your personal experience being so similar to mine, it is a problem with their upgraded system.

I am trying to be patient and let RS work on these issues.  I am surprised at the number of glitches and have to wonder why these were not picked up in testing prior to the Launch.  For me, Rocket Spanish used to be a superior program and I hope that Jason and his team will soon be able to restore the program to its glory status.

Let's hang tough for a few more days before we jump ship.  Of course, having technical updates from Jason and the team would be helpful in restoring our patience and confidence. 

 

Right now i'm frustrated.  The record features don't work and worst, the record buttons are all gone.
Personally, as of right now, I prefer the old system.  At least everything worked then.  Ugh!!!

Hi Scott,
This isn't very convenient, but I seldom use My Notes because I've been using a little "notebook" desktop application (and they're usually free). I write everything I would like to remember down and save as "Useful Spanish Dancing Phrases" or whatever applies. When I'm on a translator I also like to paste and write the meaning afterwards in my little "book." Then if there are leaves on the trees and my internet decides not to work, I can still access them from my desktop. You may or may not be open to that method, but it's definitely reliable. I hope this helps!

Rocket German sort of goes but is no longer much fun. The considerable effort required to make it function distracts me from the learning bit. I'm resigned to having to wait and see how things eventually settle down, which is a shame as I'm off to Germany in a few weeks and I really wanted to get in some practice. Best of luck to Jason and the team sorting it out.

Hi Scott - My Notes should be working as intended now. If it's not please send a screenshot to customer support!

I've just started using the new version and although I like the look, there are some major bugs. Let's hope the programmers get them straightened out:

1. About 80-90% of the words I had in "My Vocab" are gone.

2. Although those missing words still have links in the Conversation Transcript section, the same English word ("only") pops up whenever I roll over any one of the vocabulary words.

3.  Even though I have checked the "Don't show romanized text" in settings, the romanized text still shows up.

4. I couldn't find a link to download the conversation, only the entire lesson. (you could download just the conversation in the previous version).

I also wish there was some way to switch to the next or a previous lesson with just one click, rather that having to go back up to the main index.

It's also agonizingly slow with the newest version of Chrome.  It's nice to see changes, but please work on correcting the bugs!!
 

Hi Randy - The My Vocab list requires pagination to be added. Your existing list is still there. 

You can access lessons directly via the top nav rather than go back to the Dashboard.

All of the Conversations for a level can be downloaded from the All Conversations lesson.

We are working on the Romaji check box!

Thanks for the quick response, and glad to hear your working on the My Vocab and Romaji check box.  I do like what I see so far. And it somehow seems faster today but maybe that's my imagination

Regarding the other issues, It seems to me that you can only download the entire audio lesson, not just the conversation.  And as far as navigation, I do go to the top nav bar but it would be nice to have two buttons to click on, one that said "previous lesson" and another that said "next lesson".

Everything seems to work fine except Recording.  99% of my recordings say "I didn't get that. Try again."  The other 1% it is not even close to what I said.  This is an important part of my studies so I am not pleased and really stalled in my progress.

Hi Randy - Will add that suggestion to the wishlist.

Hi Beejo - That sounds like a mic issue. Please check the FAQ here or here if that doesn't help.

Really, why not always develop cloud based software with an ability to go back to the last version?

Google seems to always provide that option and they roll out software to targetted audiences in order to test and see if it works like they expect. AWS does this also, always testing, testing, testing. 

Good luck guys.

Hi all - Thanks for all of the feedback, as you know we are working on the issues. Please go to this link to email us ANY issues that you are STILL having https://members.rocketlanguages.com/members/forum/rocket-languages-blog/an-apology-and-details-regarding-the-2016-edition We would like to collate them all in one place so we can get to them faster. Thank you!

The link for problems that you sent does not work.

 First took me to my dash board and then took me to a page that said that page was missing.

Problems I am still experiencing:

When I log into Rocket French and go to my current lesson the page becomes unresponsive for about 90 seconds while it loads

When I ask to reset a test it again becomes unresponsive. 

My patience is nearly exhausted as the product as it stands is does not work.

I am sorry you are having these problems but I need to learn French and this is not helping me. Things are getting worse not better.

Karen and Samuel above both mention the missing waveform.
Me too.  Will the waveform be coming back?

It still exists in the iOS application, fortunately.
I have to admit that now the iOS app is the only good option for studying phrases fast.

There's always Duolingo and Memrise. They are really fast on iPhone and Web.
Copy all your phrases from RocketLanguage to Memrise and upload the audio clips and you have a much better platform to study (even offline with Memrise).

Good luck everybody.

HI Jason - The waveform may be coming back depending on what advances there are with HTML5 development. 

Hi DHSF - We got the speed of the page load and Test play up quite a few notches today. You should notice a considerable difference.

Thank you Jason for the suggestion on trying Duolingo and Memrise.  I will look into those as my study of Spanish has come to a complete halt.  I try a few phrases every day to see if the voice recognition and audio have improved (and also to keep up my streak count) but in my opinion they appear to be getting worse.  Absolutely no improvement.  It is frustrating because I am missing the point of the lesson as I struggle to get the audio/voice recognition to work.

As Jason Oxenham requested I sent in my concerns to the email address he provided.  The link he provided did not work.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

 

I have problems with the playback of my recordings.  The program can recognize my speech as it is typed correctly and is credited as 100% correct but the playback of my voice is unintelligible.  My microphone works fine when checked on the computer outside Rocket Spanish and I have selected the correct microphone in Chrome.  Any fix?

Jason, despite what you said to Scott, "My notes" are still not showing up where they should and did in the past.  There is no reason to send a screenshot...the screenshot would be blank, despite the notes I took.  The notes do show up under the tab "my notes", but as Scott pointed out, that is pretty inconvenient.  

I probably should leave it at that and not pile on.  Jason knows there is a big problem here and I am sure he realizes that anyone who would sign up for a trial version and finds what we are finding would never in a million years pay for the real version.  Hoping that all is solved soon.

I do not feel that the Voice Recognition software currently used is appropriate in a Learning Environment.  I will always speak French and Spanish with my English (Canadian) accent. I also sound like a female and will not sound like a male Spanish speaker. However my verbals skills are certainly understood by native speakers in real life.  That should be the point in learning a new language.  The Voice Recognition should be lenient enough to allow for these variations.  If it is not, then the user will just give up trying.  And become angry as we have seen on a few of these posts.

I am hoping if RS can deal with my audio glitches and all the other glitches that I emailed to them, then the Voice Recognition may start to work.  

And so I wait...

Hi Jason

Thanks for the post with instructions on the hard refresh and news on the algorithm. I am delighted to report that as a result of your efforts the speed issues have been resolved for me and Rocket French is now working as it should. 

Thank you for your responsiveness to my complaints - I look forward to continuing my language learning with your course.

Hi Karen - You have a valid point about the speech recognition. It is a balancing act between giving users accurate feedback versus de-motivating users by the speech recognition being too accurate. If the speech recognition component is not your thing then you can always use FireFox, which doesn't support speech recognition.

Hi DHSF - Glad to hear it!

Hi Bob/Charles - If you haven't already please email support with as much detail as possible so that we can look into your specific cases.

I'm having terrible trouble with my mike not working.  It was working yesterday.  Just slow as molasses so I gave up.  Today it doesn't work at all.

I'm Revealing answers to questions I didn't get   Q:  Monday  A:  Il est sept heures et midi

I loved this program but the new version is all screwed up.  Please give me back my old version.