There seem to be a lot of server glitches at the moment.

My question: is there any danger in answering things like the above correctly, it won't push it too far into the future will it?

The server is not happy right now, no. Neither am I. Really sorry about this.

There's no danger in answering prompts like this correctly; the server will do the right thing in terms of scheduling and only increase the interval a tiny bit.

One suggestion, based on having seen lots and lots of intermittent problems like this: it's not clear to the user at the moment whether the client has been able to send its results successfully to the server. If you go to the JavaScript console, you can see that errors are occurring, but there's no indication when things go well (i.e. when the server has finally been updated with the latest results). It would be helpful to know this so we know it's safe to close the page. Maybe a tiny indicator that goes green when the server has been brought up to date?

James

No big problem - thanks!

There's also that fun state where right at the start of a session it somehow gets into 'mad adding' mode and adds a whole bunch of new items instead of doing the ones that are new.

Yeah, we do sort of thing as well in our web app - stuff that hasn't got to the server yet gets an unobtrusive, but definitely different background colour, and a small notice saying "n items not saved".

That still doesn't stop clueless people continuing on for a long time losing work though, so maybe it needs to be more obvious!

Good thinking. I'll bump up the priority on that.

"Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems." well...

I have to admit, based on the problems it's been causing the Skritter guys, I have crossed App Engine off the list for one of my own projects.

Yes I've been having occasions about once per hour when three or four characters just repeat themselves in a loop, and the "last studied" stat doesn't update.

But no big deal.

James

Okay, the lag indicator is in alpha. Let me know how well it reflects your lovely connection experiences, and whether it's distracting. Note that it currently just tracks things saved through Flash, which doesn't include the mnemonics, custom definitions, etc. yet.

The lag indicator is a great help and it's not distracting at all.

I am a fan of the lag indicator so far.