Show Pop-up When Fields are Commented Out

Anki Suggestions
1

Have seen many people here with commented out fields. Maybe Anki can show a pop-up message when a field is commented out with steps to solve the potential issue.

There are also old guides out there where templates have this issue like this one: Audio files left unused - #3 by zz2N1KwU (the original itazuraneko was taken down and isn’t even maintained anymore but people still use it).

2

But what if one purposefully comments out the field, e.g. for testing? I don’t think having a popup would be a good idea in that case.

Also: You’d have to show the popup somewhere where users would actually see it. They most likely wouldn’t enter any screen unrelated to creating or studying their cards – a popup like this during studying would be a bad idea though; and considering a popup disappears after a while, it might be missed if it’s triggered in the add cards dialog.

Your suggestion would be really good as a warning in something like the “health check”, which has been proposed before.

2 Likes
3

I was thinking:

  1. The pop-up doesn’t disappear until it gets user input. This is so users don’t miss it.
  2. There is a “never show again” check that users can use. Someone may like the pop-up to appear again which is why it should not be a one-time pop-up by default.
  3. The pop-up would still appear if you’ve created/imported a new note type with the same (potential) issue. You’ll possibly only have to see it once in your study and then you’ll dismiss it.
  4. The timer needs to be stopped the whole duration the pop-up is on the screen.

Is it disruption? Sure, but it’ll help some people. Besides, Anki already does rigorous checks and shows errors on the study screen. I’m suggesting an (opinionally one-time) pop-up that appears when you study a problematic note type for the first time.

One more thing. FYI back when Anki decided to show an error every time there’s a non-existing field referenced, the logic was a note-type author might not face issues from it but later it’ll cause issues for others. And I think a similar same logic can apply here. Albeit here I think the imperative is we notify people, not make the note type completely useless.

Maybe, I’m not sure.

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Those users are having trouble due to an exploit that some deck authors used, when they could have properly hidden the play buttons on their cards instead. The exploit is now fixed, so the users see it as a change. But the issue is with how the cards were designed, not with Anki. [Anki gets to take the hit for the exploit remaining open for years, but that never made this the right way to hide the audio buttons in HTML.] Whoever maintains those templates should update them.

It’s generally considered a good thing to include comments in an HTML/CSS/JS document, and commenting is usually used correctly by card designers. This would burden all users with a pop-up [for every card/note/card type/note type?] telling them zero useful information – because having comments in your template is just fine.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to burden the-many with that in order to flag this potential issue for the-few who are affected. There’s really only been a handful of reports about this since the release 3 months ago, so this doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue.

1 Like