Quiz Cards - a Java flash card application
Thank you for downloading Quiz Cards. We designed Quiz Cards to be easy to learn and easy to use. Therefore there isn't much documentation right now. Please try the program out and let us know if there's anything we can do to make Quiz Cards easier to use.
Installing Quiz Cards
If you downloaded a compressed file from the Internet then you need to decompress and expand that file. After you do that, you will have a few files including:
- QuizCards.jar - the Quiz Cards application
- gpl.html - a copy of the GNU General Public License under which Quiz Cards is licensed to you
- either quiz (a shell script for Unix/Linux) or quiz.bat (for Windows) with which you can run Quiz Cards
- README.html - this file
Installation is simply a matter of copying these files to the directory of your choice. Uninstallation is then simply a matter of deleting the same files.
Running Quiz Cards
To run Quiz Cards you need to add the QuizCards.jar file to the Java class-path. There are two ways to do this. Either update your CLASSPATH environment variable to include the full path to the QuizCards.jar file, or use the -classpath command line parameter to the java command. Here are some examples of the second option:
- In Unix/Linux, use java -classpath path to QuizCards.jar:$CLASSPATH QuizCards
- In Windows, use java -classpath path to QuizCards.jar:%CLASSPATH% QuizCards
Simple shell script files that contain the above command lines are provided in the compressed packages available for downloading.
Basic Quiz Cards operations
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To create a new stack of cards, choose New Stack from the File menu. You will be prompted to specify what kinds of sides you would your cards to have. Each card has two sides, a left and a right. That way when you are browsing your cards you can see both sides at the same time (aren't computers great? :-). A card side may either contain an image, some text or two separate areas of text which can be used, for example, to contain a letter from another language you wish to learn and an example of words that illustrate the pronunciation of that letter. In addition, each image and text area on a card can have a sound associated with it.
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To add cards to your stack, choose Edit Cards from the File menu. Commands for editing cards can be found in the Edit menu. Text may be directly edited on a card. To edit an image for a card side, click on the side and use the pop-up menu that appears. For both images and text areas there is a small picture of a speaker that you may click on to get a pop-up menu that allows you to associate sound files with that side of the card. All changes that you make may be undone and redone by selected Undo and Redo in the Edit menu.
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To quiz yourself, click on one of the large buttons in the main window (when you are not editing cards). Which buttons are there depend on the choices you made when you created the Stack or when you changed the Stack Properties in the File menu. You will see a button for quizzing each side and possibly buttons for quizzing sides with sound if you indicated that one or both of the sides contain sounds.
While you are quizzing yourself you will be shown cards with one side of the card not shown (the one you are quizzing yourself on). Click the appropriate buttons to Show the side that is not shown, display the Next card chosen at random or to Drop the current card from your current quiz because you know the information on the card and no longer want to be quizzed on that card during the current quiz. The quiz will continue until you drop the last card in the quiz or when you select Done from the File menu.
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To create a saved list of a subset of the cards select Edit Sets from the File menu. After you have created some sets, edit the cards and select Card Properties from the Edit menu to change which sets the card belongs to. You can select a set at the top of the window before entering a quiz and you will only be quizzed on cards that belong to that set.
Feedback
We here at Zen Lunatics would really like to hear from you. Please let us know what you think of Quiz Cards. If you have any ideas on how you would like to see Quiz Cards improved, please let us know. If you create some stacks and would like to share them with others, please contact us about making your stack available for download from our site. If you have an idea for a different application that you'd like somebody to write, please send it to us.
You can reach us at quizcards@zenlunatics.com.
Quiz Cards is completely free and licensed under the GNU General Public License. However, if you find Quiz Cards useful and would like to thank us with some money or other gift, we would be happy to accept. We have an idealistic dream to some day earn our livings by writing free, open-source applications.
Thank you and good night.