CueCard

Welcome to the CueCard home page. CueCard is a simple flash card program for studying just about anything. It lets you enter cards on the computer, and then quiz yourself.

The interface is very simple, and hopefully intuitive. Also, it's completely free and the source code is provided. Please let me know if you find it useful or if you have any suggestions!

News

4/3/2005: CueCard 1.5 released. This is a major new release.

New features in version 1.5:

• Unicode support (for example Japanese and Chinese characters can now be displayed natively).
• Printing has been overhauled. You can now control the layout of the cards on the page, use custom paper sizes, and preview your printouts.
• Sounds can now be added to cards.
• The Edit panel has been improved. You can now preview the final appearance of the card from there.
• There is a now a timer that can be enabled while studying.
• Quiz mode lets you save the results of your quiz to a file.

Important note: Version 1.5 no longer supports computers running Windows 95. If you want a version which supports Windows 95, you must download version 1.46 (see below).

Important note #2: Files saved using version 1.5 and later can not be loaded using version 1.46 and earlier. If you need to do open your files using earlier versions of CurCard, do not save the cards using version 1.5.

6/13/2004: CueCard 1.46 released. Fixed a bug with Merge Cards, added Portugese translation (thanks Eduardo!).

6/1/2004: CueCard 1.45 released. Minor update, now scrolls the card list to show added cards.

5/7/2004: CueCard 1.44 released. Fixed an issue where under some circumstances it could take a long time to recognize that that all active cards had been learned.

5/7/2004: CueCard 1.43 released. Added French and German translations, thanks to Gust MEES and Marc Schweizer.

4/3/2004: CueCard 1.42 released. This version fixes several minor bugs still present in 1.41.

4/1/2004: CueCard 1.41 released. This version fixes various bugs in 1.4.

2/22/2004: CueCard 1.4 final released. In addition to many new features, the program interface is now available in Dutch and Spanish. Many thanks to Hans and Jim Marshall/Emma Narvaez for the translations!

If you are interested in translating CueCard's interface into a new language, see the Translation section below.

New features in version 1.4:

• All new study modes: Quiz mode and Learn mode
• Double sided printing.
• Pictures now print in addition to text.
• Images now automatically stretch to fit the cards
• Text can be formatted using **bold**, //italic// and __underline__.
• Text is now left justified, however the paragraph itself is centered horizontally.
• Can import .CSV files from Excel in addition to Tab delimited text.
• Now remembers the last directory used to open and save cards.
• Now asks if you really want to exit if there are unsaved changes.
• Card font and text/background color may be customized.
• Program interface can be translated into new languages.

6/8/2003: CueCard 1.4 beta available. This is a major update, written in a new language and adding many new features. Please help me test it by downloading the installer below and reporting any problems you find!

3/7/2003: Minor update, fixes a bug where scores are lost when saving and then reloading cards. Work on 1.4 is coming along slowly, but I have some nice new features including new study modes, double sided printing, Unicode support and more.

11/26/2002: CueCard v1.3 released! New are support for pictures on cards (not printable yet though), a resizable interface, some new printing options, and a lot of other minor improvements.

This will be the last version of CueCard written using Microsoft Visual Basic. I've been porting the application to C++ and the excellent wxWindows library, and intend to release v1.4 for PC, Mac and possibly Linux.

6/7/2002: CueCard v1.2 released! New features include randomized tests, basic printing support, statistic collection (with problem area testing), and sounds!

3/18/2002: If you have a suggestion, make sure you email me about it so I can ask for more detail. I'm also looking for people willing to test any new versions I may release beforehand.

3/14/2002: CueCard v1.0 shows up on Download.com and ZDNet!

3/1/2002: CueCard v1.0 initially written and released, after Kristen gave me the idea. Features include a nice simple card input and testing interface, along with card list saving and loading.

Screenshots

Downloads

CueCard v1.5 Installer via Download.com
CueCard v1.5 Source Code (Requires Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and wxWindows 2.5.1)

Older versions:

CueCard v1.46 Installer
CueCard v1.3 Installer
CueCard v1.3 Source Code (Requires Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0)
CueCard v1.2 Installer

Translation

New in version 1.4, CueCard can display its interface in multiple languages.  If you are interested in translating the program to a your language, there are only 125 lines of text to translate, most of them only one or two words.

The first step is to download and install the free program poEdit, this is the program used to do the translation.  Then download cuecard.po and use poEdit to replace the Spanish text with your language, and finally email me the file at wadeb@wadeb.com. Thanks!

Previewing your work: CueCard v1.43 and later automatically detect which translations are available, which means you can now test out your translation before sending it to me. To add a new translation, first go here to find your 2 letter language code and then here to find your 2 letter country code. Then locate the CueCard folder on your computer (usually C:\Program Files\CueCard), and create a new subfolder called xx_YY, where xx is the language code and YY is the country code (example: the subdirectory for Spanish - Costa Rica is "es_CR"). Using poEdit, save your .po file to that directory. This should also create a .mo file, which CueCard will detect and use for translation.

Credits: Don't forget to credit yourself in the translation! In poEdit go to the Catalog menu and select Settings. Enter your name in the "Team" field, and your email address in the "Team's email address" field. It also helps keep things organized to enter the language and country here, as well as the version of CueCard you translated.

Translating Menus: When translating menu items, place a & (ampersand) character in front of the letter that represents the keyboard shortcut for that item.

Examples: "&File", "Save &As", "R&eset Scores"

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the random card selection work?

Each time you answer a card, the following (roughly) happens to determine the next card:

1. Each active card is assigned a "weight" based on its answer history (more on this later).
2. The cards are placed side by side, with each card receiving an area proportional to its weight.
3. A dart is tossed randomly, the card closest to where it lands is chosen.

This doesn't actually happen, but it describes the process well enough (it's just a weighted random selection).

Card weight is determined as follows:

1. The weight always starts at 5.
2. If the card has not been answered before, 750 is added - this is to make sure all cards are seen before any repeats.
3. If the most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 50 is added.
4. If the 2nd most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 40 is added.
5. If the 3rd most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 30 is added.
6. If the 4th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 20 is added.
7. If the 5th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.
8. If the 6th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.
9. If the 7th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.
10. If the 8th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.
11. If the 9th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.
12. If the 10th most recent answer to this card was incorrect, 10 is added.

For steps 3-12 if a card has not been answered that many times, it is considered to have been answered incorrectly, but only 25% of the weight is added. This ensures that cards that have only been answered a few times, but correctly, don't "fall out of the stack".

Finally, there is a simple check in place to make certain that no card is shown twice in a row.

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