I’ve just updated my Typing Speed Test. I basically just implemented the changes that people suggested to me. These included:

• Allowing the user to type real sentences, for example, stuff from books.
• Adding more text input options.
• Cutting the default time down from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Not having the text scroll as the user types and letting the user see all of the text they will have to type.
• Highlighting of the correct, incorrect, and the current word in the box displaying the text that needs to be typed.
• Providing obvious instructions on what to do.

I was unsure about how to display the instructions, so I just put a yellow information box at the top of the page. The only other thing I could think of was to start the app with a Ext JS-style message box, but I figured that would get really old after a while. Also, the spacing at the bottom of the page is kind of weird because I wanted the tab sizes to be static. I’m not sure if that’s the best design idea, so that may change.

For the next release, I’m thinking about adding in more stats on how fast the user types. Maybe giving them info on what keys they typed fastest via a visualization or some bar charts. A line graph showing their progress over time might also be cool. However, JavaScript may not be fast enough to let me do this. While beta testing today I noticed that sometimes I almost got ahead of the app, and keeping lots of extra stats may slow things down too much, I’ll have to see though.

Thank you to those of you who gave me suggestions. I think the test is much, much better now.

If anyone has any more suggestions or finds any problems please let me know!

Oh, and one last news worthy item, I also updated the About page on this blog with some more info and pictures.