Times Tables Redesign!

So a lot of changes have been made to the times tables interface, hopefully it is still quite clear how to use the activity. Icons are now being used instead of plain text buttons, this has two advantages. First they are more compact and second they work better for none English speakers.

Hiding the tables buttons

One big issue that the previous version had was it relied on clicking the column and row header buttons to change the tables values. This was nice and easy to use but because the selected button was highlighted it was easy to tell the tables value without any counting. Now it is possible to hide these buttons and to change a value, you can click on the grid itself. When the buttons are hidden the background squares are also removed, this gives a simpler view of just the array of shapes.

Off screen fish

Another change is that the original showed the unused fish/shapes at the side of the screen. I liked this feature as it showed how the same 100 fish moving in and out, so fish number 20 was always fish number 20. But at the same time it could leave the screen looking quite cluttered. So now the default is that shapes that are not in the tables square, are hidden off screen. You can change back to the old way by clicking the icon in the top right corner of the screen.

Reveal Cards Delay

Now when you press the random button or the next button the tables cards will automatically turn over to hide the values, a few seconds later they will turn back to reveal the values. The speed at which this happens is determined by the time slider. This links onto the automatic modes.

Improved Automatic Mode

So there are now two automatic modes, one in which the tables appear in order and the second is for random table values. Select one of the modes and a play/pause control appears. You can use this to start or stop the arrival of new values, the timer slider affects the overall speed.

Improved iPad performance

If you are viewing the web app on an iPad then you will notice that the speed at which buttons react after being pressed is now almost instant. These improvements have been made ahead of the release of a dedicated iPad app, more news about this coming soon.