QuickQWERTY 1.1.0

There has been a new release of QuickQWERTY after over 10 years! QuickQWERTY is a web-based touch typing tutor for QWERTY keyboards that runs directly in the web browser. You can try it out here: quickqwerty.html.

The new release, version 1.1.0 of QuickQWERTY, introduces a new input command named reset, which is a synoymn for the existing commands restart and rst used to restart the current lesson. Another input command named test runs an internal suite of tests to validate that no lesson involves keys that have not been introduced in the current or prior lessons. Further, in this release, the application has been fully rewritten as a single standalone HTML file with no external dependencies, and the source code has been greatly simplified.

There are a number of other changes too. Words per minute (WPM) calculation has been refined so the first character, which starts the timer, is not counted. The guides have been enhanced. Keys to be pressed are now highlighted more clearly, and reminders to return fingers to their home positions have been added to each guide. The confirmation dialogue for switching between 6-7 split and 5-6 split styles now uses the HTML <dialog> element, replacing the dated window.confirm() prompt. In addition, when the application is opened without a fragment identifier in the URL, the most recently practised lesson loads automatically.

The user interface has been simplified. The previous and next links (« and ») for navigating lessons have been removed, as they added little value and made the layout of the various user interface components more complex. The "Next lesson" advice link remains for moving to the next lesson when the current one is completed successfully. Tooltips showing additional typing metrics have also been removed due to limited usefulness.

The lessons have been updated to remove spellings specific to American English. Care has been taken to use only words that are spelled the same in American and British English with one exception. The word "tyre" with its British English spelling has remained in the lesson by oversight. That will be fixed in the next release.

Finally, QuickQWERTY's license has changed from the BSD-2-Clause licence to the MIT licence. The source code is available at github.com/susam/quickqwerty. To run this release and learn touch typing on a QWERTY keyboard, go to quickqwerty.html.