Anki can be downloaded from [http://ankisrs.net]. There is also a [manual|http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html] there which is very useful. Getting familiar with that document is important if you want to really understand Anki.

To fully experience Anki and FlashGrid, it's best to start by downloading a high-quality shared deck that includes both images and audio. To check and see whether there is already a shared deck for the language you want to learn, try searching for that language at https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/. You can also create your own deck from scratch or possibly from a template deck.

TIP: Whichever method you use, make sure your card's back doesn't include info from the front, since that would give away the answer when using FlashGrid. Since quite a few decks do include the front as the first part of the back--usually followed by a horizontal line--FlashGrid attempts to not display any data found on the card back, up to and including the first <HR> tag (horizontal rule). If no <HR> is found, the whole card back will be displayed.

This has the lowest learning curve because the images, audio, and card designs have already been done. However, there is wide variation in the quality and complexity of decks that people have shared.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/images is a search that shows all shared decks that include images; note the counts in the Audio and Images columns. You can also sort by star rating. Here are a few that work well:

• Japanese Core 2000 Step 01

  TIP: this deck's font size is set very large (40 pt); try tweaking its card backs to use 18 pt instead: Tools, Manage Note Types, Cards, Back (bottom-left area).

• The ASL Browser deck is good if you disable the "Reverse" card. The Front of each card is a video clip.)

• The Indonesian vocabulary - over 500 multi-sided cards deck is one person's informal study deck (mainly for words that were harder to learn), but it has been tweaked to display well in FlashGrid, and it has both audio and images.

  TIP: Disabling (suspending) all the cards, then using tags to enable just the lev1 cards initially, is a good way to focus on easier words first. Try adding and tagging your own cards.

Creating your own records/flashcards from scratch is the best way to really learn how Anki works. See the Anki Overview page for a quick reference, and the Anki manual for a full reference on how to do the following:

1. Use the "Create Deck" button to create and name a new deck

1. Learn what Note Types are available. You can do this in either of two ways:

(a) Go to Browse view and click the Add button. In the Type dropdown, choose promising types until you find one that has the kinds of fields and cards that you want. (When you click Choose, the new empty record will display two or more fields to be filled out, and you can click the "Cards..." button to see what the flashcards might look like.)

(b) Go to Tools, Manage Note Types and use the "Fields..." and "Cards..." buttons to see the existing designs.

1. Clone a Note Type. Usually, you shouldn't use the same Note Type across multiple decks, so you'll typically want to create a new one for your own deck before creating any cards. Under Tools, Manage Note Types, you can choose to clone an existing Note Type (usually Basic, or one from your instructor) and then rename the new note type. This cloning will enable you to tweak the settings used by one deck's records without affecting other decks. See "What not to do", below.

NOTE: If you only intend to use someone else's deck design (its fields and card templates, not its actual data), you'll still need to first temporarily import their deck (from an APKG file). This will make all of that deck's Note Types available to you. (You can then delete the imported deck if you like. After cloning the Note Types, you can delete those as well.)

[images/cloneNoteType.png]

1. Create a new record (click Browse or Deck at the top, then Add), selecting the Note Type mentioned in the previous step. Enter data into the new record's fields. If you are creating multimedia flashcards, make sure that there are matching media files in your %userprofile%\Documents\Anki\User 1\collection.media folder.

1. Make sure that Anki will generate the desired flashcards as notes are created. To do this, click the "Cards..." button. (It is available under Tools, Manage Note Types, and any time you're editing in Browse view.) Each tab represents a flashcard. Polish up the first tab first, making sure that your fields are showing in the right places. The syntax for displaying a field's data is {{FieldName}}. Once you're satisfied with the first card template, then delete/edit/create others as needed.

The top and bottom areas are mainly for content and labels, and they accept either plain text or HTML. You can do some HTML formatting there by using <span> tags, as in <span style="font-size: 26px">my text</span>. The middle editable area, 'Styling', is for formatting that is shared across all cards of this note type. This formatting is described using the style language of the web, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

1. Repeat the record-creation steps at least three more times, so that you can fill a 2x2 grid. Go to Browse to see the results. There's one row per Card, so typically multiple rows per Note, and you can edit the Note by selecting any of its rows. Here's a single note with four auto-generated flashcards; for more detail, see [Anki Overview]

This is a way of jump-starting your own deck by cloning the other deck's Note Types (see above) and also cloning all of the deck's Notes. Cloning the notes is mainly useful when receiving a generic deck that already includes some images and some meanings in a common language such as English.

You can use FlashGrab to pull your data from an XML file (such as a LIFT file). This allows you to do all of your data editing outside of Anki (e.g. in WeSay or FLEx) and periodically one-way-sync the data. It's best to set this up after you are comfortable with how Anki works and how a deck's data is set up.

WARNING: For a given deck, you can either do all your editing in Anki or none of it there. FlashGrab will silently overwrite any edits you do make to that deck in Anki.

If this will be a one-time import, try using Anki's data importer instead. But if you do intend to keep editing the source data, and the data is in an XML file (such as a LIFT file, for lexicons from WeSay or FLEx), consider setting up a one-way sync using FlashGrab.

1. Rob is taking an online course on how to learn languages, and he receives a deck (the 'source deck') from Dr. Joe Smith. The deck contains Note records of type Word, and also notes of type Sentence. (Good)

2. Rob edits some of those existing notes (bad!), adding data for French.

3. Alicia is in the same course and does the same thing (bad!), except that her data is for Swahili.

4. When Rob needs help, he decides to export his deck and send it to his instructor, Joe. If Joe double-clicks on the APKG file, Anki will merge Rob's French records into the official 'template deck'. (Bad!)

5. Alicia wants to learn French as well, so Rob exports his deck and shares it with her. When Alicia double-clicks the APKG file, Anki will merge Rob's French records into her Swahili records. (Bad!)

6. Alicia manually fixes the data and keeps going. Then she notices that there are two 'new' Note Types (FrenchWord and FrenchSentence) because Joe had happened to rename his. She deletes each of those Note Types and "all its cards", not realizing that she's actually deleting most of her own data. (Bad!)

Now that you have some data, it's time to see how Anki works out of the box. Launch Anki, click on the name of the deck, then click "Study Now". (You may want to first use the settings dropdown to specify things such as the number of new cards per day.)

Anki will show you the next card from the queue. If you don't have FlashGrid enabled, you'll see just the front of the card.

Think of the answer, then click Show Answer, and Anki will show you the back of the card. If you got it wrong, click "Again"; otherwise click one of the other buttons.

As with any Anki addon, all you need to do is tell Anki the addon's ID number (Tools, Addons, Browse and Install), and then restart Anki once it has finished downloading and installing it.

The ID number for FlashGrid: 1696860493

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1696860493

Drilling with FlashGrid, you'll get the same testing card from the queue, so FlashGrid has no effect on which card front you'll be shown. But you'll interact with it differently--more visually. It's essentially an alternative way of clicking the "Show Answer" button. (For details, see The main display.)

With FlashGrid installed, start studying in the usual way: Launch Anki, click on the name of the deck, then click "Study Now". For the next flashcard in the queue, Anki itself displays the front of the flashcard and plays any audio it might have. But immediately after, the FlashGrid addon pops up its own window and displays the card front again (without replaying the audio) on the left side. On the right side it displays a 2x2 (or 3x3) grid of card backs. All except one will be from random "flak cards" that FlashGrid selects.

Click on the one that corresponds to the card front shown on the left, or type its letter. The popup window will close, and the main window will advance just as if you had clicked Anki's "Show Answer" button (see above). To ignore the grid for a given card, press Esc or click the X button. You can then manually press Show Answer as usual.

To disable FlashGrids, or to toggle the grid size, use the options in the Tools menu. These settings will last until (a) you toggle them back or, (b) you restart Anki.