Getting Started
To really experience Anki and FlashGrid, it's best to start by downloading a high-quality shared deck that includes both images and audio. Or, you can create your own
Check and see whether there is already a shared deck for the language you want to learn:
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. Since quite a few decks do include the front as the first part of the back, 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:
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Japanese Core 2000 Step 01 Listening Sentence Vocab + Images
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).
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foo
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bar
This 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:
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Create and name a new deck
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Select or create an appropriate Note Type
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Create a new record of that Note Type. Do this at least four times so you can fill a 2x2 grid.
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Enter data into that record, and associated media filenames. Make sure that matching media files are in your <%userprofile%\Documents\Anki\User 1\collection.media> folder.
If this will be a one-time import, try using Anki's data importer .
If you 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.
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.
As with any Anki addon, all you need to do is tell Anki the addon's ID number, and then restart Anki once it has finished downloading and installing it.
The ID number for FlashGrid: 1696860493
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1696860493
With FlashGrid installed, start studying in the usual way: launch Anki, click on the name of the deck, then click "Study Now". FlashGrid can be toggled off and on while Anki is running, but it will always be turned on after restarting Anki.
For a given flashcard, Anki itself will display the front of the flashcard and play any audio it might have. At that point, 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. Click on the one that corresponds to the card front in question and the window will close, and the main window will advance as if you had clicked Anki's Show Answer button.
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.
