Display Options for Activities

Display options can be configured to customize the activity interface. You can set them to be highly minimalist or to provide a ton of feedback and other information. In addition, if you have trouble differentiating certain letters, you can choose between various fonts.

Access the display options by clicking on the Options button just above the typing zone in the activity window. Here is a list of the options you can modify:

General

  • Display stats — Display your accuracy percentage, number of errors, and real-time speed to the right of the typing zone.
  • Display time elapsed — Display the time elapsed in seconds and minutes.
  • Display progress — Display your progress. Click on the value to toggle among display modes: progress bar, percentage, characters typed, characters remaining.
  • Underline errors in the text — Display errors in the text by underlining them.
  • Fonts
    • sans serif — Use a font without serifs (short lines at the base or head of a letter’s downstroke).
    • serif — Use a font with serifs (short lines at the base or head of a letter’s downstroke).
    • monospaced — Use a font where all letters are the same width.
    • dyslexia-friendly — If you are dyslexic, use a font whose letters are easy to tell apart.
  • Indicate when performance is below targets — Vary the color of the statistics in real time: orange when a target hasn’t been met and green when it has.
  • Accept all types of apostrophes and quotation marks — Allow Typing Pal to recognize the different types of apostrophes and quotation marks when typing. (For example, a straight apostrophe will be accepted for a curly apostrophe [’].)

Exercises

  • Show instructions on start-up — Display objectives and instructions at the start of each activity.
  • Show animation zone — Display or hide the animation zone.
  • Entertaining animations — Display entertaining animations that react to correct and incorrect typing depending on context.
  • Keyboard viewer — Display a touch typing model every time an error is made.
  • Frame characters — Display a frame around each character to equalize the space between each letter.
  • Show typing errors — Briefly display incorrectly typed characters.

Texts

  • Type text in a separate area — Type in a separate area below the text to be typed, rather than directly in the text.