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

• Show statistics—Display your accuracy percentage, number of errors, and real-time speed to the right of the typing zone.
• Show elapsed time—Display the time elapsed in seconds and minutes.
• Show progress—Display your progress. Click on the value to toggle among display modes: progress bar, percentage, characters typed, characters remaining.
• 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.
• Underline mistakes in the text—Display errors in the text by underlining them.
• Allow 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 [’].)
• 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.

Exercises

• Show instructions at the beginning—Display objectives and instructions at the start of each activity.
• Content of the animation zone—Choose the content you would like to see in the animation zone or hide it altogether.
  • Entertaining animations—Display entertaining animations that react to correct and incorrect typing, depending on context.
  • Keyboard viewer—See a keyboard template appear whenever an error is made.
• Show characters in blocks—Frame the characters in blocks to standardize the space between each letter.
• Briefly show typing mistakes—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.

Word Waves

• Voice—Change the voice used for dictation in Word Waves.