After an admittedly long delay, we are working on the latest release of 小词典, and the application should be ready for download soon. But before I get into the new features of the app, there is a bit more news…

We’ve started a proper software company – The Rohans. One of the products I would love to maintain (and speed up) development of is Xiao CiDian. However, like most small businesses, we are going to need to focus our energy on income generating and viable products. Since we are going to be focusing on web applications, I might not have a lot of time to work on Xiao Cidian as a side project. Fingers crossed I can keep working on it in my spare time!

So what’s in the new version?

• Larger word database
• Search results sorted by pseudo HSK level
• Display of HSK level in search results
• Better simplified Chinese help
• Bug fixes

It’s a very nice release!

小词典 Desktop will only work with Mac OS X Leopard and later (I am using it on Lion without any issues).

You can download it from the download page, be sure to read the installation guide (If this is your first install). Checkout the FAQ if you run into problems.

学习努力！

I’ve started up my Mandarin class again, and with the restart in study comes a refresh of my tools.

I’ve been brushing off the code for all the versions of 小词典 and I should have releases coming out soon-ish. Most are just dictionary data refreshes.

One project that isn’t going to make the cut, however, is the Adobe Air version. I rarely use that version. Purely selfish reasons I know, but I can’t see a reason for me to spend any more time on it.

If you actually use the Adobe Air version please leave a comment and I’ll figure out if I can release the source. If no one is using it, I am going to trash it.

Updates soonish.

Searching “without being so specific” was the number one requested feature of Xiao CiDian 1.0. If you have any feature suggestions, please feel free to post them here! I write 小词典 in my spare time, but I do try to put in features everyone likes (and remove the ones people find useless :D)

I would also like to thank everyone who has downloaded 小词典, and thank you all for your nice comments and ratings! I am very happy with the number of times 小词典 has been downloaded. While not a mega number of downloads, it has been downloaded 3 times more than any of the other mobile versions I’ve done – and it’s only been available for about 2 months!

Here is a movie of what it looks like (Nothing new if you’ve seen Xiao CiDian before).

To find it, just search the Andorid Market Place for “Xiao CiDian” or “Mandarin”

Happy studying!

I still have some work to do, but as you can see most of the heavy backend lifting is done. I still need to get the UI sorted, and tighten things up a bit, but I should have a beta “soon”.

I’ve had quite a few requests for Traditional character support in the Mac desktop version of Xiao CiDian.

I think that the Traditional character set is very beautiful, but all of my study material is based around the Simplified character set. For obvious, selfish reasons I have put off doing a Traditional version.

Well, I had a few extra hours today, and I thought I’d get this off my todo list. So without further ado, there is now a dictionary available for download on the right side of the page that supports the Traditional character set and should work exactly like the Simplified version.

Additionally, I have update the other two dictionaries – the Simplified and the English to Chinese versions – to use a newer cc-cedict dictionary. The dictionary is now from January of 2010.

Get it while it’s hot, and happy studying!