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  • riverR

    SidePal: Your Language and AI Ally in Side Panel

    I recently took a detour to develop an intriguing tool for Chrome's side panel, which is an impressive new feature in Chrome that I believe many people will find it quite useful. In some cases, it could even be more straightforward and convenient compared to Dictionariez, which uses a popup window to display results. SidePal is designed to work seamlessly within the side panel, showing dictionaries that integrate perfectly with this feature.

    Here is how it looks.

    image1

    It's works well with Google Translate too.
    image2

    Isn't it handy to have ChatGPT on the sideline ready to answer any questions from you?
    image 3

    Unfortunately, not all web dictionaries work in the side panel because they need to be embedded in an iframe, and some websites don't allow this. For example, my favorite dictionary, Longman English, doesn’t support iframe embedding.

    You can still try adding more dictionaries to your collection from this site, just as you would with Dictionariez. If you receive a warning that the dictionary couldn’t be loaded, it means it’s not supported on SidePal, so I recommend using Dictionariez instead.

    In this sense, SidePal is a lighter version of Dictionariez. It has its own advantages and can be used alongside Dictionariez. I hope you find it useful.

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  • riverR

    A Plan for the development of Dictionariez Pro, your input is needed!

    Over the past few weeks, I have been busy upgrading our community website pnlpal.dev to make it better host dictionaries and other learning resources. Than last week I have also started the challenging task of refactoring Dictionariez to meet Google's new Manifest V3 standards. It turns out to be a ton of hell work.

    It made me realize that it's been quite a while since I have added any major new features to Dictionariez. Most of the updates have been just bugfixes, and the progress has been painstakingly slow. A big reason for this is the lack of incentives. I did receive some generous donations from a few of our amazing users, and I deeply appreciate the coffees, but it hasn't been enough to make a significant difference in the prospect of the project or my personal life.

    Working on Dictionariez is something I love, but keeping an open-source project going requires more than just passion—it needs resources and time. Seeing the potential of Dictionariez and hearing your requests for new functionalities has been quite motivating but also a bit frustrating. I know there’s so much more I can do to make Dictionariez better. Balancing daily life with the desire to improve Dictionariez has been tough though. It's more and more clear to me that while the love for Dictionariez is strong, a more structured incentive could really help make some of these great ideas happen.

    So here is the Plan:

    To speed things up and better integrate into the software market, I’m excited to announce the launch of a pro version of Dictionariez.

    Of course the basic features of Dictionariez will stay free. The pro version will include some awesome enhancements that won’t interfere with the daily workflow of the basic version but will offer advanced features for power users. Some of these enhancements have been on our GitHub issues list for years, and many of you have requested them via Telegram, Discord, and even personal emails. Imagine how cool it would be to make these ideas a reality! Here are a few examples that could be included in the pro version:

    Advanced text parsers for languages like CJK Sentence translation capabilities Customizable Anki fields Mobile version Cloud-based word synchronization PDF lookup functionality

    These features will take a lot of time and effort, but they’ll be super beneficial and I’m sure many of you will love them.

    Your Opinion Matters:

    I need your feedback to make this happen. Do you support the idea of a pro version? How much would you be willing to pay for it, and in what ways could you support its development? I’m thinking about a subscription model, like many other software services out there. Let me ask you straightly.

    Would you be willing to pay the equivalent of 1, 2, or 3 cups of coffee per month for Dictionariez Pro? What specific features would you like to see included?

    Please share your thoughts in the comments. Your feedback is invaluable in shaping the future of Dictionariez.

    Thank you for your continued support!

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