Today, we're pleased to introduce the Popup Chinese Writing Pad, an exciting new tool that will help you master the art of writing characters. Like a ruthless taskmaster, it will force you to write and rewrite hanzi until you're writing them in the proper stroke order and with the correct proportion.

As with every feature on Popup Chinese, our Writing Pad offers full support for the traditional script. In the coming days we'll be publishing a series of lessons that cover the general rules for writing Chinese. We've included a list of these rules below for the convenience of advanced students. Everyone else should consider this lesson a warm-up: eight simple characters to test yourself on to evaluate how well you've internalized the logic of the Chinese writing system. This is a new feature and is under active development, so please let us know what you think, and let us know if you run into technical difficulties as well. We will continue to improve and develop this tool based largely on the feedback we get from you!

1. 先横后竖：十、干、丰、下、丁、于、开、井、

2. 先撇后捺：人、八、入、木、夫、未、从、

3. 从上到下：二、三、工、土、本、个、王、天、分、全、子、立、它、李、兄、今、奇、春、

4. 从左到右：川、儿、旧、你、好、他、从、姐、妹、引、泡、件、对、坏、吃、饭、洗、叫、劝、秋、林

5. 从外到内：月、风、内、肉、用、周、网、同、义、床、厅、闲、闭、问、闻、闯、病、疼、房、局、句、勾、勺

6. 先中间后两边：小、水、永、少、业、亚、办、亦、燕、兜（注意：“火”不是先中间后两边）

7. 先外后里再封口：（先进入后关门）日、四、田、回、国、目、 由、且、曲、困、因、园、圆、团、图、圈、囚、围

8. 先写左上点：为、门、问、闲、闷、问、闲、闩、闭、

9. 后写右上点：犬、术、书、发、弋、戈、龙、尤、成、咸、求、代、械、找、我、或、伏、甫、

10. 后写内部点：叉、凡、为、勺、瓦、丽、兔、雨、执、热、熟、玉

11. 先内后外：（"下包上"结构的字，先写上内，后写外。）山、凶、画、 幽、这、边、过、迟、远、近、医、巨、匹、匡

Update: we've ported the application to flash and banished Java completely, so it shouldn't be necessary to install any addition software to use the Writing Pad. Reports of problems with any particular browsers/operating systems are very welcome at service@popupchinese.com.