[johnu]

I'm more than a little amused that BBO wants windows users to migrate to the web based interface and new users have to use the web version. The playing interface doesn't look like it has significantly changed since the very first days of BBO. Dummy still does not get displayed like a real life dummy and declarer isn't rotated to South. IMHO, The windows playing table has the look of a 21st century interface, the web based version is stuck somewhere is the late 20th century.

Other suggested improvements for the web version -

Misclicking can be a problem - Confirming bids works ok but is a pain. Double clicking play of a card is way too easy to do accidentally. Why not add a drag and drop for bids and play? It's a very natural motion and gives you time to stop if you see the wrong bid or card being dragged.

Sounds - The best thing I can say about the sounds is that they are annoying. The windows version has voice descriptions of bids and plays. This could be improved by having a choice of voices for each hand.

Hand layout - You should be able to specify the exact order suits are arranged. Adding some space between each suit should be another option (don't have to worry about opponents seeing you distribution by looking at your hand). Different colors for suits can be another option.

Does anybody else have suggestions on how the table layout should look?

[1eyedjack]

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

I'm more than a little amused that BBO wants windows users to migrate to the web based interface and new users have to use the web version.

The fact that the web version is easier to maintain, not tied to Windows, and uses less bandwidth has something to do with it, in addition to user experience.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

The playing interface doesn't look like it has significantly changed since the very first days of BBO.

I just don't understand this comment. Diametrically opposed to my observation. The web interface bears very little in common with the Windows download interface which was the only one available in the "very first days" of BBO.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

Dummy still does not get displayed like a real life dummy

Again I don't understand the comment. First of all we have to establish whether a "real life dummy" (whatever that means) is the optimal display. It would be an unlikely coincidence if it is. If it can be improved upon, then I would embrace the improvement over tradition. A good example of this is using "diagram mode" rather than "pictures of cards" mode in the display options.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

and declarer isn't rotated to South.

I would strongly object to this change. I would not stand in the way of it if it has popular support, but it would surprise me if it does. But if it does, then I would certainly want an option embedded to allow users to undo that treatment, which would add clutter to the user options in the interface. Personally I would always set it so that the human player in control of the computer is sat in the South seat. Also, in Robot tourneys we already have to cope with how to display it when the human dummy plays on behalf of declarer, and over successive generations of interface they have played around a bit with these options, with the Flash interface diverging from the Mobile interface for a while. I believe that the general consensus having tried these out is NOT to go rotating the cards between the auction and card play. That is certainly my preference: Place *me* in the "South" seat (for display purposes) regardless of my actual compass location by reference to the server, and then don't move me from there whatever happens in the auction. I can accept that some players might want the "real" South to be sitting in the South seat. But either way, I would not expect popular support for then shifting declarer into that seat at conclusion of auction before the start of play.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

Other suggested improvements for the web version -

Misclicking can be a problem - Confirming bids works ok but is a pain. Double clicking play of a card is way too easy to do accidentally. Why not add a drag and drop for bids and play? It's a very natural motion and gives you time to stop if you see the wrong bid or card being dragged.

ANY solution that is implemented to protect against misclicks is bound to add to the inconvenience of making a bid or play that is not a misclick. Individuals differ in their tendency to misclick. I misclick extremely rarely, so any implementation to protect against misclicks is going to impact adversely on my enjoyment of the game. Unless, of course, such an implementation is optional for the user or capable of being reversed in user options.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

Sounds - The best thing I can say about the sounds is that they are annoying.

I agree. Which is why I disable them, as the interface options allow.

Remainder of post snipped - minor points which personally don't excite me, but each to his own.

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

Does anybody else have suggestions on how the table layout should look?

For me, functionality is more important than looks. You get used to looks. And I don't like the obsession with cutting out clutter. Again, you get used to clutter, and if the clutter adds functionality, that is good for me.

My main criticism of the Flash interface is that it is done in Flash rather than in HTML5. But perhaps converting that would be a big job.
My next main criticism is the lack of a tournament "room" for individuals at the tournament who are not seated at the table or kibitzing a table, so that there is no way to target a broadcast message to tournament attendees who are not playing. This is particularly acute if you participate in a tourney, finish early, and the host/TD then starts rolling a script to the tournament which I do not get to see.
The lack of a facility to play Rubber bridge is a concern for some (not so much for me).

Your comments generally suggest to me a certain unfamiliarity with the Flash interface (ie not being aware that you can turn off sounds that annoy you). That may be part of the root of your frustration.

[1eyedjack]

More on the subject of misclicks:

For as long as we are restricted to traditional mouse/keyboard input, the most convenient method of bidding or playing, provided that you do NOT misclick, is by way of a single click with no dragging. Bidding may take two clicks - one for suit and one for level. If you make the bidding table big enough that could be limited to one click, but for better or worse BBO decided that reducing the table size in favour of forcing a second click was the superior option. No comment on that one way or the other.

BUT, the very features that make bidding or playing convenient to someone who does not misclick, by their nature increase the likelihood of a misclick. And so a balance has to be taken between making it easy for accurate clickers and making it safe for the clumsy. A happy medium is one that provides the user a choice of protective measures which they can personally enable or not. At a cost of interface clutter.

All of the above does however assume the traditional mouse/keyboard input medium.

These days, voice-activated dictation software has come on leaps and bounds from its infancy, and its accuracy is now well developed, particularly when it has been given an opportunity to learn the voice characteristics of the user. Furthermore, the language of bidding and card plays has an extremely limited vocabulary. The prospects for confusion are restricted by the limited vocabulary.

So I think that the future argues for a microphone-based input medium, so that you simply speak into the computer your bid or selected card to play. This would have the combined benefit that there is no stress between convenience/ease of use for accurate players on the one hand and safety for the clumsy. The same method would be both easy to use and provide protection from the traditional misclick.

[Bbradley62]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

johnu, on 2014-December-12, 22:40, said:

Dummy still does not get displayed like a real life dummy

Again I don't understand the comment. First of all we have to establish whether a "real life dummy" (whatever that means) is the optimal display. It would be an unlikely coincidence if it is. If it can be improved upon, then I would embrace the improvement over tradition. A good example of this is using "diagram mode" rather than "pictures of cards" mode in the display options.

What's not to understand? OP wants the option to arrange dummy's cards vertically, not horizontally, with the trump suit (if there is one) at the left. In the "pictures of cards" layout, the system already automatically re-arranges the cards to put trumps on the left.

PS: It might also be good, in "hand diagrams" layout, to re-arrange the cards to put trumps on top.

[GreenMan]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

Again I don't understand the comment. First of all we have to establish whether a "real life dummy" (whatever that means) is the optimal display. It would be an unlikely coincidence if it is.

When a real-life dummy is on the user's left, the trump suit is nearest the user, at declarer's left, analogous to being at the bottom of LHO's hand diagram. But in BBO the trump suit is always at the top, which is visually analogous to being farthest away, at declarer's right. It doesn't seem to me that having the trump suit appear somewhere besides where it appears in F2F bridge is the optimal display. Perhaps you disagree?

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

I agree. Which is why I disable them, as the interface options allow.

Sounds are all-or-nothing. I turn them off because the constant card sound is like Satan scratching at my window, but then I also don't hear alert sounds such as when a private message comes in; if I don't happen to be looking at the BBO application right then, I could well miss it. Having the only options be "all sounds" and "no sounds" seem to me not to be the optimal experience for the user. Perhaps you disagree?

[johnu]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

The fact that the web version is easier to maintain, not tied to Windows, and uses less bandwidth has something to do with it, in addition to user experience.

As you apparently understand from your later comments, IMO the user experience is significantly worse due to a playing interface that isn't nearly as good as the "older" interface. As an option, BBO could offer the current web playing table, or a version more resembling the windows version.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

I just don't understand this comment. Diametrically opposed to my observation. The web interface bears very little in common with the Windows download interface which was the only one available in the "very first days" of BBO.

What are you talking about? You agree that the web and windows interface are very different. I was talking about the web playing table not having changed much since it was first introduced. Would you say the web playing table has changed a lot since it was first introduced?

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

Again I don't understand the comment. First of all we have to establish whether a "real life dummy" (whatever that means) is the optimal display. It would be an unlikely coincidence if it is. If it can be improved upon, then I would embrace the improvement over tradition. A good example of this is using "diagram mode" rather than "pictures of cards" mode in the display options.

Are you just being obtuse? A real life dummy has trumps on the left, other suits to the right, with suits arranged by rank vertically. This is exactly like the way the windows version displays the cards. Why are you opposed to a "traditional" display option? Why are you bringing up an "optimal" display, whatever that means? If you think having the dummy display remain the same as hands are displayed during bidding, more power to you. It should be easy enough to have several playing table options so you can keep the current look and feel.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

I would strongly object to this change. I would not stand in the way of it if it has popular support, but it would surprise me if it does. But if it does, then I would certainly want an option embedded to allow users to undo that treatment, which would add clutter to the user options in the interface. Personally I would always set it so that the human player in control of the computer is sat in the South seat. Also, in Robot tourneys we already have to cope with how to display it when the human dummy plays on behalf of declarer, and over successive generations of interface they have played around a bit with these options, with the Flash interface diverging from the Mobile interface for a while. I believe that the general consensus having tried these out is NOT to go rotating the cards between the auction and card play. That is certainly my preference: Place *me* in the "South" seat (for display purposes) regardless of my actual compass location by reference to the server, and then don't move me from there whatever happens in the auction. I can accept that some players might want the "real" South to be sitting in the South seat. But either way, I would not expect popular support for then shifting declarer into that seat at conclusion of auction before the start of play.

Have you ever heard of user selected options?

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

ANY solution that is implemented to protect against misclicks is bound to add to the inconvenience of making a bid or play that is not a misclick. Individuals differ in their tendency to misclick. I misclick extremely rarely, so any implementation to protect against misclicks is going to impact adversely on my enjoyment of the game. Unless, of course, such an implementation is optional for the user or capable of being reversed in user options.

Congratulations on being such an accurate clicker. There already is a confirm bid and confirm play option where you have to click OK for any bid, and double click any play. Does that interfere with your bidding and play enjoyment? Again, drag and drop can be an option.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

I agree. Which is why I disable them, as the interface options allow.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-13, 02:55, said:

Your comments generally suggest to me a certain unfamiliarity with the Flash interface (ie not being aware that you can turn off sounds that annoy you). That may be part of the root of your frustration.

The default for sounds is on, so if your settings are cleared, the next time you log in you have to turn them off again. In any case, the sound options for the windows version were far ahead of their time and the web version sound options remind me of a DOS program, not that DOS program weren't fine programs in their time and some are still being used today.

I don't like the flash version because I don't like the playing table. What part of that didn't you understand?

[BillHiggin]

johnu, on 2014-December-13, 15:01, said:

Have you ever heard of user selected options?

A definite design decision was made to minimize the number of user selected options. Those options may allow for greater individual choice, but the downside is that they are very confusing for many.
I will not claim to favor every design decision (of course, I do not) but I do admire the consistency with which they have adhered to that principal.

[johnu]

BillHiggin, on 2014-December-13, 16:45, said:

A definite design decision was made to minimize the number of user selected options. Those options may allow for greater individual choice, but the downside is that they are very confusing for many.
I will not claim to favor every design decision (of course, I do not) but I do admire the consistency with which they have adhered to that principal.

IIRC, the choice of development platform makes implementing some GUI options more difficult or impossible, but I'm not a flash developer and that's what I remember reading some time ago. But as far as having too many options, you could always put the more confusing ones on a double secret probation Easter egg menu that only those in the know can access

Just thinking off the top of my head, it seems possible that you could call the windows playing table GUI from the web front end as an option, so instead of rewriting all the code, you only have to write an interface from the web version to the relevant windows program code.

[scarletv]

Using the display of big cards reduced the number of my misclicks in card play significantly. On the other hand that reduced the size of the bidding box and I found it useful to activate the confirming option for bidding. I can afford about 4 additional clicks per board without being stressed.

Concerning the sound I strongly agree. The noise of the cards is not only annoying I cant see any benefit from it. So my request would be to remove the sound for the card play.

What I am missing is
1) The possibility to find players for certain criteria like country skill level et al.
2) A noise when someone enters the room
3) The possibility to select a sub in tourneys for a missing partner
4) The profile of players (including TCR, BCR, comments, friend, enemy and category) when being asked to play with as sub or inviting or being invited to tourney or team match
5) Tables where I can set the deal source for training purposes (until now for bidding and teaching table only)
6) Possibility to save deal settings in random deals and activate them for training

[1eyedjack]

@johnu

If I may paraphrase your original post:

"The old windows version is self evidently superior to the flash version. I think so and it is so obvious that I shall not bother to explain why but just assume agreement of all who will now no doubt pile in and pat me on the back for my astute observation that the flash interface is generally trash."

And do you know? I used to agree with you. I really did. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the Flash interface, mainly because of the facilities available there which were not available in the Windows download client. And guess what? Familiarity with the interface grew and with it my objections dissipated. What a surprise. Not.

I still have a few niggles, and I have mentioned them so will not repeat them here. But when I do I am specific.

You seem to object to *my* introducing the term optimising the interface. It is you, not I, who started this thread, with a view to improving the Flash interface. At least, I assume that this was your objective, else why are you wasting this time? It is to me axiomatic that anyone suggesting a change to the software does so with a view to its improvement. The definition of improvement is to approach optimisation. I may have been the first in the thread to coin the phrase, but I was certainly not the first to admit the principle into the debate.

It was you, not I, who harkened back to the "very first days of BBO", which pre-dated the Flash interface by many years. How was I supposed to realise that by "the very first days of BBO" you really meant the "very first days of the Flash interface"?

Once you recognise, as you should, that individuals will differ in their preferences (and that includes differing with YOUR preferences), then you have to accept that the programmers have to decide in each case whether to offer the user a choice at the cost of interface clutter and user confusion on the one hand, or on the other hand to deny that choice but insist on behalf of all what they perceive would be the most popular setting. The argument for offering a choice to the user is stronger where there is no clear majority preference.

Your original post made little or no reference to "user selection". You simply wanted the display to revert to the old windows version. Full stop. End of. The tenor of my response throughout was to say that I have no objection to your preference, but it does not conform to mine and that for every change that you want to implement I would want a user option to reverse it, and the introduction of that user option may be a disadvantage that would need to be factored into the decision.

As I think I made clear in my response, I personally think that they have not got the balance right in their obsession with removing interface clutter. I would prefer more user choice. I also think that if done intelligently they could offer more choice without a significant increase in clutter, by way of nested menus. The interface remains uncluttered for as long as you do not drill down through the menus, but if you DO drill down through the menus then it is reasonable to presume that the choices available therein are appreciated by the user. It is not a huge thing for me. Not enough to start a new rant thread, anyway.

Users should be encouraged to express their preferences, in this forum or elsewhere. Just cut out the arrogance of assuming popular support. You may have it, just don't take it as read.

[johnu]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-14, 02:22, said:

If I may paraphrase your original post:

"The old windows version is self evidently superior to the flash version. I think so and it is so obvious that I shall not bother to explain why but just assume agreement of all who will now no doubt pile in and pat me on the back for my astute observation that the flash interface is generally trash."

Go ahead, I see you have created your own reality. Come back soon

I explained in the first paragraph about the dummy display that didn't look like a real life dummy and the inability to rotate hands so declarer is South. FWIW, OKBridge also displayed the dummy like a fanned hand you hold during bidding as far back as the 90's (and I think they may still have basically the same interface but I haven't been a member in years). After stating those 2 reasons, I do think it is obvious why I think the windows version is better than the web version. You are free to disagree with my conclusions but don't embarrass yourself by claiming that I didn't explain why I like the windows version.

[1eyedjack]

johnu, on 2014-December-14, 03:45, said:

I explained in the first paragraph about the dummy display that didn't look like a real life dummy

You stated it. You did not explain it. It took BBradley62 to point out to me that what you meant was having trumps displayed on the left. At least I assume that he got that interpretation right. Given that you must prefer the pictures of cards layout (that being closer to real life), and as BBradley62 points out, in that presentation the trumps are already placed on the left (yes even in the Flash version) I have my doubts. You have since clarified that what you really meant was that you wanted the cards fanned out somehow. OK so now we know. For all I care you can have it. I will stick with diagram layout so it won't affect me.

johnu, on 2014-December-14, 03:45, said:

I explained in the first paragraph ... the inability to rotate hands so that declarer is South

So, just to be clear, you sit in the East seat, and the software immediately rotates it so that you sit apparently in the South seat. North is now on your right, ie locally displayed as East. At this point there is no declarer, the auction having yet to conclude, so your objection is not to that.
Then you have an auction, and your RHO, "North", sitting in the East seat, wins the auction, and your proposal is that everyone should stand up and move around AGAIN like some variant of musical chairs, so that you (East) are now sitting in the seat displayed as West, which is to say to the left of the table, and North, who has already been moved to the East seat, being declarer is now re-seated in the South seat.

Now, you may see this as an improvement. I do not. I hesitate to speak for others, a hesitation that you lack, but I speculate that you are virtually alone in so thinking.

It has been a long time since I have played using the Windows download client. So long in fact that I no longer have it installed, having since changed computers. But my recollection is that even the Windows download client didn't jump through such hoops. Maybe it did have that option, but if so I disabled it in the very early days of using it.

From these two examples, one unclearly defined and of trivial impact, and the other at best controversial, you have made the sweeping hyperbolic extrapolation that the Flash interface is stuck in the 20th century.

I feel no embarrassment in pointing out that fallacy.

[johnu]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-14, 05:03, said:

You stated it. You did not explain it. It took BBradley62 to point out to me that what you meant was having trumps displayed on the left. At least I assume that he got that interpretation right. Given that you must prefer the pictures of cards layout (that being closer to real life), and as BBradley62 points out, in that presentation the trumps are already placed on the left (yes even in the Flash version) I have my doubts. You have since clarified that what you really meant was that you wanted the cards fanned out somehow. OK so now we know. For all I care you can have it. I will stick with diagram layout so it won't affect me.

Wow, you still have not idea about what I posted. What does a real life dummy look like? Have you ever played face to face bridge? When somebody is dummy, do they just lay their hand down just like they were holding the cards in real life? Giving a list of reasons is an explanation. If you don't understand the points which you clearly didn't, ask, but don't say I didn't explain. You just didn't understand originally, and apparently you still don't understand.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-14, 05:03, said:

So, just to be clear, you sit in the East seat, and the software immediately rotates it so that you sit apparently in the South seat. North is now on your right, ie locally displayed as East. At this point there is no declarer, the auction having yet to conclude, so your objection is not to that.
Then you have an auction, and your RHO, "North", sitting in the East seat, wins the auction, and your proposal is that everyone should stand up and move around AGAIN like some variant of musical chairs, so that you (East) are now sitting in the seat displayed as West, which is to say to the left of the table, and North, who has already been moved to the East seat, being declarer is now re-seated in the South seat.

Now, you may see this as an improvement. I do not. I hesitate to speak for others, a hesitation that you lack, but I speculate that you are virtually alone in so thinking.

It took 2 days but apparently you finally understand my point about moving declarer to South. I am puzzled by your hostility when by your own words, you had no clue what I was talking about. Feel free to disagree about the importance of either of those points. But as far as being alone in my thinking, making South declarer is traditional in bridge columns, books, and blog/magazine hands. In my bridge circles, players expect declarer to be in the compass South position when given problems. Try going through old Bridgwinners.com posts where somebody fails to rotate hands and see what comments that generates.

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-14, 05:03, said:

From these two examples, one unclearly defined and of trivial impact, and the other at best controversial, you have made the sweeping hyperbolic extrapolation that the Flash interface is stuck in the 20th century.

I feel no embarrassment in pointing out that fallacy.

LOL, the first was clearly misunderstood by you so you have no understanding about the impact, and the 2nd is about 90 years of bridge tradition.

Having dummy's 13 cards fanned out horizontally was a staple of the other major online player OKBridge table layout in the early 90's (FYI, that would be in the 20th century) up to the present IIRC. What is the layout of dummy in the web version of BBO? 13 cards fanned out horizontally just like OKBridge. Does that layout resemble a real life dummy (note - you should be able to answer that question now) or the OKB layout from the 90's? If the web interface resembles the OKB layout and not the 21st century windows layout, what century would you classify the look of the web version?

[fred]

Johnu...

There is a reason why the dummy is displayed in one horizontal row in the web-client:

In order to display the dummy as you prefer (in 4 vertical columns), the cards would have to be smaller. That would make them harder to see (a problem especially for elderly users, of which there are many, who tend to have poor eyesight) and harder to click accurately. The situation is particularly bad with the popular "big cards" that are the default in the web-client (because the larger the symbols on the cards themselves, the more vertical space is required to properly render a 4-column dummy).

If we thought that this could be done in a nice way without significantly reducing card size, we would have done it already.

If you don't believe me then please feel free to experiment. If you think you have a design that offers the best of both worlds, then send me a picture (fred@bridgebase.com). If I think your design is an improvement I will consider trying to implement it in a future version of the web-client.

As for your suggestion to rotate the deal so that the declarer is always in the South position, we have learned from many years of experience that the vast majority of our members do not like the deal to be rotated. They much prefer that "their hand" always appears at the bottom of the screen and tend to get disoriented when the cards move around at the end of the bidding.

Sorry if you don't like the current design, but as far as I can tell our membership in general does not consider either of these issues to be serious - to the best of my knowledge yours are the first complaints we have ever received in either of these areas.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[johnu]

Thanks for your input Fred.

fred, on 2014-December-15, 08:46, said:

In order to display the dummy as you prefer (in 4 vertical columns), the cards would have to be smaller. That would make them harder to see (a problem especially for elderly users, of which there are many, who tend to have poor eyesight) and harder to click accurately. The situation is particularly bad with the popular "big cards" that are the default in the web-client (because the larger the symbols on the cards themselves, the more vertical space is required to properly render a 4-column dummy).

If we thought that this could be done in a nice way without significantly reducing card size, we would have done it already.

I'll take your word that some players have trouble clicking the cards as I've spent more on surgery on my eyes than all but a few, but display devices are getting bigger and cheaper all the time and you do have a keyboard option if they are really having problems. I also really believe that a drag and drop play option is a less error prone than the double click confirm option since it's too easy to double click on many devices when the cursor is not positioned right. I've made a number of plays not even realizing I had played a card.

Using the windows client card display and card font size works fine for me, even though it takes a lot less space and has smaller card fonts than the web version table layout (on my 28" monitor, windows version takes up about 6 x 12 1/4", web version about 10 1/2 x 14 1/2" using big fonts on both (I'll admit I see better with my reading glasses if playing on a 17" monitor). It seems you could increase the card size using a windows layout and still take less space than the web version (although a lot of the web version is empty space). I can see that long suits could cause a space problem if east or west cards run over into the dummy space, so a nice touch would be to dynamically change to a smaller font at the first trick when all cards are on display, and change to a larger font when cards have been played so you could usually have the largest card size possible.

fred, on 2014-December-15, 08:46, said:

As for your suggestion to rotate the deal so that the declarer is always in the South position, we have learned from many years of experience that the vast majority of our members do not like the deal to be rotated. They much prefer that "their hand" always appears at the bottom of the screen and tend to get disoriented when the cards move around at the end of the bidding.

I think that is partly a function of all 4 hands having the same format, and nothing shaped like a dummy you see in face to face bridge to anchor your view. Maybe it also happened with the 4 column dummy on the windows version but there you have 3 options for who is in the south position.

fred, on 2014-December-15, 08:46, said:

Sorry if you don't like the current design, but as far as I can tell our membership in general does not consider either of these issues to be serious - to the best of my knowledge yours are the first complaints we have ever received in either of these areas.

IIRC, I saw several questions about the web dummy layout when the web version came out, and I'm sure I inquired about getting the windows dummy layout included in the web version several years ago. I know for a fact that several windows version players are still playing on the windows version because they don't like the web playing table. They don't have a burning desire to complain because 1) they never or rarely use forums, and 2) the windows version still works great for them. Also 3) Relatively new users who can only run the web version don't have anything to compare to. I'm only in category 2), and if you don't change anything, I will happily play the windows version and only use the web version for features not in the windows version (or when I'm using my work computer which has restrictions on what programs I can install).

But rather than do anything now, can you do a poll for users to take when they sign in to play with 2 screen shots, 1 with the current dummy layout, the other with a 4 column dummy, and see what percentages would like the 4 column dummy? If I'm the only one or part of the 1 percent , you probably can't justify taking the time to reprogram.

[barmar]

Personally speaking, I've never understood what people see in the "picture of cards" mode. I've always used hand diagrams. It's much easier to see the suit distributions this way.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2014-December-16, 10:25, said:

Personally speaking, I've never understood what people see in the "picture of cards" mode. I've always used hand diagrams. It's much easier to see the suit distributions this way.

Obviously this is a matter of personal preference. I will note that on the popular gaming sites, the corporations running them spend a lot of money on their web sites trying to give their games the look and feel of being at a casino in person, e.g. virtual roulette tables look like real roulette tables down to the ball spinning around the wheel before bouncing into a numbered slot.

[1eyedjack]

I expect that they do so because in those games pandering to that look and feel does not have a significant detrimental effect on the playing experience.

[johnu]

1eyedjack, on 2014-December-27, 13:51, said:

I expect that they do so because in those games pandering to that look and feel does not have a significant detrimental effect on the playing experience.

LOL, they do so because it enhances the playing experience. I suppose games with minimal graphics like pong may make a big comeback in your world, but every video game I can think of is going towards more realistic and more detailed graphics and sound.

[jillybean]

delete