[FrancesHinden]

frouu, on Oct 4 2007, 10:39 AM, said:

fred, on Oct 3 2007, 05:49 PM, said:

awm, on Oct 3 2007, 10:27 PM, said:

(1) Last night one of the commentators for vugraph posted an html link. This link was nicely underlined and appeared in blue. I clicked on the link, saw the other web page, etc. The problem is, when I went back to the BBOTV window all chat was now underlined.

If someone sees that happen again, please make a post containing the link that caused the problem.

I'm using firefox. I tried to replicate the bug by sending a link by a private message.
It happens when you right click the link & open in new window AND someone sends another message before you reply.
It seems to happen with any link.(i tried www.google.com)

Burak

It happened to me as well. It was during the USA 1 vs Italy match, unfortunately I've lost the details of the link... it was posted by one of the commentators on board 31 (NS Fantoni/Nunes), just before they said

Walddk2: That's enormous
jtr: Declarer should have more trumps than the defence

(this may help if someone has a log file, but because I was logged on anonymously on BBOTV I don't think I have one)

I'm using IE 7, and clicking didn't actually open the link, but gave the 'Pop-up blocked' message. I then selected 'allow pop-ups' which disconnected me from BBO, so I couldn't scroll back and find the linke.

[Dwingo]

I use Opera. It seems to be happenning with any hyper link. Once you clcik on a hyper link in the chat message, from then on all chat messages become underlined and become hyper links

[cnszsun]

It seems BBOTV does not know chinese characters yet, so all the commentators' chinese words are displayed as random codes.

[fred]

cnszsun, on Oct 7 2007, 09:44 AM, said:

It seems BBOTV does not know chinese characters yet, so all the commentators' chinese words are displayed as random codes.

BBOTV will actually be great in this regard as it will allow text from several languages with different character sets to a co-exist in chat. Conversely, the Windows BBO client allows text from only 1 character set to be displayed at any given time.

This would actually work perfectly already if all of the people involved in sending/receiving chat were using BBOTV (as opposed to the Windows client). But if a chat message is sent on one version and received in the other version, it will need to be converted before it appears properly on the screen.

And this conversion utility has not been written yet. It is on our list of things to do.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I figured out the problem with the links. Thanks to everyone who posted about this issue in an effort to help me track this down.

Turns out that the browser matters. It was trivial for me to replicate this condition once I tried to do so using Firefox (instead of my usual Internet Explorer).

There probably won't be a new version of BBOTV (the name I am now using for the vugraph-only program) until after the end of the World Championships.

The program that now is nameless (the one that allows you to do more than just watch vugraph) is moving along nicely, but our goals before the next release are ambitious. Most likely it will be at least another couple of weeks before you see any announcements on this front.

Plesae keep those comments, suggestions, and bug reports coming. The feedback in this thread has been very helpful.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[helene_t]

In a CHinese vugraph room:
eciBlue→Table: 17-19ÊDzÃÅпØÖƵĽá¹�ͷ£·ÖÎ޹ØÂ
CCBA→Table: 17-19ÊÇÊַ¢ÅÆ
eciBlue→Table: ic

eciBlue was still entirely in boldface, buyt from then on, the first letter was not. Instead the arrows became boldfaced.

[helene_t]

While watching vugraph in my firefox (ubuntu), the connection was lost when I opened the "South African Typhoon" video in another tab. I closed the video and logged in again, but then I just saw one card played and then lost connection again.

Closed firefox and restarted firefox, then it's back to normal.

[BillHiggin]

Color blindness whining!
The red used for ♦ and ♥ is giving me trouble. I can see them fine in the card diagrams (and the darker red used on card images is fine). In the bidding box and in the final contract box they give me trouble (background color). In the box at lower left, the "other room contract" is unreadable if it contains red symbols (this at the largest size table I could get - much worse when smaller).
Perhaps there is some option to modify colors that I have not found. White backgrounds or a darker red would do the job for me.

I know that I am not the only one with R/G colorblindness issues.

[mgoetze]

Hi Fred (and Uday),

thanks very much for finally providing a non-Windows method to access BBO. Now if only I could sit down at a table...

Anyway, it works fine for me with Opera/Linux and Firefox/Mac, but on Opera/Mac I can't type anything.

Incidentally, on another (non-bridge) site, the admins (i.e. "yellows" on BBO) have access to the programmer's bugzilla - which I've found very helpful. Since you are letting us do such early beta tests, you might want to consider setting up something like that and giving select people access to it. Just a suggestion.

[fred]

mgoetze, on Oct 29 2007, 03:32 PM, said:

Hi Fred (and Uday),

thanks very much for finally providing a non-Windows method to access BBO. Now if only I could sit down at a table...

Anyway, it works fine for me with Opera/Linux and Firefox/Mac, but on Opera/Mac I can't type anything.

Incidentally, on another (non-bridge) site, the admins (i.e. "yellows" on BBO) have access to the programmer's bugzilla - which I've found very helpful. Since you are letting us do such early beta tests, you might want to consider setting up something like that and giving select people access to it. Just a suggestion.

We are hoping to announce a new version with lots of new functions in Forums within the next week or 2. The new version will offer full tournament and convention card support (including some nice convention card-related functions that are not currently available on BBO).

The new version will solve at least one of your problems - it lets you sit at a table

I am not sure why you are having keyboard problems on Opera/Mac. This is the first such report I have heard of this. If the problem doesn't go away when you try the next version let me know and I will investigate further.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[bassaidai]

fred, on Oct 30 2007, 12:23 AM, said:

We are hoping to announce a new version with lots of new functions

GIB will be there ?

Kindest regards.

[fred]

You will be able to play Money Bridge Tournaments and Robot Race Tournaments (all tables consist of a human and 3 GIBs in these tournaments).

If you want to play against GIB(s) at a Main Bridge Club table, a GIB-subscriber using the Windows version of BBO will have to be the host. Not clear when it will be possible to do this with the Flash BBO - it is complicated.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[inquiry]

I tried bbotv version 3 tonight from my mother's mac. A message from the BIL opened up and it was so long that it went off the screen at the bottom and there was no way I could close it, nor get past it to do anything else of usefulness. When I logged off and back on, the message reappeared. Can we have either a scroll bar or a way to close the message maybe from the top of the window?

[fred]

inquiry, on Nov 14 2007, 02:16 AM, said:

I tried bbotv version 3 tonight from my mother's mac. A message from the BIL opened up and it was so long that it went off the screen at the bottom and there was no way I could close it, nor get past it to do anything else of usefulness. When I logged off and back on, the message reappeared. Can we have either a scroll bar or a way to close the message maybe from the top of the window?

This is fixed in the next release (tentatively scheduled for tomorrow).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[pixelkid]

BBOTV is a welcome advance for me since I moved to a MAC some 6 month ago. Currently I can only play Bridge online by restarting my mac and running Windows under "bootcamp". Of course the other possibility is to use "Parallels" desktop but I would need to install that just to run BBO. Frankly I cannot be bothered so I hope a full version of BBO will be running in my browser window very soon.

The BBOTV graphics are a move in the right direction. Indeed, I think that with some work on the user interface the Browser based BBO could be a massive improvement on the current clunky interface. The user interface could benefit hugely from usability improvements. I find many things quite counter intuitive.

Dont get me wrong, I think BBO software is great and works very well. It is just the human interface that is in need of improvement. To make it feel like you are really playing brudge rather than a computer game.

Tech alert

In the future programs like BBO will run in a browser window, Safari, IE, Netscape, Opera or Firefox and it will run on any OS, Linux, OSX, Windows. In fact, who meeds an OS. All you need is a browser. What about an iPhone?

With advances in software programming, such as javascript libraries (EXT-JS) including drag and drop there is no reason why BBO will not in the future only be supported in a browser window.

This is certainly the way things are going at Google (GWT). I am assuming that the application is written in Java. If so then using GWT should enable BBO to run with very little work since GWT creates all the necessary javascript required for whichever browser.

This should solve many browser interop problems. Presumably you have a load of hand coded Javascript under the hood somewhere?

Keep up the good work
BBO on my mac - COOL

[ketsel]

I have a few classes of novice bridge players and in every class there are
a few who have Macs - so this is a welcome addition to BBO.

When will they be able to access the BIL Lounge - that's a priority for new
players!

Thanks