[hrothgar]

Oh yeah... agree with Tim (and others) that a name other than BBOTV would be nice.

Personally, I see no reason to call it anything other than the BBO Client

[hotShot]

Beside style and beauty aspects, i think there is something else to consider:

BBOTV and company security

Security and easy usage often don't go well together. It is much easier not to lock doors all the times, but it's not secure.

From a security point of view the new BBOTV is an application that downloads its own code over the internet (so the company security cannot check it prior to executing), that has a bidirectional data connection that can send data from inside the company to someone outside and that can execute tasks for someone outside the company.
If this application had any way, to access local system resources, like drives, microphones, webcams or others, it could be used to make all other security measures completely useless.
While I don't think that Fred and Uday would be interested in anything that is stored on my PC, it is quite easy to make the application download its components from a different source. So all someone would have to do is create a modified version, that has a little "extra function".
I don't know what local rights a flash application can have (I know they are limited), but I know that vendors have to fight possible escapes from that limitations from time to time.

[fred]

hotShot, on Aug 7 2007, 01:17 PM, said:

Beside style and beauty aspects, i think there is something else to consider:

BBOTV and company security

Security and easy usage often don't go well together. It is much easier not to lock doors all the times, but it's not secure.

From a security point of view the new BBOTV is an application that downloads its own code over the internet (so the company security cannot check it prior to executing), that has a bidirectional data connection that can send data from inside the company to someone outside and that can execute tasks for someone outside the company.
If this application had any way, to access local system resources, like drives, microphones, webcams or others, it could be used to make all other security measures completely useless.
While I don't think that Fred and Uday would be interested in anything that is stored on my PC, it is quite easy to make the application download its components from a different source. So all someone would have to do is create a modified version, that has a little "extra function".
I don't know what local rights a flash application can have (I know they are limited), but I know that vendors have to fight possible escapes from that limitations from time to time.

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

But of course if we wanted to screw up your system or spy on you, it would be easy for us to do that with the existing Windows client.

Hopefully it is needless to say that you have nothing to worry about in terms of our company doing anything like that.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

fred, on Aug 7 2007, 04:26 PM, said:

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

[hotShot]

fred, on Aug 7 2007, 03:26 PM, said:

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

This is good news.

[fred]

hrothgar, on Aug 7 2007, 01:35 PM, said:

fred, on Aug 7 2007, 04:26 PM, said:

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

Files can be stored on our servers.

This won't make any difference from the user's point of view except that they will have to be connected to the Internet if they want to access these files.

If this becomes a problem there are ways to package Flash applications so that they can be run locally and access local files. I don't know much about this yet and I would just as soon keep it that way, but that might not be possible.

The bottom line is that the needs of our users will be the main driving force in the development of BBOTV (or whatever we end up naming it). If significant numbers of users complain that some aspect of the software sucks then we will try to improve it. In some cases technological or security limitations could get in the way, but I am not very concerned about this.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

fred, on Aug 7 2007, 04:58 PM, said:

hrothgar, on Aug 7 2007, 01:35 PM, said:

fred, on Aug 7 2007, 04:26 PM, said:

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

Files can be stored on our servers.

This won't make any difference from the user's point of view except that they will have to be connected to the Internet if they want to access these files.

Hi Fred

I do expect that this might start creating some issues for you over time. Case in point: At the moment, people can use third party editors to create a FD type file. (In theory, I can go an create an FD file using MS-Word and save this as a text file). Under the new scheme, folks will be locked into using whatever editor you embed inside the BBO flash application.

In a similar vein, right now some of the BBO users have created the "Vugraph project". They record as many high profile Vugraphs as possible; then index and post the contents. Using the Flash application, BBO is the only one who can create this type of record. (For this matter, you can't save LIN files any more. The only way to access a hand record is to go through my hands). You might also run into trouble with Tournament Directors who want to use pregenerated hand records for tournaments. Yada, yada, yada....

I'm not saying that any of this represents an insurmountable problem. (If nothing else, there is always the option to use cut and paste type operations to move data between the BBO application and third party apps) However, I think that there are a bunch of potentially issues that you're going to need to think about down the pike.

[hotShot]

My popup-blocker does not allow flash applications to open browser windows, but i could relax that for the BBO site.

Now i get my lin-file automatic, but I see no problem to download in a different browser window. (But i might forget it sometimes ......)

People that create FD-files with an editor of their choice, will be able to visit some upload webpage. I would see no problem there.

In fact a lot of services available now, could be on a different webpage.
Just imagine that the club and tourney management could be a different application.

[badderzboy]

Hi all,

I love the look and feel of BBOTV.

I did notice it gives u an option to allow webcam and sound in the flash options - any long term plans to have windows and voice online !

Thinking of the CC issue, how feasible would it be for people to upload a word document/PDF as a CC for that session only - I guess space considerations would make it non-permanent are alternatively allow a certain amount of space per user on the server with ability to manipulate it.

A lot of people have electronic versions of their CC available which would at least supply as much info as you would get f2f?

Alternatively has something like http://acbld20.org/vilhauer_old.htm an ACBL CC editor on the ACBL site an option - it seems quite intuitive etc.

Steve

[andych]

The bigger cards is too big, and the smaller card is too small, for me.
Have a "medium size" card pls.

[FrancesHinden]

From my home PC (the one without the firewall), I installed Flash9 from the link provided, and it claimed it had installed correctly.

However none of the links work at all.

Edited: aha, but they did after I closed all the IE windows down and then started again. That seems to be necessary after installing Flash 9.

[FrancesHinden]

fred, on Aug 6 2007, 07:29 PM, said:

Trumpace, on Aug 6 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Not sure if someone mentioned this before, but I do hope you will have a "text" version of the cards (like the current BBO client), instead of just the pictures of the cards.

Right click on the green table top. A menu will appear that will allow you to switch to hand diagram mode.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

It seems to be slightly random whether I get the menu you describe, or the bog standard Flash menu (Zoom In... Zoom Out... Show All... Loop (ticked) etc). Sometimes when I right-click I get the BBO menu, sometimes I get that one. This applies on either the green table or the blue surround.

Also, right-clicking on the green chat window sometimes give me the 'standard' menu above, sometimes gives a menu saying Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete/Select All, and sometimes gives a menu with those options plus, at the top, Clear Chat/Bigger Font/Smaller Font

[chicken]

hrothgar, on Aug 7 2007, 09:11 AM, said:

In a similar vein, right now some of the BBO users have created the "Vugraph project".  They record as many high profile Vugraphs as possible; then index and post the contents.  Using the Flash application, BBO is the only one who can create this type of record.  (For this matter, you can't save LIN files any more.  The only way to access a hand record is to go through my hands).  You might also run into trouble with Tournament Directors who want to use pregenerated hand records for tournaments.  Yada, yada, yada....

i didnt get hrothgars point precisely, but LIN by now has become a very important thing in the worldwide bridgecommunication surpassing pbn i think. (dealmasterpro for example has added lin options.) especially the teaching community on bbo has done a lot of work with creating files and movies for teaching reasons. it would be important to get these files working under the new environment.

[geller]

Presumably Fred has in mind the possibility of showing live TV of matches, with voice commentary rather than text. If so, that's great. But I hope you are giving some thought to the language issue.

For example, the World Cup of football (soccer) is broadcast in over a hundred languages, using the same TV picture. For, say, the finals of the Bermuda Bowl, or indeed even at the round-robin stages, it ought to be possible to have voice commentary for each table in multiple languages, with the user able to click on the flag for the language of his/her choice. Or, at a mnimum, it ought to be possble to have multiple streams of text commentary, with the user able to select the language of choice. I hope something along these lines is in the works down the road.

For example when Japan plays China in the Zone 6 championships there ought to be Chinese, Japanese, and English commentary for each table. This could help make bridge more of a spectator sport in each country.

-Bob

[Mike_P]

The new client looks good and I'm sure will be terrific in no time, given Fred's history of excellence.

However, I still don't get the point. If this is to increase the user base by making the client not system or OS dependent, and not requiring users to maintain/update their resident BBO software, than I'm all for it -- what's good for BBO is good for me.

But I don't mind the appearance or functionality of the current client, I run Win XP, and I am not overwhelmed running the occasional update.

What aspect of this new thing should excite me?

-- Mike

[helene_t]

Mike_P, on Aug 8 2007, 01:26 PM, said:

But I don't mind the appearance or functionality of the current client, I run Win XP, and I  am not overwhelmed running the occasional update.

What aspect of this new thing should excite me? 

I suppose the new client will take advantage of a lot of general features of the flash player. For example, the current client has a "copy chat message" facility and it supports a number of non-Latin alphabets. That's fine but it means that Fred and Uday have to spend time on programming such features and that they are not guaranteed to conform with different desktop skins, interfaces etc. For example, if you receive a chat message in Hebrew or Tamil you would like to be able to copy it and paste it into a word processor.

Sometimes I have a funny board on BBO and I want to forward it to a friend who is not a BBO user. This means taking a screenshot and attaching it as a bitmap. Not very convenient. And to post a BBO board on this forum I have to use Cascade's linconverter. It's great that Cascade provided that solution but it would be easier to embed a bridge movie in the post directly (this will require an embed flash fragment option in Invision but such a feature will probably be added in the not so distant future).

[fred]

hotShot, on Aug 7 2007, 02:30 PM, said:

My popup-blocker does not allow flash applications to open browser windows, but i could relax that for the BBO site.

Are you sure about that?

Can you please try logging in to BBOTV and clicking the BBO Vugraph button near the top of the screen.

A window will appear that lists whatever vugraph matches are running. Please try clicking the Vugraph schedule button near the botton of this window.

In theory you should see new browser popup appear. What happens?

Thanks,

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

geller, on Aug 8 2007, 05:58 AM, said:

Presumably Fred has in mind the possibility of showing live TV of matches, with voice commentary rather than text. If so, that's great. But I hope you are giving some thought to the language issue.

Don't read too much into the actual name BBOTV - it is just a name and one that is not unlikely to change.

I expect that voice will eventually become part of BBOTV (or whatever name we end up using), but there are a lot of other things we are going to want to do first.

If and when a BBO client that can run on a television set becomes available is a whole other issue. Sure that would be nice, but I don't think the technology is quite there yet (and the program is not there yet in any case).

What we are now calling BBOTV will certainly become a multilingual program, just like the existing BBO client. That development is actually on the radar screen - probably we will make some effort to support multiple languages before we make an official release.

One (minor) advantage of the BBOTV design over that of the existing BBO client is that everyone will be able to see chat messages appear properly in the language that the chat-sender was using. So if Bob sends a Japanese message to the table, everyone at the table will see proper Japanese characters (versus the garbage they now see when Bob sends Japanese to a person who is not Japanese).

Not that this will matter that much from a functional point of view (because most people who speak Japanese and care about being able to read Japanese chat would set their BBO language to Japanese), but the chat window will look nicer.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Mike_P, on Aug 8 2007, 11:26 AM, said:

The new client looks good and I'm sure will be terrific in no time, given Fred's history of excellence.

However, I still don't get the point. If this is to increase the user base by making the client not system or OS dependent, and not requiring users to maintain/update their resident BBO software, than I'm all for it -- what's good for BBO is good for me.

But I don't mind the appearance or functionality of the current client, I run Win XP, and I am not overwhelmed running the occasional update.

What aspect of this new thing should excite me?

-- Mike

You are correct - a big part of the point is to increase the user base. Making BBO usable for non-Windows people who, for whatever reason, do not have a Windows emulator will certainly help in this regard.

But my opinion is that we rate to have much larger increases in the user base for a different reason: that it will be a lot easier for people to get started.

The main point of the update issue is not to spare our members the burden of having to run the occasional update program. That is important, especially for those BBO members who have slow connections or poor computer skills, but the big advantage of the BBOTV design as far as updates go is that it will be a lot easier and safer for us to release new versions of the software.

One aspect of BBOTV that really excites me is something that I have so far been unwilling to discuss publicly. Probably you will find out what I am referring to within the next month or so.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Out of curiousity, I don't suppose that you had a chance to overhaul the chat system?

I still think that an IRC model chat system that allows users to dynamically create/join/quit/destroy chat channels would make life better in oh some many ways.