[fred]

mink, on Nov 16 2007, 07:13 PM, said:

fred, on Nov 16 2007, 02:36 PM, said:

mink, on Nov 15 2007, 11:55 PM, said:

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all.

Sorry about the German problem. I have no idea how I managed to screw that up, but I will try to figure it out. This may be easier said than done since I do not have a German keyboard. If you can provide some more details I would appreciate it. In particular:

1) What keystroke(s) do you use to type the characters that are not appearing properly? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have no idea how a German keyboard is layed out or if more than 1 key is required to type the characters that are causing you problems.

2) Does this happen regardless of where in the program you are trying to type?

3) What if anything do you see instead of the characters you are trying to type?

Windows XP allows you to have several keyboard layouts, and to switch from one layout to another. This can be done in the "Options for Regions and Languages" (or whatever this is labeled in the English version of Windows XP). This way, applications need not deal with the keyboard layout, but can trust that pressing a key produces the symbol that is on the key provided the correct keyboard layout is active. This works very well with all applications including the old BBOTV, and I never imagined that there might be a problem in this area, and I have no idea how a programmer mess this up.

I am typing this using Firefox, and the BBOFLASH is running under Firefox in another window. Here in the forum, the keyboard works as expected, and there in BBOFLASH it does not work. I tried it both with the cc feature and the chat and the login on 2 different computers.

Numbers and letters are nearly the same on English and German keyboards, only y and z are exchanged. But this works with BBOFLASH. The layout of the upper row of keys is

with shift: °!"§$%&/()=?`
without shift: ^1234567890ß´

What I get in BBOFLASH is

with shift: Ü!@#$%^&*()ßÝ
without shift: Ü1234567890ßÝ

The key next to the left shift key should produce <>| without/with shift/with Alt Gr but in BBOFLASH produces < only.

The keys between m and the right shift key should produce

with shift ;:_
without shift ,.-

but in BBOFLASH produce

with shift <>_
without shift ,.-

The umlaut keys produce the right umlaut characters üöä, but only in lowercase, the shift key has no effect there. The same is true for the 2 special character keys between the umlaut keys and the return key: They produce +# without shift as they should, but with shift they produce the same, and therefore * and ' are not available.

For me all this sounds like some Flash code you use has decided no to read the characters from the keyboard the normal way, converted by Windows according to the keyboard layout, but rather instructs Windows to deliver raw keyboard codes and do the translation to characters itself.

Karl

Thanks for the excellent description.

I was able to make my PC think that it has a German keyboard and I could replicate the problem you describe, but only under Firefox. Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[sceptic]

Quote

think this is about the best we can do here. It is mildly disconcerting that this was not obvious to a long time BBO user (who has presumably struggled with difficult-to-use software for years!). Maybe I need to rethink this...

Fred I am not sure if this helps, but I think my moment of dumbness (I should have worked it out) is caused by the fact I am so used to having the ability to see the names of everyone on a big list, it is just a case of thinking old bbo NOT THINKING NEW BBO (if that makes sense)

[sceptic]

I actually really miss not being able to scroll through the tables that are part filled, this may take some getting used to when trying to find a game

also I can't see how to join a club, I assume this may change a lot also and I may just have to wait and see how you present that to us in the next version ?

[mink]

fred, on Nov 16 2007, 09:29 PM, said:

Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

I have only IE6 on my computers. There, I installed Flash successfully and tried all 3 links to start BBOFLASH, but all I got was the "Loading" message, which disappeared after a short period of time, leaving a blue IE window.

Karl

[fred]

mink, on Nov 16 2007, 11:43 PM, said:

fred, on Nov 16 2007, 09:29 PM, said:

Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

I have only IE6 on my computers. There, I installed Flash successfully and tried all 3 links to start BBOFLASH, but all I got was the "Loading" message, which disappeared after a short period of time, leaving a blue IE window.

Karl

Thanks for trying. The symptoms you describe normally mean an old version of Flash, but since you just downloaded it that seems unlikely.

In any case we understand this problem now so don't worry about trying to get it to work on IE as far as we are concerned. It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this. At some point we will release a workaround, but this is not likely to happen in the next couple of days as I had originally predicted (sorry).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

sceptic, on Nov 16 2007, 10:01 PM, said:

I actually really miss not being able to scroll through the tables that are part filled, this may take some getting used to when trying to find a game

also I can't see how to join a club, I assume this may change a lot also and I may just have to wait and see how you present that to us in the next version ?

Right now there is no notion at all of a "list of tables" in BBOFLASH. For the same reason Helene is unable to easily join a table in a tourney she just played in to kibitz the last few tables finish play.

This is a complex subject (mostly in terms of user interface design - the software support for lists of tables is not that complicated). One consideration to keep in mind is that there is no point in showing the "average BBO member" a constantly moving list of 1000+ tables in the Main Bridge Club.

The constantly moving list of 10K+ people in the lobby is similar. For our average member this is nothing more than scary noise.

A lot of BBO members (though probably few Forums regulars) dread having to deal with lists of tables. If we could make BBOFLASH do everything these people want without having to ever show them a list of tables, they would be very happy.

Such considerations are influencing the direction of our design and the scheduling of our development. There already is a BBO for "power users" (BBOWIN), but BBOWIN can cause some awful experiences if you are not comfortable with computers.

One of the defining goals of BBOFLASH will be to provide a more welcoming BBO for these people. Eventually BBOFLASH will have just about everything the power user could ever want, but our first order of business is to take care of those bridge players who are not comfortable with BBOWIN (or who cannot use it at all).

Note: I am not suggesting that "table lists" are a "power user only" function.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

By the way, you can join an arbitrary table as a kibitzer (and later click a seat to sit) with BBOFLASH as long as you know the name of one of the players at the table.

You can use the "Find" button to display that person's profile (or click on his name if it appears in the Friends/Stars/Hosts lists or in the chat area). If he is at a table that you can legally join (eg you can't join a Money Bridge Table in this way) you can click the yellow "Join" button at the bottom of the profile area to join that table.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Dwingo]

I got invited for Team Match, and that was my first TM on BBOFLASH.

I couldn't not see the Team Names and the Barometer scoring. I had to check with my pd who had set up the TM to provide me the running scores via the Table chat.
I missed my BBOWIN here. My results pag gave the results of the other room, but did not compute the IMP's automatically.

Last deal of TM, I couldn't review the deal/result of last board. The My results page probably disappears after the TM is over. I am not sure of this.

Otherwise the TM went on all. Well love the graphics in FLASH

[mink]

fred, on Nov 17 2007, 12:47 AM, said:

It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this.

Fred, did you remember that I wrote that the old BBOTV worked alright with the German keyboard under Firefox, and still does - I just tried it. So this cannot be simply a Firefox bug: Only the combination of Firefox, new BBOFLASH version and German keyboard creates the problem.

About the IE6 problem, I tried to run BBOTV and BBOFLASH under IE6 on another computer, and got the same result: an all blue IE window. When I right click on that blue space, I can retrieve the Flash version no., which is 9.0.47.0 (the newest). So unless this problem is connected with my security configuration, it seems that Adobe does not fully support IE6, but I doubt you find this information in their web pages. At least, I was not warned about that when I installed Flash under IE6. Up to now I successfully managed to prevent Microsoft from installing IE7 on my computers, because I do not like the look and feel and because I am afraid it might use too many resources on my relatively old computers.

Karl

[fred]

mink, on Nov 17 2007, 12:37 PM, said:

fred, on Nov 17 2007, 12:47 AM, said:

It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this.

Fred, did you remember that I wrote that the old BBOTV worked alright with the German keyboard under Firefox, and still does - I just tried it. So this cannot be simply a Firefox bug: Only the combination of Firefox, new BBOFLASH version and German keyboard creates the problem.

Yes I did remember. You are right that something has changed in BBOFLASH and that this caused a bug that has always existing in Firefox to manifest itself.

But unfortunately the thing that changed is an important new part of the program that we can't just get rid of or easily rewrite it so that the Firebox bug does not come into play. I have no doubt we can and will fix this, but it is not going to happen immediately.

It is not only Germand keyboards that are effected by this bug. If you want to knw more about this bug for some reason, do a web search for: Firefox wmode bug

We are NOT looking for help in terms of finding a fix for this bug right now so please don't spend a lot of time reading the results of this web search in the hope of trying to suggest a solution. The only reason I suggested a web search was so that those people who might be skeptical that the bug is in Firefox (versus BBOFLASH or Flash itself) can see for themselves.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Dwingo, on Nov 17 2007, 05:28 AM, said:

I got invited for Team Match, and that was my first TM on BBOFLASH.

I couldn't not see the Team Names and the Barometer scoring. I had to check with my pd who had set up the TM to provide me the running scores via the Table chat.
I missed my BBOWIN here. My results pag gave the results of the other room, but did not compute the IMP's automatically.

Last deal of TM, I couldn't review the deal/result of last board. The My results page probably disappears after the TM is over. I am not sure of this.

Otherwise the TM went on all. Well love the graphics in FLASH

Sorry about barometer scoring not being implemented yet. We were under some pressure to get a release out a week or so before Uday and I have to go to San Francisco for the ACBL Nationals. A few things (like barometer scoring) that ideally would have been part of this release were left out as a result.

At this point in time it seems likely that a myhands-like facility will end up being part of BBOFLASH itself (current plan is to use one of the currently disabled tabs in My Results for this purpose but that could easily change).

The "My tournaments" tab of the "My results" window is a nice feature that you might want to try if you have not done so already. I am pretty sure that the results of team matches (and not just tournaments) are presented there.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I am somewhat concerned about the trouble Karl has had getting BBOFLASH to work on a PC running IE 6 and Flash 9. I would like to be able to blame this on Karl or his PC(s), but he has a long history of being one of our most reliable volunteer testers

I don't have easy access to a PC with IE 6 and I really do not want to "downgrade" one of my PCs that runs IE 7. If anyone out that has IE 6 and is willing to give BBOFLASH a try and report the results I would appreciate it.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[sceptic]

Quote

a constantly moving list of 1000+ tables in the Main Bridge Club.

I always had it filtered to only show tables with places vacant if this makes any difference

[ng:)]

fred, on Nov 17 2007, 08:13 AM, said:

I am somewhat concerned about the trouble Karl has had getting BBOFLASH to work on a PC running IE 6 and Flash 9. I would like to be able to blame this on Karl or his PC(s), but he has a long history of being one of our most reliable volunteer testers

I don't have easy access to a PC with IE 6 and I really do not want to "downgrade" one of my PCs that runs IE 7. If anyone out that has IE 6 and is willing to give BBOFLASH a try and report the results I would appreciate it.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I have the same problem, Fred (Flash 9, IE6). After the Loading message, I can see only a blank blue IE window.

Gabor

[inquiry]

I still have IE 6.0 on one of my laptops and bboflash loads just fine on it. However, the operating system is windows 2000 not XP nor Vista.

[mgoetze]

Hi Fred,

unfortunately, Opera/Mac still isn't working. I can't focus keyboard input on any of the text boxes, e.g. if I open a new tab, write http://www.bbotv.com...mbed_kiosk.html into the URL bar, then click into the "User ID" field so that there's a blinking cursor at the end of my User ID (funnily enough it knows that my User ID is "mgoetze" since I entered it in Firefox), hitting Backspace will now activate the Browser's "back" function taking me back to the speed dial. Similarily typing anything else won't actually cause text to show up anywhere...

Firefox/Mac is still working nicely, though (haven't tested the new version with Opera/Linux yet).

BTW, back when I was still accessing BBO through BBOWIN, I bought Larry Cohen's Life Master Pairs lessons... are there any plans to make this content available via BBOFLASH? Just wondering, I don't necessarily want this to be done before such important features as barometer scoring or actually organising a team match are implemented.

[helene_t]

The German keyboard works fine with Firefox under Ubuntu. So the obvious workaround is to shift to Ubuntu

[HeavyDluxe]

IE6, WinXP Pro (SP2) here and BBOFLASH works fine.

[DrTodd13]

So I can't scan a list of all tables and pick the one I want to join? I find the "I want to play a pickup game feature" pretty useless, at least for the way I use BBO.

[downagain]

Hi Fred

After one of the previous versions was releases, I reported it wasn't possible to log in with a username containing a whitespace.
This still doesn't seem to be fixed. When I try to log in, the program shows some error messages. Maybe you looked over it last time, so I'll report it again.