[david_c]

I can see some bugs:

1. If you switch from hand diagram mode to pictures of cards in the middle of the play, the next card played is not displayed. (You hear it being played but don't see it.) It finally appears when the card after that is played, but the order of the cards as seen in the middle is then messed up. [I saw this when kibitzing team matches; not sure whether it happens elsewhere.]

2. For obvious reasons, if you log in anonymously and look at the list of tables, you can't kibitz a table where permission is required to kibitz. However there seems to be a bug which also disables other tables, seemingly at random, if you scroll up and down the list a bit.

[david_c]

Anyway, this looks great. I think a new user will find this much more appealing (when it's finished) than the old client.

But without wanting to sound negative, its easy to find some things to comment on which I don't like so much:

1. As mentioned in a post above, it's really important for the list of tables to refresh automatically while you're looking at it. People will find it very annoying if they can't join a table because the information is out of date. Note that people who have played on other bridge sites will expect to be able to view and join tables this way. I think it would be very unwise for BBO to be behind its competitors in this area: after all, this is the first thing people are likely to do when they join BBO. From what I understand of how it works, this could be implemented in a scaleable way by having the server only give the information to the people who are actually looking at the list. But if it had to involve splitting up the main bridge club into more than one room, then so be it.

2. I really don't like having to click on a name to see the profile. The old way of being able to hover over it was much better. For instance, the first thing I normally do when I log on is look through my friends list to see what they are up to. This is really clumsy if it involves clicking on each one.

Having said that, what happens when you do click on a name is excellent. My strong preference is for a hover to display profile and a click to pin. (Which also avoids having that "pin" button that people are going to find unfamiliar.)

3. If I click on a user it tells me if they are playing or kibitzing, but it doesn't tell me which table they are at. But I will nearly always want to know who else is at the table before deciding whether to join them. I can't see any way to do this in the new version. So the old version is much better here.

4. It takes a lot of clicks to get from the main menu into the main bridge club. In fact, with this and the "refresh" issue, it seems that everything is set up to persuade people not to go to the tables this way! But for people new to BBO coming from other sites (and older versions of BBO) this is exactly what they expect to do. Personally I think BBO's two main clubs should be visible in the main page, certainly not tucked away in a fourth-level menu.

[fred]

Thanks matmat and and DavidC for your posts. Lots of food for thought here.

Some comments:

- You identified a few true bugs. These will be fixed in the next version.

- matmat made what I thought were some good suggestions regarding things like color and layout, but this aspect of the software is currently "frozen" for the purposes of the "facelift" that our artists are working on. So it is unlikely you will see any small changes in terms of layout/aesthetics. More likely that some (not-too-distant) future beta will contain substantial changes in this area.

Quote

it would be good to retain the feature where you can right-click a friend's name and be given an option to go to their table (this was not available while i was in the vugraph theater, had to go back out -- also doesn't seem to work from the initial screen?)

"Join table" will appear on the right-click menu provided that the software "thinks" that the user in question is at a table. Unlike BBOWin, BBOFlash does not "know" where any given user is at any given point in time. I suspect that if we always included "join table" on the right-click menu that we would get a lot of complaints when these requests failed (because the person in question was not at a table).

Will think about this some more...

Quote

since you're pretty much writing this from scratch -- any chance of time-stamping messages?

I assume you mean that you would like to see this information appear for every chat message you receive?

If yes, I could see how this feature would be useful, but I can also see how many users would much prefer to rarely if ever see this information.

In the world of BBOWin, this state of affairs would call for the creation of a new user option. Our current philosophy with BBOFlash is different. We are trying to keep the number of options available small, at least for the time being. Later we might add "advanced" button(s) that allow our "power users" to have more control over the interface.

What we are trying to avoid is creating a situation like the one that exists in BBOWin where the number of options is sufficiently large that our "average members" have trouble finding the few options they actually care about.

Quote

are deals and chat still logged?

Deals are still logged. In fact, there is a nice facility built into the client itself for reviewing hands that you have played. Click "my bbo" (in the row of buttons near the top) and then "hands and results" to access. This facility will become more powerful than it is now. It is actually the case that we have intentionally disabled some features in this area for the purposes of the beta release.

Chat is not logged and we currently have no plans to do this (sorry). This is mostly because Flash does not allow files to be stored on the user's hard disk and we do not want to get involved in storing people's private chat logs on our servers.

Some good news is that the chat area in BBOFlash works like a standard text-rendering control (which is not the case in BBOWin). You can select text by clicking and drag and then right-click to copy (or use right-click to select all). You can then go into your favorite text editor program and "paste".

Quote

"other" flag shows up blank? is that right?

Yes. The United Nations flag caused us enough problems (to say nothing of the problems the UN causes for the entire world) that we decided to toss it in favor of the blank flag.

Quote

should i be able to find an invisible member using the search box in the top right?

No.

There is a bug on the server that results in "invisible" not working when you log in with BBOFlash (ie if you select invisible you will really be visible). I think that "find" actually does block you from located invisible people and the problem you are experiencing is a result of invisible itself not working.

Quote

It takes a lot of clicks to get from the main menu into the main bridge club. In fact, with this and the "refresh" issue, it seems that everything is set up to persuade people not to go to the tables this way! But for people new to BBO coming from other sites (and older versions of BBO) this is exactly what they expect to do. Personally I think BBO's two main clubs should be visible in the main page, certainly not tucked away in a fourth-level menu.

I agree that the entry point to the Main Bridge Club should be moved up in the menu heirarchy. I can understand your perception that we are trying to keep people away from these areas, but that is not our motivation. It is actually the case that Uday and I had been under the impression that the need to "refresh" table lists was perfectly workable. Still not sure that this is not the case - needs more thought and discussion.

The menus themselves are controlled by files that are external to the program itself. That gives us a great deal of flexibility. We could, for example, "clone" the entire navigational structure of BBOWin without having to make any programming changes to BBOFlash. I am hoping we can do better. For sure there is still plenty of room for improvement in what we have now.

The competing interests of "power BBOWin users", "average BBOWin users", and "new users" make this (and many other parts of this project) much more difficult than you might think. Perhaps the time will come in which we show different classes of uses different menus. Perhaps we will eventually include a facility whereby power users can define their own menus, create shortcuts, etc.

Making everyone happy, especially for the first official release, is going to be more or less impossible. The primary goal of BBOFlash is to make our site more welcoming for new members. I am confident we will succeed in that regard.

Another important goal of this project is to address the "scaling" problems that we are facing. BBOWin's demands for (mostly unimportant) information put a massive strain on our servers. In order to sustain our rate of growth in the long term, it is likely that we will need a significant % of our members to use a less-hungry client (like BBOFlash).

A (much) longer term goal is to get to BBOFlash to the point that even most of our power users as well as those (many) average members who care a lot about familiarity will want to move to the new client.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[david_c]

fred, on Apr 6 2008, 03:42 PM, said:

I can understand your perception that we are trying to keep people away from these areas, but that is not our motivation. It is actually the case that Uday and I had been under the impression that the need to "refresh" table lists was perfectly workable. Still not sure that this is not the case - needs more thought and discussion.

I must admit it doesn't affect me very much since I almost always play with friends. But I would guess the majority of BBO users find games in the main bridge club by browsing through the list of tables and clicking on an empty seat at a table which looks suitable. If the list isn't continually updated this becomes almost impossible since the turnover of empty seats is so fast.

I would agree that requiring a refresh is OK for most purposes. But just when trying to find a seat to play at, I don't see how you can do without a continually-updating list.

[hrothgar]

uday, on Apr 6 2008, 12:49 AM, said:

Quote

all I seem to get when I try to sit

There is always a race for empty seats, in a sense. The more activity there is, the harder is is to get the seat before someone else grabs it.

Hunting for seats via browse-table just isnt (imo) a good way to find a seat.

Anyone have any better ideas? An "interesting tables" list for sitting ? Something like that?

Hi Uday

Here's my take on matters: I don't think that there is any "One size fits all" type of solution. BBO has a very diverse user base. Different classes of users are going to be looking for very different types of functionality. I don't think tht you can make everyone happy with a single comprehensive table matching structure. Instead, I would recommend trying to identity different classes of users and and create more specialized systems for each type of user.

1. A few years back I suggested creating a permanent floating Indy tournament running 24x7 with no limit on the number of people playing. Every 2-3 boards the event will automatically redistribute the players. Players can drop in for a few rounds, drop out for a few rounds, do whatever they bloody well please. In my mind, this event shouldn't be viewed as an actual tournament. Rather, this is a tool that allows people to play a few hands of bridge without the need to find a table. In an ideal world, the permanent Indy would siphon off a large number of players and address some of the scaling problems that you're encountering.

2. In a similar vein, I also suggested creating a bottom-up type service by which players could match themselves into pairs, pairs could find other pairs to compete against. In theory, the same type of system could be used to match team matches.

3. I think that the existing system is pretty good if your goal is to track down friends that you already know and arrange a game with them.

[matmat]

fred, on Apr 6 2008, 09:42 AM, said:

"Join table" will appear on the right-click menu provided that the software "thinks" that the user in question is at a table. Unlike BBOWin, BBOFlash does not "know" where any given user is at any given point in time. I suspect that if we always included "join table" on the right-click menu that we would get a lot of complaints when these requests failed (because the person in question was not at a table).

Right, but does the software check this just as you log in? (which is the time when this might be most relevant -- i couldn't get it to do that).

Quote

Deals are still logged. In fact, there is a nice facility built into the client itself for reviewing hands that you have played. Click "my bbo" (in the row of buttons near the top) and then "hands and results" to access. This facility will become more powerful than it is now. It is actually the case that we have intentionally disabled some features in this area for the purposes of the beta release.

I like knowing that the deals that I played are stored locally, but as you say, flash doesn't allow local hard drive access. (fwiw, I like having them on my drive in case I decide to run some stat engine on them or some such).

Quote

Chat is not logged and we currently have no plans to do this (sorry). This is mostly because Flash does not allow files to be stored on the user's hard disk and we do not want to get involved in storing people's private chat logs on our servers

I very much agree with the latter sentiment, I have found the chat log useful. Wonder if there are any flash-recorders out there...

re timestamps.

I don't know how difficult it would be to add another clickable feature (i.e. bug) to enable or disable timestamps

Quote

Yes. The United Nations flag caused us enough problems (to say nothing of the problems the UN causes for the entire world) that we decided to toss it in favor of the blank flag.

now my opps will think i'm giving up or something

maybe make the card the ace of spades, or allow a person to choose a card from the deck (including a joker!) instead of a flag? I assume this is not too difficult considering the artwork is already in place. Heck, even the back of a card would be better than a white flag

Quote

Making everyone happy, especially for the first official release, is going to be more or less impossible. The primary goal of BBOFlash is to make our site more welcoming for new members. I am confident we will succeed in that regard.

I can appreciate that and I think the flash version is well on the way to having the familiarity and functionality of the windows client.

Of the things that i mentioned in my previous post, i think the one i would most like to see happen is the keyboard chat-target selection, with a little more flexibility for the private-chat-target. Since you're already scanning the keyboard to allow for text entry, this (to my flash-ignorant mind) doesn't seem like it would be much additional work.

[cherdano]

uday, on Apr 5 2008, 03:49 PM, said:

Quote

all I seem to get when I try to sit

There is always a race for empty seats, in a sense. The more activity there is, the harder is is to get the seat before someone else grabs it.

Hunting for seats via browse-table just isnt (imo) a good way to find a seat.

Anyone have any better ideas? An "interesting tables" list for sitting ? Something like that?

While I understand your point, the current solution puts the BBOFLASH users at a competitive disadvantage to the BBOWIN users, which won't help you convince to switch as many users as possible as early as possible after the new release.

I guess the common solution to this problem is to try to divide the players into different rooms/interest groups/... E.g. on go servers this issue is hardly a problem because the players sort themselves by playing strength.

[matmat]

cherdano, on Apr 6 2008, 02:06 PM, said:

uday, on Apr 5 2008, 03:49 PM, said:

Quote

all I seem to get when I try to sit

There is always a race for empty seats, in a sense. The more activity there is, the harder is is to get the seat before someone else grabs it.

Hunting for seats via browse-table just isnt (imo) a good way to find a seat.

Anyone have any better ideas? An "interesting tables" list for sitting ? Something like that?

While I understand your point, the current solution puts the BBOFLASH users at a competitive disadvantage to the BBOWIN users, which won't help you convince to switch as many users as possible as early as possible after the new release.

I guess the common solution to this problem is to try to divide the players into different rooms/interest groups/... E.g. on go servers this issue is hardly a problem because the players sort themselves by playing strength.

I think i may have mentioned this above, but it may have gotten lost in the fluff. Most people will click the first available free space they see... so just start the list off at a different first letter, dependent on the first letter of the user doing the looking...

[matmat]

hehe

i forgot

the flash version font doesn't allow for the TM (trademark) symbol, which is doing a number on my profile name...

[fred]

For those of you who use the Main Bridge Club list in BBOWin to try to find a table when you do not already have a game arranged, I would be interested in knowing:

1) What is your attitude toward tables with "permission required to play"? Do you prefer these tables? Prefer to stay away from these tables? Don't care? Does it matter if you "know" the host or not?

2) Do you tend to look at some or all of the profiles of the players at a table before deciding whether or not to sit?

3) Do you sometimes join the table as a kibitzer and then try to sit or do you always just click on an empty seat in the table list?

4) Suppose you click on a seat in the Main Bridge Club list. About what % of the time do you see the message "Seat taken"?

5) What is your best guess as to the average time between the list appearing and you ending up in a seat? I am not wondering how long it would take if you were trying to find *any* seat as quickly as possible. Instead I am wondering how much time you typically spend on this.

6) Do you filter the list so that "full tables" are hidden?

7) Do you frequently experience seeing a seat you want "fill up" before you have a chance to click on it?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Aberlour10]

1) Don't care

2) Definitly YES

3) 60-70%... try to join as kibbitzer first

4) It happens mostly at the tables without "permission required to play"...in this case I would say about 30%

5) In my case, it depends on the daytime (CET) late afternoons I need longer...2-3 minutes, at the evening mostly under 1 minute..

6) YES always

7) I dont know what you exactly mean..may be it....I experienced that tables without "permission required to play" disappear very often before I have the chance to click on it

Robert

[paulg]

An observation that when the system is busy and running slow (like ~2000 GMT yesterday), I find that BBOwin takes an age to log in whereas BBOFLASH 'appears' to just hang.

Paul

[blahonga]

I could see the explanation of my partners alert yesterday when playing. This seems like a bug.

/Mattias

[Tcyk]

helene_t, on Mar 31 2008, 10:39 PM, said:

The underscore (my favorite character ) is now vissible in the log in screen.

It is currently not stable, I tried to open it in another window but there it wasnt stable either. I lose connection all the time. Could be my connection or my browser. Ubuntu Gutsy, Firefox.

I have not figured lout how to use BBO with Linux. If I knew how, I might give up0 windows completely.

[fred]

cardsharp, on Apr 7 2008, 11:44 AM, said:

An observation that when the system is busy and running slow (like ~2000 GMT yesterday), I find that BBOwin takes an age to log in whereas BBOFLASH 'appears' to just hang.

Paul

As long as "connecting to BBO please wait" (or whatever) is on the screen, the program is alive. When the server is under stress BBOFlash could easily stay in this state for a couple of minutes.

As you probably noticed, we have had some pretty serious performance problems during the past few days during peak times. Uday is working on it...

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

blahonga, on Apr 7 2008, 12:39 PM, said:

I could see the explanation of my partners alert yesterday when playing. This seems like a bug.

/Mattias

Yes this is a bug. I have fixed it, but not sure when the next version will be deployed. Probably it will be at least a few days from now.

Until I get a new version out you will continue to see this happen (sorry).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

Tcyk, on Apr 7 2008, 08:54 AM, said:

helene_t, on Mar 31 2008, 10:39 PM, said:

The underscore (my favorite character ) is now vissible in the log in screen.

It is currently not stable, I tried to open it in another window but there it wasnt stable either. I lose connection all the time. Could be my connection or my browser. Ubuntu Gutsy, Firefox.

I have not figured lout how to use BBO with Linux. If I knew how, I might give up0 windows completely.

Have you read the thread BBO for Linux? It explains how to run BBO under WINE on Linux or CrossOver on Mac OS X.

[Bridgebum_]

I don't know if this relates to the "alert" bug already mentioned, but a number
of times I've seen alerts for no reason, the last one being on a first round pass
explained as a transfer. I did explain a transfer bid a few boards before, but it
certainly wasn't a pass.

[paulg]

Further to my comments about connection time, I've discovered that the issue seems to be wireless verses wired.

At times of light load, like 0800-1300 GMT, I have no problem connecting with BBOflash in my normal wireless environment. Now, at 1500 GMT, I will wait 20 minutes with no discernible change in the 'connecting screen'. However, if I use BBOwin or BBOflash over a wired connection, then I can connect instantly.

Naturally this is probably due to a wireless issue at my end, but I wonder if Flash is less tolerant of network errors and dropped packets?

Paul

[tony stack]

Hi all, I am td and have tested a few of the features on new version. I have found that you can: get director calls, chat to tourney, accept director calls, and get messages about missing players. You cannot however: chat to any tourney table, set up a tourney, perform substitutions/board adjustments.

When signing up for a tourney, if you log off, and log back in, it says you are registered to play in tourney with your partner, has "register to play" button displayed (cant do anything with that tourney anymore), from partners point of view, you are not registered and tourneys starts without them. Tourney registration cannot be achieved if person on old version asks and a person from new version and accepts (can be done vice versa). I use Windows XP operating system and am looking forward to seeing web version of bbo .