[fred]

In order to access BBO through our web-based client, go to our home page:

http://www.bridgebase.com

and click on the yellow link near the top of the page.

You can log in with the same user ID and password that you normally use when you log in using our Windows client program.

The latest version of the web-based BBO client is mostly about TD-support.

Other changes not related to TD-support include:

- New option for "Autoplay singletons" (click "Options" button, then "More options", then "Advanced options")
- New "Compose mail" facility (click "My BBO" button, then "Mailbox")
- Table counts now appear in the "Show all tables" list
- Faster loading time (though the first time you try the new version loading time will be slow)
- Several other performances improvements, bug fixes, etc...

Sorry in advance if your preferred options are not remembered the first time you try the new version. This won't happen again...

If you are not a TD on BBO there is not much point in you reading the rest of what follows. If you want to become a TD, please e-mail td@bridgebase.com.

If you are already a TD then please give our TD-enabled web client a try and let us know what you think! We hope you will like what we have done, but since this is the first TD-enabled version of our web client, of course we expect there to be room for improvement. So please let us know if you have any comments, suggestions, or bug reports to offer either by posting to Forums or by e-mailing fred@bridgebase.com.

Here is a link to a new Forums thread where you can post your comments about the web-based BBO client:

Link to BBO web-client comments thread

If you are authorized to create tournaments on BBO, you will see a "Director" button near the very top right of the screen (next to "My Results"). Even if you are not authorized to create tournaments, you will also see this button appear if you are a co-TD of any pending or running tournaments.

If you click this button a "TD Control Panel" will be displayed on the right side of the screen. Depending on factors like your screen resolution, you may want to make this area larger (click and drag the slider just to the left of this area). You can also make the TD Control Panel appear in a popup window by clicking the "Popup" button at its bottom. Once the TD Control Panel has been displayed in a popup window, you can move it back to the right side of the screen by clicking the "Director" button again.

If you click the "Create Tournament" button at the bottom of the TD Control Panel, a dialog box will appear in which you can specify the properties of the tournament you want to create. The options available through this dialog box will be familiar to anyone who has TD experience with our Windows client. Note that there is a new (and hopefully easier) mechanism in place to maintain include and exclude lists. After you have successfully created a tournament, the same dialog box will remain on your screen that you can use to edit the properties of the tournament you have created.

Once you have created a tournament, it will appear in the list at the top of the "Pending tournaments" tab of the TD Control Panel. The button to the right of any tournament's entry in this list can be used to issue various commands pertaining to that tournament. Try clicking the arrow at the right of this button in order to bring addition commands into view via a menu. Selecting a menu item will cause the command in question to be issued and for the function of the button to change (so that, if you subsequently click the button, the same command will be issued again). These "menu-buttons" are used in various places in the TD Control Panel so make sure you understand how they work!

When one of your tournaments starts, it will appear in a list at the top of the "Running tournaments" tab of the TD Control Panel. A menu-button will appear (at the right of entries in this list) that can be used to issue various commands that will be familiar to experienced BBO TDs (things like substitutions, adjustments, show boards for player, show table list, chat->tourney, etc). Note that some of these functions can also be invoked by:

- right-click on player's name ("substitute this player" and "show this player's results")
- left-click on a red name (indicating player is not online) in either in the list of tables or at a table ("substitute this player")
- clicking the "Adjust score" button that will appear below the deal diagram in the "My results" tab at the right of your screen ("adjust score for this board")

Each line in the list of running tournaments will also contain a "Status" area in which information about the state of the tournament (missing players for example) will be displayed.

A list of pending TD calls for all tournaments you are TDing will appear in the "Running tournaments" tab below the list of tournaments. Some of the items in this list will be informational in nature. You can click the "Delete" button at the right of such messages to remove them from the list, but if you leave them alone they will eventually disappear on their own.

For those TD calls in this list that require a response, all of the TDs for the tournament in question will receive a notification that will appear in their respective lists of TD calls. Each TD call is intended for one particular TD (whose user ID will appear in the appropriate line in the list of TD calls), but any TD can choose to accept a TD call that belongs to any other TD. This is done by clicking the "Accept" button at the right of each TD call in the list. This button is actually a menu-button that contains one other command: "Delete". This will remove the TD call in question from the lists of all of the TDs of the tournament in question.

We recommend that groups of TDs who work together make agreements as to if and when they will accept each other's TD calls and under which circumstances it is appropriate to delete TD calls. The software is intended to make it easier for a group of TDs to work as a team, but it will help if the members of each team discuss how best to utilize the software in order to work together to best serve the players.

If a TD has pending TD calls and if the "Running tournaments" tab of the TD Control Panel is not being displayed, a small window will appear that will remind the TD that there is work to be done. You can move this window to a convenient place on your screen - the software will remember where you like it. Clicking the button is this window will cause the window to disappear and cause the "Running tournaments" tab (where pending TD calls are listed) to be displayed.

When a tournament you are TDing is complete, it will continue to appear in the list of tournaments in the "Running tournaments" tab for another 20 minutes or so. During this time you can still use the menu-button of this tournament to issue commands for things like adjusting scores, chatting to the tournament...).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com