[fred]

mink, on Jan 7 2009, 10:41 PM, said:

After I read this I tried it out. The handling is much better than in the old interface. Here is what I observed in detail:

Thanks! I am glad you like it. Thanks also for the high-quality feedback.

Comments/answers follow...

Quote

1. I forgot to check "Barometer". As most tourney hosts have barometer on, I would suggest that this should be the default.

You could easily be right. I will discuss with Uday and change the default if he agrees with you.

Quote

2. When the tourney started, I was not informed about the sitouts. Ok, I found out about them myself very quickly.

I thought a statement pertaining to sitouts was supposed to appear in the status area, but I could easily be wrong. I will look into it.

In all likelyhood there will be another new version released within the next day or two. This release will contain several improvements pertaining to TD functionality most of which were suggested by various TDs.

One of these improvements will make it easier to sub-out sitouts (you will be able to click on "Sitout" in the list of tables).

Quote

3. When kibitzing at a table, I did not have the option to talk to the tourney, unless I used the td controls.

Fixed in the upcoming version.

Quote

4. When accepting a td call it was removed from the list. I would prefer that it is removed from the lists of the other tds only, but remain on my list. More precisely, there should be 3 lists:

• requests not yet answered
  
  
• requests closed
  
  
• requests answered but not yet closed

The last list contains the case I am currently working on, and could contain tables where I still have to make an adjustment or the like, but there are currently more urgent problems to take care of. Only when a request is fully solved, the td should change the status to closed.

You make a good point, but I will want to discuss this with Uday and Jacki before making any changes.

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5. I see no point in sending each request to a specific director, as you described in your initial announcement of the new version. Rather, each new call should appear in the lists of all tds, and the first who clicks on the request owns it from then on.

The basic idea is that including this info will make it easier for groups of TDs to work together. In practice it might not work out that way, but I would prefer to get Jacki's feedback after our ACBL TDs (who tend to work in teams of at least 2) have had a chance to play around with it.

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6. The way the tourney status is shown is nearly exactly the same as in the old client, and there are still not all tables shown that play in a given round. I would prefer that in the list of tables there is an additional column with the boards number that is currently played there. I guess that this information might not only be interesting for tds, but also for normal kibs.

A nice idea, but not likely to happen soon mostly because this would be a lot harder to do than you might think (and because there are many other things we could work on that I think are at least as important).

I will make a note of this in my "things to do one day" folder.

Quote

7. When the tourney was over, the result was not shown to me, and I found no way to retrieve it with the Flash client. Of course it is no problem to use myhands.

Fixed in the upcoming version via a new command, "Results", in the menu-buttons for completed tournaments.

There will also be a new command, "Registration", in the menu-buttons for pending tournaments that will act as a shortcut to the screen where people sign up to play in the tournament in question.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

This new version of Flash wasn't supposed to lose your preference settings when you updated the code, right? It doesn't look like this works, because everything went back to defaults for me today. I assume you released a new version this afternoon.

[fred]

barmar, on Jan 8 2009, 11:32 PM, said:

This new version of Flash wasn't supposed to lose your preference settings when you updated the code, right?  It doesn't look like this works, because everything went back to defaults for me today.  I assume you released a new version this afternoon.

I have been away from my office for most of the afternoon, but I am pretty sure that Uday did not release a new version while I was away.

Assuming you are using the same computer and the same user ID that you normally use and assuming you log in through our home page, I cannot explain why you might have lost your settings (sorry).

I will make a post to this thread when the new version is released. In theory it is ready, but I had thought the plan was to wait for a new version of the server to be ready as well. If all goes smoothly then I suspect that this will happen sometime within the next 24 hours, but it would not surprise me at all if something comes up that delays things until early next week.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

A new version was released this morning. You don't have to do anything - you should pick up the new version automatically if you log in through our home page.

Most of the changes in this version are bug fixes and improvements to the TD control panel. Thanks to all the TDs out there who provided so much helpful feedback. I think you will see that the new version addresses most of the concerns that you expressed.

As usual, please let me know if you find any more problems or if you have any additional requests for improvements. You can either post to this thread or send me an e-mail: fred@bridgebase.com

Fred Gitelman
bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[suokko]

- Good feature to add would be table lit that show list of tables where my friends are playing. In old bbo client I'm using table filter to show only friends and star tables to choose where to kibitz.
In flash bbo it could be possible to combine tables for different clubs also. Inteface could be done so that tables from a club would be grouped under header line telling the name of club where this list of tables is coming from.

- Also huge problem is that special characters like äöå£ and others special characters are converted to wrong values. output is (in same order): ä ö Ã¥ £ and Alt gr outputs: 
I'm using firefox 3.0.5 with Flash 10.0 r15 in linux. My default locale is utf-8 but I changed my locale to iso-8859-1 (latin 1) but that didn't help.

- Also if there is plans to enable possibility to use flash version for vugraph operation it would be nice to enable features that speed up entering info.
Play from keyboard with configureable keys would be nice. I would like to have keyboard entries configured about like: numbers for cards between 2-9, Q=♣, W=♦, E=♥, R=♠, U=J,I=Q,O=K,P=A. Or possible drop everything one row down so I can use F and J buttons to keep my fingers in correct locations. Playing from keyboard helps following fast game because eyes can be kept looking at table instead of switching between screen and table.
Make entering bids and plays asynchronous. I mean that operator can enter multiple event that aren't yet transfered to server and client has send queue for these events and transfers them to server as fast as connection allows. This would help operating when using high latency Internet connection.

[fred]

suokko, on Jan 17 2009, 03:17 PM, said:

- Good feature to add would be table lit that show list of tables where my friends are playing. In old bbo client I'm using table filter to show only friends and star tables to choose where to kibitz.
In flash bbo it could be possible to combine tables for different clubs also. Inteface could be done so that tables from a club would be grouped under header line telling the name of club where this list of tables is coming from.

- Also huge problem is that special characters like äöå£ and others special characters are converted to wrong values. output is (in same order): ä ö Ã¥ £ and Alt gr outputs: 
I'm using firefox 3.0.5 with Flash 10.0 r15 in linux. My default locale is utf-8 but I changed my locale to iso-8859-1 (latin 1) but that didn't help.

- Also if there is plans to enable possibility to use flash version for vugraph operation it would be nice to enable features that speed up entering info.
Play from keyboard with configureable keys would be nice. I would like to have keyboard entries configured about like: numbers for cards between 2-9, Q=♣, W=♦, E=♥, R=♠, U=J,I=Q,O=K,P=A. Or possible drop everything one row down so I can use F and J buttons to keep my fingers in correct locations. Playing from keyboard helps following fast game because eyes can be kept looking at table instead of switching between screen and table.
Make entering bids and plays asynchronous. I mean that operator can enter multiple event that aren't yet transfered to server and client has send queue for these events and transfers them to server as fast as connection allows. This would help operating when using high latency Internet connection.

Thanks for your suggestions, suokko.

All of these changes are already on the radar screen. They will all be done - it is only a matter of when. There is a good chance that at least some will be done in the next major version. The special characters thing could happen at any time since this will be done on the server (so will not require a new client version).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Gerardo]

Flash has an issue with Unicode keyboard input in Linux, see FP-40.

[zman102]

I really like BBO's web-based client. Have been playing there since about the first of the month, and have wandered around and answered most of my questions (at least those I am aware of).

I bought a new computer in December with a 22 inch monitor and it is great to have large cards that I can see well. Also like being able to drag to make the areas bigger or smaller. I have experienced no real problems with the web BBO.

I do have one question. On 1-2-09 I purchased the GIBs for one month for $3.00. I can play with them on the BBO version on my computer, but I can't figure out how to do it on the web-based version.

Thought maybe playing with GIBs had not been activated on the web version (other than in robot races), until I saw someone playing with GIBs in the main bridge room the other night. So I am missing something.

My $3.00 payment shows up on both BBO on the computer and the web-based versions. Any instructions would be appreciated.

Thanks for working to improve my bridge experience on BBO. Like I said I really like the web-based version.

[fred]

zman102, on Jan 19 2009, 11:28 PM, said:

I really like BBO's web-based client.  Have been playing there since about the first of the month, and have wandered around and answered most of my questions (at least those I am aware of).

I bought a new computer in December with a 22 inch monitor and it is great to have large cards that I can see well.  Also like being able to drag to make the areas bigger or smaller.  I have experienced no real problems with the web BBO.

I do have one question.  On 1-2-09 I purchased the GIBs for one month for $3.00.  I can play with them on the BBO version on my computer, but I can't figure out how to do it on the web-based version.

Thought maybe playing with GIBs had not been activated on the web version (other than in robot races), until I saw someone playing with GIBs in the main bridge room the other night.  So I am missing something.

My $3.00 payment shows up on both BBO on the computer and the web-based versions.  Any instructions would be appreciated.

Thanks for working to improve my bridge experience on BBO.  Like I said I really like the web-based version.

Hi Zman,

Nice to read such a positive post! I am glad you like the web-based client so much

Sorry but at this point in time we do not have the ability to offer GIB rentals through the web-based client (actually we do have the ability but we need to figure out how to make it affordable).

Most likely we will figure this out with the next couple of months. When that happens it will be announced in various places. If you send me an e-mail at that time (fred@bridgebase.com) and remind me, I will be happy to give you a few free months of GIB access as an attempt to make up for the current inconvenience.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[zman102]

Hi Fred,I did have something strange go on (with the web-based version) during an ACBL speedball game on Monday evening (January 19th).

I played in two ACBL games and when we started the second one two strange things occurred.  We finished the first hand and the score for this hand was placed on line 3 of my results.  The second hand was scored on line two and the third hand was scored on line one.

We moved to the next table and the 4th hand was scored on line 4 (where it should be).  My opps were thinking about their bids (on hand 5) and I glanced at our score from the first round and I couldn't see the score as I had made my playing window too large.  So I drug the interface to make the my results area larger.  Then when it was my time to bid I didn't have anywhere to bid.  The numbers and the suits that show up in the right hand bottom corner wasn't there.

Of course, it was speedball and everyone paniced (lol).  The director came and told me to log off and come back and I could get back in.  So I did and everything was normal after that.I wish that I had had my wits about me and just made my window larger again as maybe I covered the bidding area when I made the window smaller.  Suspect I may have caused my own problem.

It wasn't a big deal.  Logging off and coming back worked.  My left hand opponent, Chris (I think that was his name) said this had happened to him before too (not the way the score showed, but losing the place to bid).  I didn't mention the funny way the score showed up as, well, this was speedball and no time.

I am still a fan of the web-based version.

[1eyedjack]

I'm sorry, no doubt this is a really stupid question, but how do I get to read the tournament rules posted for a particular tourney, if I am logged on via the web client?

[1eyedjack]

1eyedjack, on Jan 25 2009, 12:05 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no doubt this is a really stupid question, but how do I get to read the tournament rules posted for a particular tourney, if I am logged on via the web client?

OK sort of sussed it I think. Option to access tourney rules and description appears to be denied once tourney starts. Not optimal, I feel.

[fred]

1eyedjack, on Jan 26 2009, 11:16 PM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 25 2009, 12:05 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no doubt this is a really stupid question, but how do I get to read the tournament rules posted for a particular tourney, if I am logged on via the web client?

OK sort of sussed it I think. Option to access tourney rules and description appears to be denied once tourney starts. Not optimal, I feel.

The button is also dimmed out before the tournament starts (and after it is finished as well). Doing something about this is on our list of things to do, but the list is long and there are other items that are closer to the top.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[1eyedjack]

fred, on Jan 27 2009, 12:46 AM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 26 2009, 11:16 PM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 25 2009, 12:05 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no doubt this is a really stupid question, but how do I get to read the tournament rules posted for a particular tourney, if I am logged on via the web client?

OK sort of sussed it I think. Option to access tourney rules and description appears to be denied once tourney starts. Not optimal, I feel.

The button is also dimmed out before the tournament starts (and after it is finished as well). Doing something about this is on our list of things to do, but the list is long and there are other items that are closer to the top.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I agree. I just needed to know it wasn't something I was missing at my end.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on Jan 27 2009, 01:18 AM, said:

fred, on Jan 27 2009, 12:46 AM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 26 2009, 11:16 PM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 25 2009, 12:05 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no doubt this is a really stupid question, but how do I get to read the tournament rules posted for a particular tourney, if I am logged on via the web client?

OK sort of sussed it I think. Option to access tourney rules and description appears to be denied once tourney starts. Not optimal, I feel.

The button is also dimmed out before the tournament starts (and after it is finished as well). Doing something about this is on our list of things to do, but the list is long and there are other items that are closer to the top.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I agree. I just needed to know it wasn't something I was missing at my end.

I must still be missing it. I see the "MORE" button that displays a brief summary of the tournament. But BBO Win lets you view a multi-page document with all the tourney rules, and I couldn't find that in BBO Flash.

Admittedly, most tourneys don't bother to write this document. Maybe I couldn't find it because the tourneys I looked at didn't. But I looked at an ACBL tourney, and I thought they used to have this.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on Jan 27 2009, 06:00 PM, said:

But I looked at an ACBL tourney, and I thought they used to have this.

Are you looking at the tourney after it has commenced, or before?

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on Jan 28 2009, 02:58 AM, said:

barmar, on Jan 27 2009, 06:00 PM, said:

But I looked at an ACBL tourney, and I thought they used to have this.

Are you looking at the tourney after it has commenced, or before?

Before.

I just looked again at an ACBL tourney that starts in 26 minutes, and there's a "Rules" button below the "More" button. I didn't notice it before because it's dimmed out and almost impossible to read.

I can't find any tourney where the button isn't dimmed. I guess no one, not even ACBL, bothers to post rules.

[fred]

barmar, on Jan 29 2009, 05:36 AM, said:

1eyedjack, on Jan 28 2009, 02:58 AM, said:

barmar, on Jan 27 2009, 06:00 PM, said:

But I looked at an ACBL tourney, and I thought they used to have this.

Are you looking at the tourney after it has commenced, or before?

Before.

I just looked again at an ACBL tourney that starts in 26 minutes, and there's a "Rules" button below the "More" button. I didn't notice it before because it's dimmed out and almost impossible to read.

I can't find any tourney where the button isn't dimmed. I guess no one, not even ACBL, bothers to post rules.

Many groups who run tournaments (including ACBL) post rules, but they do so using a file format that is currently supported only by the Windows client.

You don't rate to see the Rules button in the web client enabled until either:

1) We get around to writing a program that can convert from that file format to one that the web client can support.

or

2) Enough people start using the web client that it becomes the platform of choice for tournament organizers to post their rules.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[1eyedjack]

fred, on Jan 29 2009, 07:23 AM, said:

2) Enough people start using the web client that it becomes the platform of choice for tournament organizers to post their rules.

It could be a case of chickens and eggs. Perhaps they are waiting for the functionality before switching to the web client.

Anyway, the web client is coming on great guns, so it won't be long now. No complaints from me.

[fred]

1eyedjack, on Jan 29 2009, 06:43 AM, said:

Anyway, the web client is coming on great guns, so it won't be long now. No complaints from me.

Thanks!

There will be another new version coming out soon (maybe today) that attempts to address one of the major complaints we receive: that the cards are hard to see on small monitors.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com