Jump to content

Clickable links


Recommended Posts

Well, I know there is little push to make improvements to the existing software right now, but I wanted to get this suggestion in anyway since I don't recall having seen it before and I did a quick search and was unable to find it.

 

A lot of people have personal web pages, either advertising services, detailing systems, or simply expressing themselves. People sometimes put their web addresses into their profiles, but currently they must be manually retyped into a browser. It would be really nice if there were a way to put a "clickable" link into a profile.

 

Thanks,

 

Julie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a good suggestion and, in principle, it should not be too hard for us to implement it. However, consider the way that profiles work on BBO and you will understand why we have not done this already.

 

As you know, profiles appear when you move your mouse over a player's name and they disappear when you move your mouse off of the name of that player. You may not know this, but it is possible to set up BBO to create a delay in terms of how long your mouse has to be over a player's name before the profile appears (see "Tooltip delays" in the "General" tab of the Options dialog box).

 

So unless we were to rework the basic user interface properties of profiles, it would be impossible for us to make some aspects of profiles clickable - by the time you move your mouse to the clickable area, the profile would be gone.

 

There is no really good answer to this problem. Activating profiles on mouse over (versus on mouse click) has several advantages:

 

- it is easier for the user to see a profile (no need to click)

- the user doesn't have to do anything to dismiss a profile (it just goes away when the user moves his mouse)

- the click is "freed up" for another useful function (initiating a chat message in this case)

- double clicks are bad (because some people, especially elderly people, have trouble double clicking accurately) and are unnecessary the way we do things now

- to me the way we do things now is intuitive: you point at something to see what it is and you click on it to do something to it

 

But there are also disadvantages to the method we use (the inability to implement things like what is suggested in this thread for example). Also, there was a time in which we received a lot of complaints that the BBO interface was "too busy" because things popped up as a result of casual and unintentional mouse movement. The (relatively new) "tooltip delays" were meant to address this problem.

 

This is an area that Uday and I have thought about a lot, but so far we have no answer that we really like. Maybe we are missing something...

 

If any of you have any suggestions on how we might go about improving the interface in this area, I would like to hear them.

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or even more simply, add a "lock Playerx's profile" to the player's right click menu, which would keep the profile up until the player's name is right clicked again and "unlock Playerx's profile" toggles it down. I know it would add an extra step for people to learn, but the type of people who want to follow links should be able to figure it out pretty quickly.

 

I do like that the profiles come up so quickly, however I think being able to lock a profile in place would have benefits beyond the clickable links, as there have been times I have "lost" a player profile I was looking at.

 

Thanks,

 

Julie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I have had another thought about this, and yes, I do understand that there is little interest right now in adding to the existing software, and probably even less in adding to the area I am suggesting about, but it seems a fairly simple solution to implement.

 

I know that Fred has put a ton of effort into Full Disclosure, but it seems to me that FD is more a tool used by very advanced players and partnerships, and the bulk of BBO users continue to use the "old convention card" if they use a cc at all. The old convention card opens up and is pinned. Since a very good use of clickable links would be to direct people to more information about a player's system or style, etc, why not allow a clickable link to be placed in the "other" section of that old convention card?

 

Julie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...