BBOTV - feedback

[kenrexford]

When I read that there was a BBOTV, I immediately thought that there was going to be some sort of television program/network. Sort of like FoodTV is a network for food programming.

Let's see:

 

Good Leads

Iron Defender America

30 Minute Deals

Going Down with Bobby Flay

The Barefoot Countsignaller

Everyday Italian Cuebidding

 

And, my favorite:

 

The Essence of Board-a-Match (think about this one for a bit...)

[fred]

Not sure if someone mentioned this before, but I do hope you will have a "text" version of the cards (like the current BBO client), instead of just the pictures of the cards.

Right click on the green table top. A menu will appear that will allow you to switch to hand diagram mode.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[DrTodd13]

I followed the pointer in the other thread and the software downloaded and it gets to the point where I click "log in anonymously" and then it sits there trying to connect.

[Aberlour10]

I like it :)

 

the only thing is...I still use 800x600 resolution and the BBO TV screen is not completely displayed, I can see for ex. the whole chat window only if I "hide" manually all explorer menu bars and adress window.

 

Robert

 

EDIT: Solved, I launched it in a pop-up window now. works fine :)

[Gerardo]

Hand diagram for movies has a separate setting from main window one.

Right click on movie window to set.

[sceptic]

I am intrigured as to how the shuffle works in my hands (what it actually does)

 

the (I assume the old movie button) my hands at the table feature is cracking looks like a lot of people are going to enjoy that, in fact that looks to me like it has so much potential for people that take bridge hands analysis seriously, another winner from BBO

[BillHiggin]

I have less than perfect color vision (I have never passed a color blindness test more sophisticated than red/amber/green traffic light type). The red cards are a real issue for me. They appear brown (and not that distinct from the black cards - but at least the borders are not a problem for me). The regular BBO display uses a red that is easy for me (yes - it does look red - I think, but then I have never really seen what the rest of you see).

[awm]

BBOTV works very smoothly for me under both Linux and MacOS. I'm looking forward to the day when I won't have to emulate a PC to play on BBO.

 

I did see an auction today of 1♦-P-1♥-1♠-1♠, but I suspect this was vugraph operator error and not a problem with the software.

[hrothgar]

Hi Fred:

 

Here's a number of comments in no particular order (Please don't take the frequent kvetching the wrong way. Its often easiest to find things that warrant improvement. By and large I think that this will be a big improvement over the traditional client. As I understand matters, your main goal was to avoid the need to push updates to non-technical users. Here you've succeeded admirably)

 

1. On my home PC, I can't connect using Internet Explorer. (I get to the initial page, but the system stalls at http://www.bbotv.com/v2/client/embed_kiosk.html. It doesn't matter if I select a popup, the same web page, or even the no- stall option. Things are working fine with Firefox.

 

2. The proportions of the cards looks off to me. The cards (and the associated fonts) look thiner than they do on the traditional client. I don't think that the change is for the better. I think that the “hand diagram” option looks much better and would recommend using this as the default.

 

3. Do you have any ability to play games with the browser navigation bars? In general, I am happy with the way I have my browser. However, when I'm running the new application I'd like to minimize many more toolbars than normal in order to maximize screen real estate. It would be nice if the BBO app was able to control this. (I know that many flash apps are able to go into a full screen mode)

 

4. If I Right Click on the cards and use the “Zoom In” option, I can't zoom back out

 

5. I like the fact that I can cut and past from the chat window. Enabling “Control C” to copy is particularly useful, as is the fact that suit symbols translate over to other editors. It would be nice if we could also copy an auction in the same way.

 

6. Once the application takes you to a table (for spectating) it always takes you to the same table.

[keylime]

I tested it on my Mac tonight and it worked very well. Huge grins erupted when the knowledge of being able to play BBO and not having to deal with emulation software hit me - I bought software for the sake of playing BBO and doing one other program that the Mac could not do.

[cnszsun]

perhaps the port in question (3336) is an issue for some PCs. Maybe I'll try moving the port and see if that helps, but i'll wait just a little bit first.

Hi, Fred and Uday,

 

I really hope the firewall problem can be solved in the official version of BBOTV. If i'm correct, it should also be one of the advantages by adopting browser-server structure.

Many people like me are browsing internet through company's proxy server. I'm not expert on internet connection, but maybe only port 80 is allowed?

I can watch the video on YouTube, but not BBOTV. Because both are using Adobe flash, it should not be a big issue to solve it.

[Gerardo]

Actually, it is not so simple. Youtube is unidirectional, BBO is bidirectional.

 

Hard to find a port which would work from behind a corporate firewall. And 80 might not work if firewall requires HTTP on that port.

[uday]

I think the only way I can come up with that will work behind a firewall is to either have the client connect to whatever host/port user wants (to allow him to redirect, as DrTodd does) or to try to use HTTP instead of a socket. We'll probably try both over time.

[Dwingo]

Any way of seeing Player profile my mousing over his name? ( like in the client version )

[fred]

Any way of seeing Player profile my mousing over his name? ( like in the client version )

Not yet.

 

There are a lot of things we have either not implemented or implemented and not enabled. There rate to be several new versions of BBOTV announced during the next couple of months. Some of the functions you will probably see in the next few versions included:

 

- non-anon logins

- ability to chat

- lists of players (friends/yellows/stars)

- ability to play

 

It is less clear when profiles will be made available, but I am guessing that it won't be too long and that some limited form of profiles might make it into the next version.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Oh yeah... agree with Tim (and others) that a name other than BBOTV would be nice.

 

Personally, I see no reason to call it anything other than the BBO Client

[hotShot]

Beside style and beauty aspects, i think there is something else to consider:

 

BBOTV and company security

 

Security and easy usage often don't go well together. It is much easier not to lock doors all the times, but it's not secure.

 

From a security point of view the new BBOTV is an application that downloads its own code over the internet (so the company security cannot check it prior to executing), that has a bidirectional data connection that can send data from inside the company to someone outside and that can execute tasks for someone outside the company.

If this application had any way, to access local system resources, like drives, microphones, webcams or others, it could be used to make all other security measures completely useless.

While I don't think that Fred and Uday would be interested in anything that is stored on my PC, it is quite easy to make the application download its components from a different source. So all someone would have to do is create a modified version, that has a little "extra function".

I don't know what local rights a flash application can have (I know they are limited), but I know that vendors have to fight possible escapes from that limitations from time to time.

[fred]

Beside style and beauty aspects, i think there is something else to consider:

 

BBOTV and company security

 

Security and easy usage often don't go well together. It is much easier not to lock doors all the times, but it's not secure.

 

From a security point of view the new BBOTV is an application that downloads its own code over the internet (so the company security cannot check it prior to executing), that has a bidirectional data connection that can send data from inside the company to someone outside and that can execute tasks for someone outside the company.

If this application had any way, to access local system resources, like drives, microphones, webcams or others, it could be used to make all other security measures completely useless.

While I don't think that Fred and Uday would be interested in anything that is stored on my PC, it is quite easy to make the application download its components from a different source. So all someone would have to do is create a modified version, that has a little "extra function".

I don't know what local rights a flash application can have (I know they are limited), but I know that vendors have to fight possible escapes from that limitations from time to time.

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

 

But of course if we wanted to screw up your system or spy on you, it would be easy for us to do that with the existing Windows client.

 

Hopefully it is needless to say that you have nothing to worry about in terms of our company doing anything like that.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

 

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

[hotShot]

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

This is good news.

[fred]

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

 

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

Files can be stored on our servers.

 

This won't make any difference from the user's point of view except that they will have to be connected to the Internet if they want to access these files.

 

If this becomes a problem there are ways to package Flash applications so that they can be run locally and access local files. I don't know much about this yet and I would just as soon keep it that way, but that might not be possible.

 

The bottom line is that the needs of our users will be the main driving force in the development of BBOTV (or whatever we end up naming it). If significant numbers of users complain that some aspect of the software sucks then we will try to improve it. In some cases technological or security limitations could get in the way, but I am not very concerned about this.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

Flash has essentially zero ability to access the local hard drive. This will cause problems for the developers for various reasons, but hopefully this will give our members some peace of mind.

Hmm

 

If a player creates their own convention card, will they then need to publish it as a web page or some such for the client to access it?

Files can be stored on our servers.

 

This won't make any difference from the user's point of view except that they will have to be connected to the Internet if they want to access these files.

Hi Fred

 

I do expect that this might start creating some issues for you over time. Case in point: At the moment, people can use third party editors to create a FD type file. (In theory, I can go an create an FD file using MS-Word and save this as a text file). Under the new scheme, folks will be locked into using whatever editor you embed inside the BBO flash application.

 

In a similar vein, right now some of the BBO users have created the "Vugraph project". They record as many high profile Vugraphs as possible; then index and post the contents. Using the Flash application, BBO is the only one who can create this type of record. (For this matter, you can't save LIN files any more. The only way to access a hand record is to go through my hands). You might also run into trouble with Tournament Directors who want to use pregenerated hand records for tournaments. Yada, yada, yada....

 

I'm not saying that any of this represents an insurmountable problem. (If nothing else, there is always the option to use cut and paste type operations to move data between the BBO application and third party apps) However, I think that there are a bunch of potentially issues that you're going to need to think about down the pike.

[hotShot]

My popup-blocker does not allow flash applications to open browser windows, but i could relax that for the BBO site.

 

Now i get my lin-file automatic, but I see no problem to download in a different browser window. (But i might forget it sometimes ......)

 

People that create FD-files with an editor of their choice, will be able to visit some upload webpage. I would see no problem there.

 

In fact a lot of services available now, could be on a different webpage.

Just imagine that the club and tourney management could be a different application.

[badderzboy]

Hi all,

 

I love the look and feel of BBOTV.

 

I did notice it gives u an option to allow webcam and sound in the flash options - any long term plans to have windows and voice online !

 

Thinking of the CC issue, how feasible would it be for people to upload a word document/PDF as a CC for that session only - I guess space considerations would make it non-permanent are alternatively allow a certain amount of space per user on the server with ability to manipulate it.

 

A lot of people have electronic versions of their CC available which would at least supply as much info as you would get f2f?

 

Alternatively has something like http://acbld20.org/vilhauer_old.htm an ACBL CC editor on the ACBL site an option - it seems quite intuitive etc.

 

Steve

[andych]

The bigger cards is too big, and the smaller card is too small, for me.

Have a "medium size" card pls. :rolleyes: