BBOFLASH Feedback

[fred]

You can find out more about the latest version of BBOFLASH here:

 

Link to BBOFLASH description

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hrothgar]

You can find out more about the latest version of BBOFLASH here:

 

Link to BBOFLASH description

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Punched through my company's firewall like a hot knife through butter...

 

There goes the work week :-(

[awm]

BBOFLASH seems to crash Safari (mac web browser) consistently. This happens even before I get the login prompt, it says "initializing" and then the whole thing goes down. This did not happen on BBOTV or earlier versions of BBOFLASH.

 

It seems to work okay using Internet Explorer on mac.

[Finch]

You can find out more about the latest version of BBOFLASH here:

 

Link to BBOFLASH description

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Punched through my company's firewall like a hot knife through butter...

 

There goes the work week :-(

Luckily still blocked by our firewall.

[sceptic]

I have a comment about the friends hosts profile area, I cant seem to get uniformity unless I have it expanded width ways about 4 inches, it causes no problems other than looks a bit untidy (imo) I mean only when it is set less than about 4 inches

 

over all I like it a lot

 

The cc area seems to be quite good also, I prob need to play with it a lot before I can comment, other than it looks like a good way forward

 

Just used the function to play a game it is excellent Fred + Uday and works just like invites to a team game great stuff (assuming you want to invite 3 other specific people)

 

I would still like to see a way to view the list of pairs or tables that have vacancies for players so I could be a bit more selective (wheteher this wqs skill levels or people that are not on my friends lists but may like playing against

 

 

is it deliberately set only so you can invite friends on your list only?

 

also one question

 

How does the "I don't care function" work and what exactly will it do

 

 

 

I just went to a Vu Graph table and the selection screen stayed up when I went to the table, easy to close (I know) but would prob be better if it automatically closed

[helene_t]

I zoomed in (somewhat useless feature) and then I couldnt find out how to zoom out again so I had to log out and log in again.

 

Also I can't figure out how to get back to the home page with the option of entering tourneys etc after first having gone to a table

[uday]

Safari gave me a lot of probs on wintel OSX leopard. Startup, and randomly. When things calm down i'll try on more boxes and dbl check to see if i have the latest flash player

 

Ubuntu gave me some probs when it came to popping up our little web widget in Firefox but we worked around it with a "real" window (popup blocker needs to allow)

[mink]

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all.

 

Improvements that I consider essential:

• sound
  
• option to switch off card animation
  

Karl

[andych]

Difficult to look at previous hand.

The my results window could not be minimized/refreshed. Prefer my result also included in the other result portion.

The previous hand result is not shown in the scoreboard.

 

 

:) :lol:

[karlson]

On Ubuntu with firefox, I have the same problem I had with the old BBOTV (maybe the new one too, haven't tried recently). I get disconnected every 5 minutes or so.

 

Sorry if this was covered in an old thread.

[helene_t]

I can chat to my partner during tourneys.

[fred]

I zoomed in (somewhat useless feature) and then I couldnt find out how to zoom out again so I had to log out and log in again.

 

Also I can't figure out how to get back to the home page with the option of entering tourneys etc after first having gone to a table

The zoom thing is not a feature I put it - it is part of Flash.

 

Zoom is on the right-click menus by default. It is possible for a programmer (me) to get remove Zoom from right-click menus. Unfortunately it is not possible for a programmer to have complete control over what appears in these menus.

 

I thought I got rid of all the "Zooms", but apparently not. I will make another paass at some point and make sure they are all gone.

 

For now I suggest you not use this "feature" :)

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I have a comment about the friends hosts profile area, I cant seem to get uniformity unless I have it expanded width ways about 4 inches, it causes no problems other than looks a bit untidy (imo) I mean only when it is set less than about 4 inches

 

over all I like it a lot

 

The cc area seems to be quite good also, I prob need to play with it a lot before I can comment, other than it looks like a good way forward

 

Just used the function to play a game it is excellent Fred + Uday and works just like invites to a team game great stuff (assuming you want to invite 3 other specific people)

 

I would still like to see a way to view the list of pairs or tables that have vacancies for players so I could be a bit more selective (wheteher this wqs skill levels or people that are not on my friends lists but may like playing against

 

 

is it deliberately set only so you can invite friends on your list only?

 

also one question

 

How does the "I don't care function" work and what exactly will it do

 

 

 

I just went to a Vu Graph table and the selection screen stayed up when I went to the table, easy to close (I know) but would prob be better if it automatically closed

Thanks for your comments. I am glad you like the program.

 

Can you please explain further what you mean by "uniformity" in your first paragraph? If easier, please send a screenshot to me by e-mail (fred@bridgebase.com). Thanks.

 

I think the "I want to play in a pickup game" will also be useful if you have a partner but not opponents arranged. Probably the time will come in which we other a traditional table-list (like BBOWIN has for the Main Bridge Club), but that may not be for a while.

 

About inviting people to play in Pickup games, you can invite whoever you want. The control used to type in the names of the other players is called a Combobox. It consists of an area at the top where you can type any player's name, but a dropdown menu that, in this case, is filled with a list of your friends who are currently online.

 

I think this is about the best we can do here. It is mildly disconcerting that this was not obvious to a long time BBO user (who has presumably struggled with difficult-to-use software for years!). Maybe I need to rethink this...

 

When you click "I want to play!" from the "I want to play in a pickup game" screen, the server will take you to a table as soon as it finds one that matches whatever criteria you specified. If you specified "I don't care" in some places, all that means is that you rate to be taken to a table more quickly (because more tables will match the criteria you specified).

 

About the vugraph screen staying open, I am not sure what is best. There are pluses and minuses both ways. I am hoping this window will turn into more than a list of table. In particular, I would also like it to serve as a "scoreboard" for all the vugraph tables that are in play. That will add to the value of keeping it on the screen.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Also I can't figure out how to get back to the home page with the option of entering tourneys etc after first having gone to a table

I am assuming you simply did not see the "Leave table" button (at the bottom right of the table itself).

 

If I am the one who is missing something then please clarify!

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Difficult to look at previous hand.

The my results window could not be minimized/refreshed. Prefer my result also included in the other result portion.

The previous hand result is not shown in the scoreboard.

 

 

:) :)

For now the easiest way to do this is close the "my results" window when you are done with it. When you reopen it (say after completing another hand), the most recent hand will appear.

 

In other words, close and then open the window to refresh the list.

 

At soem point we will make this easier...

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all.

 

Improvements that I consider essential:

• sound
  
• option to switch off card animation
  

Karl

Sorry about the German problem. I have no idea how I managed to screw that up, but I will try to figure it out. This may be easier said than done since I do not have a German keyboard. If you can provide some more details I would appreciate it. In particular:

 

1) What keystroke(s) do you use to type the characters that are not appearing properly? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have no idea how a German keyboard is layed out or if more than 1 key is required to type the characters that are causing you problems.

 

2) Does this happen regardless of where in the program you are trying to type?

 

3) What if anything do you see instead of the characters you are trying to type?

 

Your essential improvements will happen.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Ant590]

I was wondering if the inclusion of partnership bidding is possible in the near future of BBOFLASH? I probably use this room as often as I play, if not more and it'd be great to not have to borrow a PC when I need to. It is often this feature that I promote when I try to convince current players to try BBO for the first time.

[fred]

I was wondering if the inclusion of partnership bidding is possible in the near future of BBOFLASH? I probably use this room as often as I play, if not more and it'd be great to not have to borrow a PC when I need to.

Certainly possible and there will certainly be access to Partnership Bidding in BBOFLASH one day, but it won't happen in the near future.

 

Our primary mission is to finish the playing/kibitizing/socializing aspects of the software (beause these are the things that almost all of our members want to do when they log in). We are close to being at that point now. Next we will spend some time on improving the layout and behavior of the screens and on general site navigation.

 

After that I expect we will start to add functions available on BBOWIN that are important (to us at least), but used by only a small % of our members. Partnership Bidding is a perfect example of something that falls into this category.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[helene_t]

When a tourney finishes, I leave the tourney. In BBOWIN I stayed in the tourney area so it was easy to go kibbing.

 

OTOH it's cool that the results pop up as soon as the tourney is finished, and the "my results" and "my tourneys" pages are nice.

 

Over-all a very good job. ♥ to Fred and Uday.

[mink]

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all.

Sorry about the German problem. I have no idea how I managed to screw that up, but I will try to figure it out. This may be easier said than done since I do not have a German keyboard. If you can provide some more details I would appreciate it. In particular:

 

1) What keystroke(s) do you use to type the characters that are not appearing properly? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have no idea how a German keyboard is layed out or if more than 1 key is required to type the characters that are causing you problems.

 

2) Does this happen regardless of where in the program you are trying to type?

 

3) What if anything do you see instead of the characters you are trying to type?

Windows XP allows you to have several keyboard layouts, and to switch from one layout to another. This can be done in the "Options for Regions and Languages" (or whatever this is labeled in the English version of Windows XP). This way, applications need not deal with the keyboard layout, but can trust that pressing a key produces the symbol that is on the key provided the correct keyboard layout is active. This works very well with all applications including the old BBOTV, and I never imagined that there might be a problem in this area, and I have no idea how a programmer mess this up.

 

I am typing this using Firefox, and the BBOFLASH is running under Firefox in another window. Here in the forum, the keyboard works as expected, and there in BBOFLASH it does not work. I tried it both with the cc feature and the chat and the login on 2 different computers.

 

Numbers and letters are nearly the same on English and German keyboards, only y and z are exchanged. But this works with BBOFLASH. The layout of the upper row of keys is

 

with shift: °!"§$%&/()=?`

without shift: ^1234567890ß´

 

What I get in BBOFLASH is

 

with shift: Ü!@#$%^&*()ßÝ

without shift: Ü1234567890ßÝ

 

The key next to the left shift key should produce <>| without/with shift/with Alt Gr but in BBOFLASH produces < only.

 

The keys between m and the right shift key should produce

 

with shift ;:_

without shift ,.-

 

but in BBOFLASH produce

 

with shift <>_

without shift ,.-

 

The umlaut keys produce the right umlaut characters üöä, but only in lowercase, the shift key has no effect there. The same is true for the 2 special character keys between the umlaut keys and the return key: They produce +# without shift as they should, but with shift they produce the same, and therefore * and ' are not available.

 

For me all this sounds like some Flash code you use has decided no to read the characters from the keyboard the normal way, converted by Windows according to the keyboard layout, but rather instructs Windows to deliver raw keyboard codes and do the translation to characters itself.

 

Karl

[fred]

While there was no keyboard problem with the old BBOTV, this new BBOFLASH does not support my German keyboard very well. Though the umlauts and some special characters are at the right place, a lot of them are not where they should be or not available at all.

Sorry about the German problem. I have no idea how I managed to screw that up, but I will try to figure it out. This may be easier said than done since I do not have a German keyboard. If you can provide some more details I would appreciate it. In particular:

 

1) What keystroke(s) do you use to type the characters that are not appearing properly? Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but I have no idea how a German keyboard is layed out or if more than 1 key is required to type the characters that are causing you problems.

 

2) Does this happen regardless of where in the program you are trying to type?

 

3) What if anything do you see instead of the characters you are trying to type?

Windows XP allows you to have several keyboard layouts, and to switch from one layout to another. This can be done in the "Options for Regions and Languages" (or whatever this is labeled in the English version of Windows XP). This way, applications need not deal with the keyboard layout, but can trust that pressing a key produces the symbol that is on the key provided the correct keyboard layout is active. This works very well with all applications including the old BBOTV, and I never imagined that there might be a problem in this area, and I have no idea how a programmer mess this up.

 

I am typing this using Firefox, and the BBOFLASH is running under Firefox in another window. Here in the forum, the keyboard works as expected, and there in BBOFLASH it does not work. I tried it both with the cc feature and the chat and the login on 2 different computers.

 

Numbers and letters are nearly the same on English and German keyboards, only y and z are exchanged. But this works with BBOFLASH. The layout of the upper row of keys is

 

with shift: °!"§$%&/()=?`

without shift: ^1234567890ß´

 

What I get in BBOFLASH is

 

with shift: Ü!@#$%^&*()ßÝ

without shift: Ü1234567890ßÝ

 

The key next to the left shift key should produce <>| without/with shift/with Alt Gr but in BBOFLASH produces < only.

 

The keys between m and the right shift key should produce

 

with shift ;:_

without shift ,.-

 

but in BBOFLASH produce

 

with shift <>_

without shift ,.-

 

The umlaut keys produce the right umlaut characters üöä, but only in lowercase, the shift key has no effect there. The same is true for the 2 special character keys between the umlaut keys and the return key: They produce +# without shift as they should, but with shift they produce the same, and therefore * and ' are not available.

 

For me all this sounds like some Flash code you use has decided no to read the characters from the keyboard the normal way, converted by Windows according to the keyboard layout, but rather instructs Windows to deliver raw keyboard codes and do the translation to characters itself.

 

Karl

Thanks for the excellent description.

 

I was able to make my PC think that it has a German keyboard and I could replicate the problem you describe, but only under Firefox. Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

 

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[sceptic]

think this is about the best we can do here. It is mildly disconcerting that this was not obvious to a long time BBO user (who has presumably struggled with difficult-to-use software for years!). Maybe I need to rethink this...

 

Fred I am not sure if this helps, but I think my moment of dumbness (I should have worked it out) is caused by the fact I am so used to having the ability to see the names of everyone on a big list, it is just a case of thinking old bbo NOT THINKING NEW BBO (if that makes sense)

[sceptic]

I actually really miss not being able to scroll through the tables that are part filled, this may take some getting used to when trying to find a game

 

also I can't see how to join a club, I assume this may change a lot also and I may just have to wait and see how you present that to us in the next version ?

[mink]

Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

 

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

I have only IE6 on my computers. There, I installed Flash successfully and tried all 3 links to start BBOFLASH, but all I got was the "Loading" message, which disappeared after a short period of time, leaving a blue IE window.

 

Karl

[fred]

Everything seems to work just fine with IE.

 

If you have IE can you please confirm this?

I have only IE6 on my computers. There, I installed Flash successfully and tried all 3 links to start BBOFLASH, but all I got was the "Loading" message, which disappeared after a short period of time, leaving a blue IE window.

 

Karl

Thanks for trying. The symptoms you describe normally mean an old version of Flash, but since you just downloaded it that seems unlikely.

 

In any case we understand this problem now so don't worry about trying to get it to work on IE as far as we are concerned. It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this. At some point we will release a workaround, but this is not likely to happen in the next couple of days as I had originally predicted (sorry).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com