BBOFLASH Feedback

[fred]

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 ?

Right now there is no notion at all of a "list of tables" in BBOFLASH. For the same reason Helene is unable to easily join a table in a tourney she just played in to kibitz the last few tables finish play.

 

This is a complex subject (mostly in terms of user interface design - the software support for lists of tables is not that complicated). One consideration to keep in mind is that there is no point in showing the "average BBO member" a constantly moving list of 1000+ tables in the Main Bridge Club.

 

The constantly moving list of 10K+ people in the lobby is similar. For our average member this is nothing more than scary noise.

 

A lot of BBO members (though probably few Forums regulars) dread having to deal with lists of tables. If we could make BBOFLASH do everything these people want without having to ever show them a list of tables, they would be very happy.

 

Such considerations are influencing the direction of our design and the scheduling of our development. There already is a BBO for "power users" (BBOWIN), but BBOWIN can cause some awful experiences if you are not comfortable with computers.

 

One of the defining goals of BBOFLASH will be to provide a more welcoming BBO for these people. Eventually BBOFLASH will have just about everything the power user could ever want, but our first order of business is to take care of those bridge players who are not comfortable with BBOWIN (or who cannot use it at all).

 

Note: I am not suggesting that "table lists" are a "power user only" function.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

By the way, you can join an arbitrary table as a kibitzer (and later click a seat to sit) with BBOFLASH as long as you know the name of one of the players at the table.

 

You can use the "Find" button to display that person's profile (or click on his name if it appears in the Friends/Stars/Hosts lists or in the chat area). If he is at a table that you can legally join (eg you can't join a Money Bridge Table in this way) you can click the yellow "Join" button at the bottom of the profile area to join that table.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Dwingo]

I got invited for Team Match, and that was my first TM on BBOFLASH.

 

I couldn't not see the Team Names and the Barometer scoring. I had to check with my pd who had set up the TM to provide me the running scores via the Table chat.

I missed my BBOWIN here. My results pag gave the results of the other room, but did not compute the IMP's automatically.

 

Last deal of TM, I couldn't review the deal/result of last board. The My results page probably disappears after the TM is over. I am not sure of this.

 

Otherwise the TM went on all. Well love the graphics in FLASH

[mink]

It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this.

Fred, did you remember that I wrote that the old BBOTV worked alright with the German keyboard under Firefox, and still does - I just tried it. So this cannot be simply a Firefox bug: Only the combination of Firefox, new BBOFLASH version and German keyboard creates the problem.

 

About the IE6 problem, I tried to run BBOTV and BBOFLASH under IE6 on another computer, and got the same result: an all blue IE window. When I right click on that blue space, I can retrieve the Flash version no., which is 9.0.47.0 (the newest). So unless this problem is connected with my security configuration, it seems that Adobe does not fully support IE6, but I doubt you find this information in their web pages. At least, I was not warned about that when I installed Flash under IE6. Up to now I successfully managed to prevent Microsoft from installing IE7 on my computers, because I do not like the look and feel and because I am afraid it might use too many resources on my relatively old computers.

 

Karl

[fred]

It is actually a bug in Firefox that is causing this.

Fred, did you remember that I wrote that the old BBOTV worked alright with the German keyboard under Firefox, and still does - I just tried it. So this cannot be simply a Firefox bug: Only the combination of Firefox, new BBOFLASH version and German keyboard creates the problem.

Yes I did remember. You are right that something has changed in BBOFLASH and that this caused a bug that has always existing in Firefox to manifest itself.

 

But unfortunately the thing that changed is an important new part of the program that we can't just get rid of or easily rewrite it so that the Firebox bug does not come into play. I have no doubt we can and will fix this, but it is not going to happen immediately.

 

It is not only Germand keyboards that are effected by this bug. If you want to knw more about this bug for some reason, do a web search for: Firefox wmode bug

 

We are NOT looking for help in terms of finding a fix for this bug right now so please don't spend a lot of time reading the results of this web search in the hope of trying to suggest a solution. The only reason I suggested a web search was so that those people who might be skeptical that the bug is in Firefox (versus BBOFLASH or Flash itself) can see for themselves.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I got invited for Team Match, and that was my first TM on BBOFLASH.

 

I couldn't not see the Team Names and the Barometer scoring. I had to check with my pd who had set up the TM to provide me the running scores via the Table chat.

I missed my BBOWIN here. My results pag gave the results of the other room, but did not compute the IMP's automatically.

 

Last deal of TM, I couldn't review the deal/result of last board. The My results page probably disappears after the TM is over. I am not sure of this.

 

Otherwise the TM went on all. Well love the graphics in FLASH

Sorry about barometer scoring not being implemented yet. We were under some pressure to get a release out a week or so before Uday and I have to go to San Francisco for the ACBL Nationals. A few things (like barometer scoring) that ideally would have been part of this release were left out as a result.

 

At this point in time it seems likely that a myhands-like facility will end up being part of BBOFLASH itself (current plan is to use one of the currently disabled tabs in My Results for this purpose but that could easily change).

 

The "My tournaments" tab of the "My results" window is a nice feature that you might want to try if you have not done so already. I am pretty sure that the results of team matches (and not just tournaments) are presented there.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I am somewhat concerned about the trouble Karl has had getting BBOFLASH to work on a PC running IE 6 and Flash 9. I would like to be able to blame this on Karl or his PC(s), but he has a long history of being one of our most reliable volunteer testers :)

 

I don't have easy access to a PC with IE 6 and I really do not want to "downgrade" one of my PCs that runs IE 7. If anyone out that has IE 6 and is willing to give BBOFLASH a try and report the results I would appreciate it.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[sceptic]

a constantly moving list of 1000+ tables in the Main Bridge Club.

 

I always had it filtered to only show tables with places vacant if this makes any difference

[ng:)]

I am somewhat concerned about the trouble Karl has had getting BBOFLASH to work on a PC running IE 6 and Flash 9. I would like to be able to blame this on Karl or his PC(s), but he has a long history of being one of our most reliable volunteer testers :)

 

I don't have easy access to a PC with IE 6 and I really do not want to "downgrade" one of my PCs that runs IE 7. If anyone out that has IE 6 and is willing to give BBOFLASH a try and report the results I would appreciate it.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

I have the same problem, Fred (Flash 9, IE6). After the Loading message, I can see only a blank blue IE window.

 

Gabor

[inquiry]

I still have IE 6.0 on one of my laptops and bboflash loads just fine on it. However, the operating system is windows 2000 not XP nor Vista.

[mgoetze]

Hi Fred,

 

unfortunately, Opera/Mac still isn't working. I can't focus keyboard input on any of the text boxes, e.g. if I open a new tab, write http://www.bbotv.com/v2/client_v6/embed_kiosk.html into the URL bar, then click into the "User ID" field so that there's a blinking cursor at the end of my User ID (funnily enough it knows that my User ID is "mgoetze" since I entered it in Firefox), hitting Backspace will now activate the Browser's "back" function taking me back to the speed dial. Similarily typing anything else won't actually cause text to show up anywhere...

 

Firefox/Mac is still working nicely, though (haven't tested the new version with Opera/Linux yet).

 

BTW, back when I was still accessing BBO through BBOWIN, I bought Larry Cohen's Life Master Pairs lessons... are there any plans to make this content available via BBOFLASH? Just wondering, I don't necessarily want this to be done before such important features as barometer scoring or actually organising a team match are implemented. :D

[helene_t]

The German keyboard works fine with Firefox under Ubuntu. So the obvious workaround is to shift to Ubuntu :D

[HeavyDluxe]

IE6, WinXP Pro (SP2) here and BBOFLASH works fine.

[DrTodd13]

So I can't scan a list of all tables and pick the one I want to join? I find the "I want to play a pickup game feature" pretty useless, at least for the way I use BBO.

[downagain]

Hi Fred

 

After one of the previous versions was releases, I reported it wasn't possible to log in with a username containing a whitespace.

This still doesn't seem to be fixed. When I try to log in, the program shows some error messages. Maybe you looked over it last time, so I'll report it again.

[fred]

Hi Fred

 

After one of the previous versions was releases, I reported it wasn't possible to log in with a username containing a whitespace.

This still doesn't seem to be fixed. When I try to log in, the program shows some error messages. Maybe you looked over it last time, so I'll report it again.

Thanks. I must have missed your last post on this subject.

 

I will fix this (soon I hope).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

BTW, back when I was still accessing BBO through BBOWIN, I bought Larry Cohen's Life Master Pairs lessons... are there any plans to make this content available via BBOFLASH? Just wondering, I don't necessarily want this to be done before such important features as barometer scoring or actually organising a team match are implemented. :(

Yes there are plans to support this, but they are long term plans.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Thanks to everyone who tried running BBOFLASH under IE6.

 

I was able to dig out an old PC and try it myself. The only problem I had was getting Flash to install properly in the first place. Once I did BBOFLASH worked just fine.

 

So I doubt if IE6 is the culprit here.

 

For those of you who get the empty blue screen, have you been able to get BBOTV to work? If you have not tried that program you can access it through:

 

link to BBOTV

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[ng:)]

Thanks to everyone who tried running BBOFLASH under IE6.

 

I was able to dig out an old PC and try it myself. The only problem I had was getting Flash to install properly in the first place. Once I did BBOFLASH worked just fine.

 

So I doubt if IE6 is the culprit here.

 

For those of you who get the empty blue screen, have you been able to get BBOTV to work? If you have not tried that program you can access it through:

 

link to BBOTV

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

I have tried BBOTV many times (it was the previous version, I think) and everything was OK. But now something is wrong, because I get: Loading. Please wait..., and a blank blue screen :(

 

Gabor

[kgr]

I get the blue screen after logging in with Netscape 7.2

[fred]

There is a new version of BBOFLASH available now. Whether or not you automatically get the new version is at least partly a function of your browser settings. You can ensure you get the new version by clearing your browser's cache before you go to the BBOFLASH launch page.

 

The main purpose of this new version was to fix some of the bugs that have been reported during the past few days, but I also added an option to turn off card animation which somebody requested.

 

In particular the + sign in convention card problem is fixed and user IDs that contain spaces should work fine now.

 

While I remember, if BillHiggin is reading this can you please let me know if the new red color is better for you? It is likely that many of the colors will change before too long, but in the mean time I am hoping that the new red makes life easier for people who are colorblind.

 

I still don't know why some people are getting stuck with the blue screen after "Loading...". Maybe clearing your cache before you try the latest will help.

 

Something strange is going on because we have not changed the BBOTV program in at least a month and apparently during that time it has somehow stopped working on Gabor's PC.

 

I am trying to figure out what is going on, but this is difficult since I cannot replicate the problem on any of my PCs. I am sure I will work it out eventually. In the mean time, sorry to everyone who has experienced this problem - as far as I can tell this is happening on only a small % of PCs.

 

I have to go to San Francisco for 2 weeks starting tomorrow and I am unlikely to have time to do much in the way of real work while I am away. I will try to read this thread and fix any bugs that are reported, but don't expect any dramatic new versions in the near future.

 

Thanks again to everyone for their help with testing and the (mostly) enthusiastic response that BBOFLASH has generated.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[BillHiggin]

While I remember, if BillHiggin is reading this can you please let me know if the new red color is better for you? It is likely that many of the colors will change before too long, but in the mean time I am hoping that the new red makes life easier for people who are colorblind.

 

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

It is better. Of course the tables i kibitzed to check this out tried their darndest to not bid any red suits :P

 

Good luck in San Fran!

[fred]

While I remember, if BillHiggin is reading this can you please let me know if the new red color is better for you? It is likely that many of the colors will change before too long, but in the mean time I am hoping that the new red makes life easier for people who are colorblind.

 

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

It is better. Of course the tables i kibitzed to check this out tried their darndest to not bid any red suits :D

 

Good luck in San Fran!

Thanks Bill :)

 

For those of you who do not see the application once "loading..." is complete, I am sorry to tell you that I still have no idea what is going on and it is unlikely I willl be able to spend much time on this during the next 2 weeks.

 

Of course this is a problem we are going to have to fix and we will try to do so as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[keylime]

Ran it under both Windows XP Pro, Ubuntu 7.10, and Leopard - not one issue. For what it's worth, Leopard is a fresh installation and not an archive and install.

 

The colors appear more vibrant to me and that is a plus. The latency is minimal, and the interface is rich but not overwhelming.

 

Overall, a positive and large step forward to full functionality I feel.

[fred]

Ran it under both Windows XP Pro, Ubuntu 7.10, and Leopard - not one issue. For what it's worth, Leopard is a fresh installation and not an archive and install.

 

The colors appear more vibrant to me and that is a plus. The latency is minimal, and the interface is rich but not overwhelming.

 

Overall, a positive and large step forward to full functionality I feel.

Thanks Mr. Lime - I am glad you like it. I like it too :D

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com