BBOFlash Comments Thread3

[fred]

Please post comments regarding BBOFlash here!

 

You should access BBOFlash through the yellow link "click here to play or watch bridge" on our home page:

 

www.bridgebase.com

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

Is there any way you could retain preferences across upgrades? Luckily BBO Flash doesn't have too many options, so it only takes a minute to set everything back the way I like it.

[Aberlour10]

It is possible now to log in using IE 6, all works fine, thanks! :)

 

Robert

[Ant590]

Much improved in version 6.

 

One small suggestion: move the vugraph button to the "play and watch bridge" section. Also I tend to choose which (vugraph) room to watch based on the number of kibs, so providing this info on the vugraph table list would be a bonus.

[mghatiya]

Earlier some things used to happen just with mouse hover. e.g. When I hover mouse over somebody's id, I would get to see his profile details. Or if I browse the movie after a game is over, I can browse through what bidding happened on other tables, just by hovering mouse over other tables' results.

 

Now I have to click to get the same results.

 

This restriction is not so nice I think.

[fred]

Is there any way you could retain preferences across upgrades? Luckily BBO Flash doesn't have too many options, so it only takes a minute to set everything back the way I like it.

I expect we will make a serious effort to arrange this (and that it won't be particularly hard) once BBOFlash becomes an official product.

 

But nowadays our priority when we release a new beta is to make sure that everyone gets a completely "fresh installation" (mostly so that we know that whatever bugs are discovered are necessarily consequences of the most recent version and not an artifact of something that no longer exists).

 

Sorry about the inconvenience.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Earlier some things used to happen just with mouse hover. e.g. When I hover mouse over somebody's id, I would get to see his profile details. Or if I browse the movie after a game is over, I can browse through what bidding happened on other tables, just by hovering mouse over other tables' results.

 

Now I have to click to get the same results.

 

This restriction is not so nice I think.

This is one of those no-win situations for us.

 

One of the most common complaints we get from new BBO members is "I hate that things pop up constantly as I move my mouse around the screen". In BBOWin I attempted to address that problem by adding a slight (but configurable) delay before mouseover would take effect. The change, which I think is clearly an improvement even if you like mouseover, seemed to reduce the volume of complaints but the issue has not gone away - there are definitely plenty of people out there who don't like these mouseover effects regardless of whether or not a delay exists.

 

Then there are people like you who like being able to use mouseover instead of click for such purposes. My wife happens to think just like you in this regard. I am somewhere in between - I prefer mouseover for profiles, but prefer click in the movie window's list of results.

 

The seemingly "obvious solution" of adding an option for this is far from perfect because:

 

1) We still have the problem of selecting defaults for this option. Whatever defaults we choose there will be 1000s of people who would have preferred that we use a diffferent default.

 

2) IMO each option we add reduces the utility of the options that already exist. Eventually you end up with a situation like that which exists in BBOWin: so many options that you need strong computer skills and a lot of patience to find the ones that do what you want. The temptation to continue to add options never ends. For example, a recent Forums post suggested an option to "hide other table results in team matches". The person who made this suggestion had a perfectly good reason for wanting this option, but my personal opinion is that very few people would ever use this (mostly because most people wouldn't want to use this option, but even for those who did it there are so many options already that it would be all but impossible for us to put this new option, or any new option, in a place where people would notice it).

 

So our general attitude with BBOFlash is to keep the # of options small (so that people will actually be able to find and use the few options that they really rate to care about). Originally we had not planned on a mouseover/click option (or options). But if enough BBOWin veterans complain I suspect we will do something about this eventually.

 

But please don't pass judgment on this immediately. Some people (including me) seem to get used to clicking after they have used BBOFlash for a while. Even if they prefer mouseover, some come around to find clicking to be OK too.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[keylime]

Fred,

 

Firstly, the login cycle was much smoother and predictable than the stutters I was having before.

 

I like the color change quite a bit for it shows contrast; I hope that our colorblind users are able to have the same ability to quickly differentiate as I did.

 

I don't have the disappearing player name issue I reported in the other thread appear as of yet.

 

I prefer a fresh installation for each new version - especially when there's a browser change involved (FTR -> I did not have much success in Firefox 3 beta 5, but 2.0.0.14 is much smoother and predictable).

 

Me thinks that I may be using this Flash version for a while now instead of dealing with an at times shaky WINE. So far, well done Fred and crew, well done.

[Bridgebum_]

Nice new look. The "table" button is hidden in the options. I like having

a separate button for that, seems simpler and easier to access

[keylime]

Fred,

 

A small request - when selecting the VuGraph table, can the screen be offset in such a way to show that the table has been chosen. The screen currently blocks the table in its entirety so once has to close the screen then verify the table is selected.

[TylerE]

I'm sorry to say I'm not exactly in love with this new version. I can't stand the color scheme of the main interface. Too *bright* by far. Also, having the main background and informational elements (e.g. the player list) be the same color is just bad. I find my eyes hunting around and just generally not liking it.

 

Secondly, no profile on mouseover is very bad. THat alone is enough to make me not use BBO Flash. Far to annoying when e.g. trying to find an open table with a compatible partner.

 

I should add to this, I'm not a fan of flash, or web-browser hosted applications in general. The availability of a native client was one reason I came to BBO in the first place. For a flash client to be of use to me, it would have to provide a real benefit in usability and functionality. As it stands, BBO Flash doesn't provide that. Pretty? Sure But it's not as responsive and the windows client, and again, I have a strong distaste for browser-hosted applications.

 

If it was available as some sort of stand-alone bundle, not hosted in a web browser. I wouldn't like it if when, say, Quicktime decides to crash my Firefox session, I lose my BBO connection as well.

[Ant590]

The star graphic next to people's names at a table seems not to be a vector graphic; it distorts and becomes pixellated as it gets larger.

[barmar]

I had an 8-card ♣ suit today, I could only see 6 of them (I use hand diagram mode). It took me a moment to figure out that my 0236 hand wasn't a typical r.g.b posting.

 

Luckily, when you have that long a suit, it's not too important what the last couple of spot cards are.

[fred]

I'm sorry to say I'm not exactly in love with this new version. I can't stand the color scheme of the main interface. Too *bright* by far. Also, having the main background and informational elements (e.g. the player list) be the same color is just bad. I find my eyes hunting around and just generally not liking it.

Hi Tyler,

 

I am sorry you don't like the new version, but I think the previous version was a lot "brighter" than this one :rolleyes:

 

I am not sure what area(s) you referring to when you talk about informational elements and main background having the same color. If you could either provide some more details or (better) send a screenshot by e-mail to fred@bridgebase.com I would appreciate it. It is definitely possible that either our artists missed something or that I made a mistake in the process of incorporating their designs into the program itself. Once I have a better idea of the specific area(s) you are referring to, it will be easy for me to correct the problem (if our artists agree that it really is a problem).

 

Thanks,

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Fred,

 

A small request - when selecting the VuGraph table, can the screen be offset in such a way to show that the table has been chosen. The screen currently blocks the table in its entirety so once has to close the screen then verify the table is selected.

Hi Dwayne,

 

Can you please confirm that you are referring to the position of the window that appears when you click "BBO Now" then "Vugraph"?

 

If yes I will try to improve things but you should know that the program is designed to remember where you move things. So for now I suggest you move the window to a place you like it. In theory the program should "remember".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[TylerE]

Sorry, at work so I can't screenshot. What I meant is the main background (white) and the "buttons" that populate the player list on the right side" (also white).

[keylime]

Fred,

 

The window it seems is now remembering the 3 inch slide I gave it, so I can see the table change beneath it. It was rather annoying admittedly!

 

In the latest flavor of Safari, it took a while to load, but now it's functional.

 

2nd problem: When logging into the Flash interface, I'm getting an immediate connection lost. This is happening on both my Windows box and my NC8430 box. The strangest thing too because this box, the D630, and the HP one, are IDENTICAL in every way O/S-wise. I went ahead and reinstalled the Flash on both without success.

[slior]

Report after short test of the current flash client (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8).

 

1. Basic interface works except that card animation is slow so I deselected that for now; perhaps this will be resolved later.

 

2. The ability to resize the window is great.

 

3. I'd like to second mghatiya's point: the "mouse hover" features of BBOWin are really nice. Each and every one of them speeds up my interaction with the client. They are certainly not essential -- I wouldn't have thought of them if they weren't there -- but you should keep them if at all possible.

 

4. The "BBO Now" menu is great. One issue: if you attempt to join the table you are currently kibitzing, you get the error message: "Error. could not join table." This happens both through "Interesting tables" and "all tables". Possible alternatives are: a more informative message ("Error. You are already kibitzing this table."), silent success (if the user is asking to join the table he's at, there's nothing to do), or the BBOWin behaviour (leave the table then rejoin it).

 

5. A problem with both BBOFlash & BBOWin: the default chat target for a kibitzer at a table should be the other kibitzers, not the whole table. Inadvertent chat to table is a very very common error. If non-players had to make an explicit click to chat to the table this problem would disappear.

 

--

 

Aside: It's difficult for a flash application in a broswer to compete with stand-alone compiled code: BBOWin + Wine provides a faster, smoother experience. Of course it's not as portable. As a free-loader, all I can say is that I will test the flash client occasionally but would probably stay with the existing client under Wine until the future evolution of the client/server protocols breaks it.

 

Cheers,

Lior

[fred]

Sorry, at work so I can't screenshot. What I meant is the main background (white) and the "buttons" that populate the player list on the right side" (also white).

Thanks for clarifying, but as I am sure you noticed the list of players where these white squares resides has a light gray background. To my eye at least it is not a problem to use white here even though white is used in other (non-touching) areas as a background color. Apparently our designers (who are really good at this stuff) feel the same way.

 

Maybe this is something you will get used to before too long? I know that happened with me. At first I was very unsure about the new color scheme, but after looking at it for an hour or so I began to really like it.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hotShot]

My impression is that areas that I can click on to start an action are colored in some sort of cyan.

 

I can "JOIN" a tourney, and "ADD" my name to the partnership desk.

 

 

But why is the invite area in the partnership list not colored cyan?

 

If the number of participants of a tourney has reached the limit, it would be nice to have this information easier to find.

[keylime]

Fred,

 

Clarification: I have found that the 64 bit O/S and Flash don't like each other nearly as much as the 32 bit flavor. That would explain some things.

[blahonga]

Hello,

 

i really like the new look! I no longer see the explanation of my partner's alerts, so this seems to be fixed.

 

A more minor bug seems to occur when chatting. I was using the flash client, and the recipient was using the old windows client. Everything looked good to me, but when i used å,ä, or ö they looked weird on his side.

 

/Mattias

[xcurt]

First off let me say very good work. This has come a long way since BBOFlash v2. It's important to my enjoyment of BBO, since I don't use Windows.

 

Two small requests:

 

One -- in hand diagram mode, can you show the ten-spot as "T" instead of "10," as the latter looks like two cards at a quick glance? Or, if possible, please make this a configurable option. This isn't a big deal in pictures-of-cards mode as there is a visual cue from the corners of the cards how long each suit it. But as a long-time text client user on another service, I strongly prefer hand diagram mode.

 

Two -- in BBOFlash, the default chat chats to the table when kibitzing. It's just too easy to accidentally chat to the table when kibitzing. If you're looking at all four hands, you should have to do something special and hard to do by mistake to chat to the table, if that should even be possible at all. I fell into this one last night -- fortunately I was commenting on the hand previous and not the hand current.

 

Once again, thank you for a very nice product.

 

Curt

 

edit -- also, a fixed-width font option for hand-diagram mode would be nice

Edited May 4, 2008 by xcurt

[sceptic]

I'm sorry to say I'm not exactly in love with this new version. I can't stand the color scheme of the main interface. Too *bright* by far. Also, having the main background and informational elements (e.g. the player list) be the same color is just bad. I find my eyes hunting around and just generally not liking it.

 

Ditto, it gives me eye strain

[Dwingo]

I'm sorry to say I'm not exactly in love with this new version. I can't stand the color scheme of the main interface. Too *bright* by far. Also, having the main background and informational elements (e.g. the player list) be the same color is just bad. I find my eyes hunting around and just generally not liking it.

 

Ditto, it gives me eye strain

Can't please everyone, when it comes to color choices. Will be good to have 2 or 3 skins to select from.