BBOFlash Comments Thread3

[svs108]

I tried out the flash version. It is of course great for all the alternate OS people (I am also experimenting with Ubuntu) and seems the way to go. Also in one window, almost all the information has been arranged. Maybe a few colour corrections are required, but nothing major on that front, will just take a little getting used to.

 

My vote is for the mouse over.

 

I have just tried it out for not a very long time, but if anybody can clear up a few issues for me and my humble views on the new version:

 

1. It is slow. And I do have a decent PC. It is just slow as compared to the older version.

 

2. The clarity is also somewhat lacking, maybe it is the anti-aliasing in flash. I do not know how to explain it. Clear type is disabled on my LCD (I find it a bit blurry) and everything is very sharp. In the flash version, it looks like Nokia PC Suite - the text is all blurry.

 

3. I suggest rather than the tabbed version of the results, a horizontal split (like the old version) gives more information at a glance. One has to again click back and forth. Again I cannot get the leads for the other tables. Is there an option to show this?

 

4. Where is the option to enable keyboard entry? It really is much better for the old carpal tunnel syndrome.

 

5. Can you please improve on the 'host' icon? It really looks a bit wishy washy.

 

6. The options seem really limited. But then you have already felt that this is better.

 

7. Where is the option to fix South? The results and player placements then keep changing and becomes confusing.

 

I am not a very advanced player, so cannot comment on the tourneys and other stuff, but hope my feedback helps.

Sorry but none of the options you mention are currently available.

 

Your comment about blurry text is the first I have heard of this. You are correct that the font I use in most places is anti-aliased, but this is supposed to help make the text easier to read. For whatever its worth both me and the artists/designers I worked with like the way the text looks. Also, Flash is supposed to be good at stuff like this.

 

Likely it is just a matter of perception, but regardless there is almost certainly nothing I can do about it (sorry).

 

Flash does eat up a lot of memory and this could cause BBOFlash to run slowly (especially if your PC doesn't have a lot of memory to begin with or if you tend to run several memory-intensive applications at once).

 

If convenient it might be smart to not experiment with Ubuntu and BBOFlash at the same thing!

 

Sorry but none of the options you are looking for are currently available.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

No, my experiments with Ubuntu are separate from BBOFlash. I just mentioned that since otherwise for BBO one would have to use Wine. So BBO now becomes independent of the OS (if the OS/browser supports flash), which is good.

 

Yes, I guess I just have to get used to these types of fonts. I have a PC with 1GB of RAM and text on my Dell 19" LCD (with digital connection) is actually sharper/clearer without clear type enabled, which is in effect what Flash does. On one or two other PCs with good LCDs, I find clear type is better.

 

And without lobby chat, how does one broadcast for opps/partners?

 

Is BBOWin going to co-exist with BBOFlash? I do hope so, then in that case as long as I use Windows (or dual boot) I would still prefer the mouse over/keyboard entry and other stuff and use the BBOWin app.

[Mr. Dodgy]

Thanks for noticing and reporting this.

 

Your report actually reveal several bugs (even mroe thanks!) that we hope to have fixed within the next few days.

it's $10/bug, right? I'm RICH!

 

j/k :)

[fred]

And without lobby chat, how does one broadcast for opps/partners?

If you create a table and don't reserve the empty seats for anyone, you are in effect advertising that you want partners and opponents. If you set "permission to play" to "off" the empty seats rate to fill up almost immediately. If you set "permission to play" to "on", it will take longer for various reasons.

 

As I tried to explain in a previous post in this thread, Lobby Chat is not an effective mechanism for filling in empty seats. I am not suggesting that just creating a table and waiting is a great mechanism either - eventually we will come up with something better.

 

Besides being ineffective for the purposes you describe, Lobby Chat creates additional problems for our system, our staff, and our members.

 

Is BBOWin going to co-exist with BBOFlash? I do hope so, then in that case as long as I use Windows (or dual boot) I would still prefer the mouse over/keyboard entry and other stuff and use the BBOWin app.

 

Yes BBOWin will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. That being said, the rate at which we introduce next features and improvements to BBOWin rates to continue to be low (or zero) for the foreseeable future.

 

I cannot say with any certainty that "BBOFlash is the future", but I am fairly confident that "BBOWin is not the future".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Hi ,

 

I don`t know if this is mentioned (i didnt read all 9 pages) is it possible to BBOFlash remembers my choices?(such as chat font, sound etc)

added part= i meant bbotv not bboflash.

This happens automatically, but when we release a new version you will sometimes lose your settings. Sorry about this. I expect we will find a way around it at some point, but our priority right now is to make sure that people pick up the most recent version (not as easy as it may sound).

 

Some settings (including the ones you list) are remembered as soon as you change them, but some (like the sizes and positions of various screen elements) are only remembered when you click the Logoff button. If you close your browser window without logging off these settings will not be remembered.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Edit: I have found the source of this bug and fixed it so don't worry about answering the questions or trying to replicate this. The fix rates to be installed within the next day or 2.

 

A small bug...

 

At some point while playing I alerted and explained my second call in an auction.

 

Later in the same bboflash session I played at another table.  Various call would randomly show up as alerted with the explanation I had typed in at the previous table.  Nobody else at the table noticed anything amiss so I think this is just something wrong in the rendering code.

 

I didn't take screenshots or count when this happens, so it may be difficult to reproduce, but there definitely is an issue in there somewhere.

This is a bug I have not heard about in several months. I had been under the impression that it was fixed a long time ago.

 

If you see it again, please send a screenshot (fred@bridgebase.com)!

 

Questions:

 

1) Did the inappropriate explanations only appear for bids that you made?

2) Do you remember if you sat in the same seat at both tables?

3) Are you sure you are using a recent version of BBOFlash? One way to know is that, in recent versions, the Back, Home and Logoff buttons are all yellow buttons that reside just to the left of a BBO logo.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[barmar]

I just noticed that I'm not using the latest beta. I was using the v12 link, which I thought I copied from the June 11 announcement, but I see that the current version is v15. I'll see if I still have a problem joining tourneys with the new link.

[barmar]

After upgrading to v15 things worked better in Safari.

[jillybean]

My apologies but this is more on lobby chat, I cant find the previous discussion.

 

As default I don’t have lobby chat turned on, I think it is awful but without it how will we find other players/pairs for a team game or find subs for teams and tournaments?

[Dwingo]

There is no way to Create Team Matches, without Chat to Lobby, unless you have the names of 8 people willing to play.

 

I understand the reason for not having Lobby Chat, but if we can have a way of the software sending an automatic chat to Lobby, that will help people organise TM using BBO Flash.

 

One option would be to have a button next to "CREATE" , say "INVITE" and after filling the few names, if you hit "INVITE", software send a Chat message to Lobby something like,

 

Dwingo <Automatic> 4 people needed for a 10 board TM Starting soon, Barometer ON, Reply Privately.

 

Since the user does not have any control over the Automated chat to Lobby, this should be OK, I suppose

[hallway]

I ♥LOVE♥ the new mail features - copy/paste - preview - cursor over - list form (can scroll down and reply to important mail without having to wade through all the ones that dont require an answer ) Oh it is a treat I could go on and on about it :P

 

Probably a work in progress - but needing to do some homework on BBOFlash in preparation for the onslaught ! - I went through the Help List, lots of it doesnt load :P

 

No team game help

No tournament help except for conventions

No Help for:

MB$

About Playing Here

Pick up game

Playing special partner

Set games

Mail messages

Private and Public Clubs

Masterpoints

Quick Search (page opens but the links on that page do not)

About Kibitzers

Vugraph

 

Question:

On the Private Club Descriptions

The Club URL looks like it is a link (has the underline and even has the hand ) but it takes one nowhere - do the Private Clubs need to send in the URL for the Hyperlink to be activated ?

[svs108]

Is BBOWin going to co-exist with BBOFlash? I do hope so, then in that case as long as I use Windows (or dual boot) I would still prefer the mouse over/keyboard entry and other stuff and use the BBOWin app.

 

Yes BBOWin will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. That being said, the rate at which we introduce next features and improvements to BBOWin rates to continue to be low (or zero) for the foreseeable future.

 

I cannot say with any certainty that "BBOFlash is the future", but I am fairly confident that "BBOWin is not the future".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Hmmmm... With Mr. Bill Gates on board BBO? :P Are you sure he is aware of this? :P

 

On the serious side, BBOWin has matured and I think is reasonably adequate for I would guess 80% or more of its members and I personally have been very happy with the latest version. The only improvement required is maybe on the servers side to avoid frequent disconnections, but then I also may be having a poor ISP.

[david_c]

Oh, this must be a bug - I was watching vugraph and wondered what would happen if I clicked on the score at the bottom left of the screen. What happens is that the list of results goes completely blank (white), and won't come back. Surely that's not supposed to happen ...

[fred]

Oh, this must be a bug - I was watching vugraph and wondered what would happen if I clicked on the score at the bottom left of the screen. What happens is that the list of results goes completely blank (white), and won't come back. Surely that's not supposed to happen ...

What is supposed to happen is that the result at the other table is displayed.

 

If the board is question has not been played at the other table then you might get something like this.

 

In retrospect I could have probably handled this better. I will add this to me list of things to do after our first official release.

 

Those of you who work in software development will likely understand that improving something like this now (now meaning a time in which we are trying to put a stable release candidate together) would not be smart.

 

This is a lesson I learned the hard way from one Uday Ivatury :P

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Is BBOWin going to co-exist with BBOFlash? I do hope so, then in that case as long as I use Windows (or dual boot) I would still prefer the mouse over/keyboard entry and other stuff and use the BBOWin app.

 

Yes BBOWin will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. That being said, the rate at which we introduce next features and improvements to BBOWin rates to continue to be low (or zero) for the foreseeable future.

 

I cannot say with any certainty that "BBOFlash is the future", but I am fairly confident that "BBOWin is not the future".

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Hmmmm... With Mr. Bill Gates on board BBO? :) Are you sure he is aware of this? :P

 

On the serious side, BBOWin has matured and I think is reasonably adequate for I would guess 80% or more of its members and I personally have been very happy with the latest version. The only improvement required is maybe on the servers side to avoid frequent disconnections, but then I also may be having a poor ISP.

I know you were not being serious, but I should probably clarify my remarks:

 

In particular, I was not trying to make any prediction about the future of Windows or any value judgment about that platform. In fact - I really like Windows (as well as every other Microsoft product that I have ever used extensively).

 

You are correct that BBOWin is a very successful program in the sense that there are many people who are satisfied with it. However, it suffers from some serious problems:

 

- Many (you might be surprised at how many) people are never really able to get started with BBOWin for a variety of reasons (most of which are my fault).

- Parts of the program are very old.

- (most!) parts of the program are not very well-written.

- As a result, it is almost always signficantly more difficult than it should be to fix problems or introduce new features.

- There is no good way to introduce new versions of BBOWin without creating problems for many 1000s of people.

- I am the only person who understands how BBOWin works and it would take a massive effort by an excellent programmer to get to the point that he/she could replace me as the BBOWin programmer. I am not planning on going away, but it is a bad state of affairs for any company when its most important product is completely dependent on a single person.

 

I was also responsible for doing the programming of the BBOFlash client (Uday does all of our server programming) and, in doing so, I have made an effort (for the first time in my programming career!) to address these sorts of problems.

 

Of course I also tried to build a better mousetrap at the same time (and I had a ton of design help from Uday, David Smith, and our artists in this regard not to mention plenty of excellent suggestions from Forums readers). It is hard for me to be objective about this, but I strongly believe we have been successful - BBOFlash really is better than BBOWin (IMO) even though BBOWin is likely to remain a more powerful program for a while.

 

BBOWin is also likely to remain a more popular program than BBOFlash for a while too. But I am guessing this will not be the case forever.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

As default I don’t have lobby chat turned on, I think it is awful but without it how will we find other players/pairs for a team game or find subs for teams and tournaments?

Substitutes work differently in BBOFlash - there is no need for Lobby Chat for the purposes of advertising for subs.

 

As far as using lobby chat to organize team matches go, let's just say for now that Uday and I recognize that there is a problem in this area.

 

This problem will be addressed but not via lobby chat (and not immediately). Instead I expect we will develop an entirely new facility that makes it easier for people to form team matches.

 

Not sure when this will happen, but now that the issue regarding lobby chat and forming team matches has been brought to our attention (thanks!), I suspect that the priority for doing creating this hypothetical new facility will be bumped up.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

I ♥LOVE♥ the new mail features - copy/paste - preview - cursor over - list form (can scroll down and reply to important mail without having to wade through all the ones that dont require an answer ) Oh it is a treat I could go on and on about it :P

 

Probably a work in progress - but needing to do some homework on BBOFlash in preparation for the onslaught ! - I went through the Help List, lots of it doesnt load :)

 

No team game help

No tournament help except for conventions

No Help for:

MB$

About Playing Here

Pick up game

Playing special partner

Set games

Mail messages

Private and Public Clubs

Masterpoints

Quick Search (page opens but the links on that page do not)

About Kibitzers

Vugraph

 

Question:

On the Private Club Descriptions

The Club URL looks like it is a link (has the underline and even has the hand ) but it takes one nowhere - do the Private Clubs need to send in the URL for the Hyperlink to be activated ?

We are still working on the Help system. I am guessing that all of the topics will have something in them within the next week or so.

 

I am not sure why the private club web site links are not working. I will investigate and, assuming it is a bug which seems likely, I will fix. Thanks for noticing this.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[babalu1997]

Yes BBOWin will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. That being said, the rate at which we introduce next features and improvements to BBOWin rates to continue to be low (or zero) for the foreseeable future.

 

I cannot say with any certainty that "BBOFlash is the future", but I am fairly confident that "BBOWin is not the future".

Fred,

 

Well, here is my wish that the bridgemaster deals will continue to be available to those of us who have them-- could a web version of those be created, separate from bbo flash, so that we may continue to use it?

 

My other concern is Pbidding. the features in pbidding are the best, they are easy to use and the control which we have of sequences, even contested sequences is very good. Certainly, if there were to be come a paod-feature, such as the gib robot, i would gladly pay for it.

 

thanks

[hallway]

OOPs my love affair with the Mail Box is in crisis :o

 

5.0.3 - Clearing mail using "OK" saved the message to my harddrive - so I could put messages 'on hold' to reply to later . Also meant I had them on file to refer to days/weeks/months later when necessity arose (and it does often !) all neatly in their month of issue.

 

BBOFlash - has Delete per line and a Delete all but no Save that I can see - deleting really does delete it - it does not give me the option to save to my hardrive

 

'Close' leaves it sitting in the mailbox. I could just leave them there forever more I suppose BUT they are listing in descending order - oldest at the top - don't fancy having to scroll forever to find todays mail. Newest at the top could do it.

 

Right clicking the message does not give me a save option just Select all - CtrlC CtrlV pastes to a word doc but only the message not the sender details - ID - date/time etc. I cannot copy/paste the header. Typing those details <BBOIDs are :) > takes one back to the nightmares of 2003.

 

I am sure there must be a simple couple of keystrokes that will solve this problem ?

[hotShot]

I am sure there must be a simple couple of keystrokes that will solve this problem ?

I'm afraid there is no simple solution, because browser applications are not allowed to access local harddisks. This is important, because otherwise surfing the net would be a big risk.

[hallway]

Thanks Hotshot < hey long time no see !> Time then to figure out a workaround - they say such brain activity can stave off senility so could be useful on 2 counts.

Well the old grey cells have done their poor best and yes , I have a workaround :) that will enable me to take the best from the Flash Mail and still save the messages I need without too much of a hassle.

 

For those readers who do need to keep copies of some of their mail here's what to do.

 

Log into BBOFlash

Attack the mail - Scroll through

Delete those that require no reply ( hint if the sender has left spaces the preview can appear to be complete so always mouse over to see if there is more to it )

Click on More to send a reply then delete if you do not want a copy or click on Close if you want to keep a copy to save

When all mail is dealt with Click on Close to clear the screen and go play some bridge

<not for me though clearing the mail can take hours>

Now log into BBOWIN and hey presto the mail you wanted to save is still there :)

just click the ok button and it is Safe and Sound in your BBO Chat log on your hard drive for ever and a day - well that is to say until the space gremlins get them

and of course so long as there is a BBOWIN to save it for us.

[edwardz73]

I can have a chat with everyone who are playing in TM!! :rolleyes:

 

But can't have chat with someone from another table when I'm playing with the robots, how's that?? ;)

[1eyedjack]

Is there any way of telling in which club an individual is playing?

 

I see a friend online. I click on the name, and all it tells me is that said individual is playing "in a public club". I can join the table but it is still not stated which club I am in. If I click on "back" with the intention of seeing all of the other tables in that club in play it takes me straight back to the sign-in screen.

[fred]

Is there any way of telling in which club an individual is playing?

 

I see a friend online. I click on the name, and all it tells me is that said individual is playing "in a public club". I can join the table but it is still not stated which club I am in. If I click on "back" with the intention of seeing all of the other tables in that club in play it takes me straight back to the sign-in screen.

Look at the browser's title bar (or maybe the title of the tab in some browsers).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[1eyedjack]

Is there any way of telling in which club an individual is playing?

 

I see a friend online.  I click on the name, and all it tells me is that said individual is playing "in a public club".  I can join the table but it is still not stated which club I am in.  If I click on "back" with the intention of seeing all of the other tables in that club in play it takes me straight back to the sign-in screen.

Look at the browser's title bar (or maybe the title of the tab in some browsers).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Yup - missed that :rolleyes: thanks

 

Will we be able as kibitzers to follow a specified individual throughout a tourney?

[1eyedjack]

Is the timeout set the same so that prolonged inactivity auto logs you off the server after the same interval as it does in BBOWin?