BBO web client

[cicus]

There are currently 3 reasons because of which I stick to the old Windows BBO client:

 

1. Using the web browser client deals I played or kibitzed are not saved.

 

2. There is no partnership bidding room in the web browser client.

 

3. The old program is much easier for my eyes to view.

 

 

Item 3 is of course subjective but how about 1 or 2?

[helene_t]

There is partnership bidding room and it is even better than the old one.

 

Open a table, select "bidding" for table type.

[fred]

1. Using the web browser client deals I played or kibitzed are not saved.

 

You can save specific deals yourself if you want. Click the Options button below the deal diagram on the right of your screen, then Export Deal, then Save Deal As.

 

Also, you can access the most recent 100 or so hands you played through My BBO (button at the top), Hands and Results, and then Recent Hands (in the window that appears). Most likely we will eventually extend this feature so that you can access any deals that you have played on BBO. Maybe we will even include some advanced search options.

 

3. The old program is much easier for my eyes to view.

 

If you can be more specific about why this is the case then I might be able to do something about it.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[cicus]

1. Using the web browser client deals I played or kibitzed are not saved.

 

You can save specific deals yourself if you want. Click the Options button below the deal diagram on the right of your screen, then Export Deal, then Save Deal As.

 

Also, you can access the most recent 100 or so hands you played through My BBO (button at the top), Hands and Results, and then Recent Hands (in the window that appears). Most likely we will eventually extend this feature so that you can access any deals that you have played on BBO. Maybe we will even include some advanced search options.

 

3. The old program is much easier for my eyes to view.

 

If you can be more specific about why this is the case then I might be able to do something about it.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

As for saving hands, I like to have all my hands saved, so that after a session I can browse through them and look for errors or bidding situations to be discussed. One of the good things with the windows program is that it saves the hands by session.

 

As for viewing, the web client has a large area at the right side that contains the whole hand, the bidding sequence, and the scorecard. I don't know how to close these windows and as it is there is very few room left for the deal in play and the chat area. In addition, the upper region is taken up by the browser header, status line and browser tools (of course I can switch these off but that is not all that convenient).

 

Can be that I am getting old and like what I am used to?

[fred]

As for saving hands, I like to have all my hands saved, so that after a session I can browse through them and look for errors or bidding situations to be discussed. One of the good things with the windows program is that it saves the hands by session.

 

I am sure that eventually we will make some improvements in this area in the web-client, but it is more complicated than you might think since Flash is granted only very minimum rights in terms of accessing the user's hard disk. That means that any substantial files must be saved in a server-side database. Given the number of hands that are played on BBO, it is currently not practical (and it is also expensive) to save all hands for all users *forever* in this way.

 

Like I said, eventually I expect we will find a way to address this issue, but that may not happen for a while.

 

As for viewing, the web client has a large area at the right side that contains the whole hand, the bidding sequence, and the scorecard. I don't know how to close these windows and as it is there is very few room left for the deal in play and the chat area. In addition, the upper region is taken up by the browser header, status line and browser tools (of course I can switch these off but that is not all that convenient).

 

There are ways around all of these problems:

 

1) There are "sliders" between the area in which the table is displayed and both the area on the right and the chat area. Click and drag these sliders to change the amount of space that is used by the various components.

 

2) Use the yellow link on our home page to launch the web-client. This will result in a lot of the browser controls not being displayed.

 

3) After you launch the web-client, hit the F11 key on your keyboard. This will result in the remaining browser controls going away. This trick works with both Internet Explorer and Firefox. I don't know if it will work if you are using some other browser.

 

Can be that I am getting old and like what I am used to?

 

I don't think it has anything to do with age - people in general do seem to be resistant to change. Hopefully we will eventually manage to make the web-client so much better than the Windows client that there will be many compelling reasons for our members to make the switch ;)

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[cicus]

Thanks for your answers. I tried the F11 trick in Google Chrome and it works there as well.

[karlson]

I actually thought that by "easier on the eyes" might be referring to the minor issue that I've had. I've found that the font/images used for the cards on the windows client to be much clearer (by which I mean easy to quickly internalize the hand I see) than on the web client. I find that on the web client it takes me a few seconds of conscious effort to figure out the cards after I see my hand (or see dummy) whereas I never had to do anything like this on the old client.

 

I think specifically the amount of whitespace and relatively smaller symbols make the cards run together somewhat, especially, I find, for consecutive red cards. (It's much worse with the big cards options enabled, also)

 

Anyway, this is obviously pretty minor, and probably to a huge degree a product of experience with the windows client, but if it's easy to implement, it would be nice to have a few more options for the card images.

[hanp]

When using the flash version the kibitzers are not refreshed automatically, I think you have to click away from kibitzers and then on kibitzers again. This is a big issue for very vain people, such as myself. Also, the other day I was waiting for kfay to come and see a hand only to find out much later that he was already there.

 

I find it also harder to switch from talking to people to talking to kibitzers/table/tournament, etc. This may be because I am so used to the windows client.

 

The partnerhip bidding on the flash client is fantastic.

[fred]

When using the flash version the kibitzers are not refreshed automatically, I think you have to click away from kibitzers and then on kibitzers again. This is a big issue for very vain people, such as myself. Also, the other day I was waiting for kfay to come and see a hand only to find out much later that he was already there.

You can click the top of the kibitzers tab to refresh the list. Sorry that is not more intuitive. Most likely I will include an explicit "refresh" button one day.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[cherdanno]

When using the flash version the kibitzers are not refreshed automatically, I think you have to click away from kibitzers and then on kibitzers again. This is a big issue for very vain people, such as myself. Also, the other day I was waiting for kfay to come and see a hand only to find out much later that he was already there.

You can click the top of the kibitzers tab to refresh the list. Sorry that is not more intuitive. Most likely I will include an explicit "refresh" button one day.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

It would be nice if the kibitzer tab updated automatically. It doesn't help social interaction when you don't notice friends coming to your table, or it could be awkward when you think a conversation is private, when it actually isn't.

[cnszsun]

The users from windows client and web client can not communicate with each other in Chinese (Random code will be displayed). I know the reason is that they are using different font coding system. Is there any solution?

[fred]

When using the flash version the kibitzers are not refreshed automatically, I think you have to click away from kibitzers and then on kibitzers again. This is a big issue for very vain people, such as myself. Also, the other day I was waiting for kfay to come and see a hand only to find out much later that he was already there.

You can click the top of the kibitzers tab to refresh the list. Sorry that is not more intuitive. Most likely I will include an explicit "refresh" button one day.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

It would be nice if the kibitzer tab updated automatically. It doesn't help social interaction when you don't notice friends coming to your table, or it could be awkward when you think a conversation is private, when it actually isn't.

Sorry but I don't think it is likely that we will be willing to update this list in real time though perhaps an auto-refresh every minute (or whatever) might be in the cards one day.

 

Keep in mind that in the Windows client you need to move your mouse in order to see the (up-to-date) kibitzers' list. Moving and then clicking your mouse is not that much more of a burden, right?

 

Probably we would not be having this discussion at all if we had made the web-client like the Windows client (where it is not possible to keep the kibitzer list displayed while you are playing) in this area.

 

By the way, I can see the value in what you and Han are asking for. The only case for the other side of the argument is performance-related. Unfortunately it is part of my job to be concerned about such things.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[hanp]

OK I take my comment about chatting back. It is actually very nice to have private discussions in seperate windows.

 

Is it possible to change the size of the main window? (using the flash client)

[cherdanno]

Is it possible to change the size of the main window? (using the flash client)

There are sliders with which you can control the size of pretty much anything.

[cicus]

The partnerhip bidding on the flash client is fantastic.

Yesterday I had very limited time to try it out so that is perhaps why I did not notice what extra features it has over the windows client. Would you please mention some of them?

[helene_t]

The partnerhip bidding on the flash client is fantastic.

Yesterday I had very limited time to try it out so that is perhaps why I did not notice what extra features it has over the windows client. Would you please mention some of them?

- GIBs as opponents are free

- The way constraints are specified is more user-friendly (IMHO)

- You can use "dealer"-like language to specify constraints

[fred]

The users from windows client and web client can not communicate with each other in Chinese (Random code will be displayed). I know the reason is that they are using different font coding system. Is there any solution?

Hi Michael,

 

In theory it is supposed to work in 2 cases:

 

1) A web-client user should be able to see proper chat sent by any user regardless of whether the sender is using the Windows client or the web-client and regardless of what the language of the sender is.

 

2) A Windows client user should be able to see proper chat in his own language provided that the sender is using the same language. If the sender is using the web-client, his computer's "system language" much match the language option that has been set by the receiver in the Windows client.

 

All of this is somewhat delicate and it is hard for us to test with all combinations of languages for a variety of reasons. If you can let me know:

 

1) The user ID of the web-client user

 

2) The user ID of the Windows client user

 

3) The direction(s) of chat that cause this problem (Windows->web, web->Windows, or both)

 

4) Ideally a screenshot in which garbage is displayed. Don't worry if you can't arrange this, but if it is easy please e-mail the screenshot to fred@bridgebase.com

 

I should then be able to figure out what is going on and hopefully fix the problem (if it is possible - it will only be possible if the users fall into one of the 2 categories mentioned above).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[fred]

Is it possible to change the size of the main window? (using the flash client)

There are sliders with which you can control the size of pretty much anything.

Thanks but I am not sure if you answered the question that Han was asking.

 

If he was referring to window that contains the web-client itself, the answer is yes. You can make this window whatever size you want using the normal mechanisms provided by your operating system. In Windows, for example, you can double click the title bar to maximize/restore the window. If the window is in the restored state, you can click and drag the borders of the window to resize it to whatever you want.

 

Also note the F11 key trick that I mentioned earlier in this thread. Once the web-client is launched, hitting this key will make it as big as possible. Once you are in this state, hitting F11 again will restore things to "normal".

 

One of the nice things about the web-client is that, unlike the Windows client which comes in only 2 discreet sizes, the web-client attempts to use whatever space you give it in a sensible way. The ever-increasing population of users with screen resolutions greater than 1024x768 will hopefully appreciate this.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[uday]

It would be nice if the kibitzer tab updated automatically. It doesn't help social interaction when you don't notice friends coming to your table, or it could be awkward when you think a conversation is private, when it actually isn't.

 

This could be ( and perhaps should be ) another form of notification. Friend BLAH has logged in. Friend BLAH is now at table BLAH. Friend BLAH is kibbing you now.

 

Or with specs: You now have 0 (10) (20 ) (30 ) kibs - this can be displayed as the # in the kibtab and the click can, as usual, show the list. Perhaps the list being open should imply that the player wants the list updated in realtime.

 

I'll discuss this stuff w/FG