1eyedjack Posted July 24, 2004 Report Share Posted July 24, 2004 I know I have no right to the information, but it would be quite nice to know what are the management's priorities in implementing enhancements over the next year or so. It would be nice also to have some input into that process. We all tend to make suggestions to go on the wish list, but many of them we know should be assigned a low priority (contrasted with other enhancements). Others we REALLY want, but we tend to get a wall of silence (from the management, at least) about how the suggestions are received and this can be a bit depressing. Perhaps when submitting suggestions we should add a self-assessment of priority on scale 1-10 or similar. It was refreshing to know that you were concentrating on the language project over the last few months. Can we have more of the same? Personally I have two high priority wants that may have been lost in all the noise. While I do not want the "noise" to be lost altogether, it would be nice to know if what I regard as high priorities are opinions shared by the management (and for that matter other users). So, with apologies for any repetition my two favourites: 1) Teams Matches - allow a teams match to be set up without a full complement of 8 players, so that players can join or apply to join an incomplete team similar to joining a table in the main playing area. 2) Some utility to search an entire folder/directory of .lin files for any files that contain certain search criteria, ie occasions in which a particular player was sitting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanrover Posted July 24, 2004 Report Share Posted July 24, 2004 Both of your software suggestions are very nice. Hopefully they both will be implemented. Fred and Uday are not particularly secretive about the future of BBO. Unfortunately, there are only two of them, and Fred has to spend much time playing in tournaments, so progress can not be as fast as we like. They spend a lot of time dealing with technical support. If BBO was a pay site, we could afford to hire more programmers, but you pays your money and you takes your choice. I have no inside information, but I think it very likely that they will re-write BBO from scratch some time in the near future. When it was originally written its intention was to be an online store for Bridge Base products only, and thus perhaps some of the fundamental building blocks were for the wrong kind of house. Hopefully this would help speed up any future enhancements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ack_hh Posted July 24, 2004 Report Share Posted July 24, 2004 2) Some utility to search an entire folder/directory of .lin files for any files that contain certain search criteria, ie occasions in which a particular player was sitting..lin files are simple text files, so you may use Windows' find utilityto search .lin files for, e.g., a certain player's name - use "containing text ...". Other powerful search utilities exist - you may wish to visitwww.pricelessware.org / http://www.pricelessware.org/2004/PL2004FI...TIES.htm#Search Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted July 24, 2004 Report Share Posted July 24, 2004 Basic plan: 1) Languages We are all for adding new languages but we depend on volunteersto do the translation work for us. The next release of BBO will allowfor chat in Chinese, Japanese, Greek, and Arabic even if thetranslations of these languages have not been done. 2) "Small things" By this I mean things that likely would require no more thana couple of hours for Uday and/or myself to do. There are a million of these on our list of things to do one day.We work through them as we have time and pay particularattention to suggestions that we receive from more thanone person. Some small things that will be in the next version: - new sounds for friend logging in and for the dialog boxesthat appear when someone asks you to play in tourney - mouse over of table in vugraph list will display the namesof the players at the table and the number of spectators - list of tournaments has been reorganized - no doubt several other things I have either not thoughtof or we have not done yet 3) "Big things" By these I mean projects that require weeks of time for Udayand/or myself. The work we had to do on language was our most recent big thing.Other recent big things include pay tourneys, general rewrite of theclient interface with 1024x768 support, and several big things thatUday has done on the server that you would not be aware of (thingsdesigned to improve performance and lower our bandwidth costs). Some big things you can expect to see before too long: - All sorts of things for teachers. Teachers will be able to create adsfor their services, students will be able to sign up and pay in BB$,teacher will be paid by our company (we keep a percentage). Innext version authorized members will be allowed to create "paytables" where people must pay a specified BB$ fee to join the table.This is intended to be used by teachers, but if people are willing topay to kibitz 4 stars play, I see nothing wrong with that. It will also be possible to charge a specified BB$ fee to access a chat room, lecture, or partnership bidding table. - Classified ad area in online store (including an area for personal ads) - Ability to buy non-Bridge Base products (bridge books, bidding boxes, bridge vacations, cars, houses, etc.) through online store - Eventually the client program will either be rewritten or "refactored"(more likely the later). Most likely at this time we will work with anartist to select nice colors, fonts, etc. and create a much fancier UIfor playing online (old UI will still be available as option). Keep the suggestions of small things coming. As for the big things,our plan is hardly set in stone (in fact it changes all the time - we tendto make up a lot of things as we go along). Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com PS To Dean: Uday and I both work far more than full time on BBO,but not all of that time is spent programming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mink Posted July 24, 2004 Report Share Posted July 24, 2004 Thanks Fred! All of your plans sound very nice. However, I would not change the layout of the user interface. Yes, it does not contain a lot of graphics, and yes, maybe there might be better colors. But for me the main thing is, that it serves its purpose very well, and it is fairly easy to introduce it to newcomers! I can imagine that rewriting the client is necessary in order to ease maintenance of a then better-structured code. But If I would do it, the result would exactly _look_ like the current version from the users point of view. As for 1024x768 support I think this is not really needed. I work with this resolution and everything is nice for me. But if you have a flat screen with a natural resolution of 1280x1024, the BBO window becomes rather small - this is worth to be improved. The problem with such displays is that they perform best with there natural resolution only. Among the "big things" I missed any plans to ease the task of tourney directors. I have written some Ideas to this topic and shall post them in the tournament directors forum, as maybe this is not interesting for non-directors. Karl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgr Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 a little (?) thing that would be nice:CTRL-W:Add one more layout which is compared to current small layout:not wider but longer.=> allows to have more chat, but not a wider screen (I don't like the wide screen becaause cards too fare from each other).(ctrl-w switches then between 3 layouts) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 Try using the "maximize" button near the X in the topright corner of the BBO window. You can use this to make the chat area fill the entirevertical space of your monitor. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com PS If you are curious this feature has been around fora year or so and it turned out to be not a "little thing" dueto poor early design by Uday (just kidding was my fault). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgr Posted July 25, 2004 Report Share Posted July 25, 2004 tx Fred (never tried it because I thought it would make it even wider then the Wide of ctrl-w)...that was a fast answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twcho Posted July 26, 2004 Report Share Posted July 26, 2004 One "little" thing that I have requested before but get no attention. It would be nice if one can right click a player's name to have an option to join the player's table. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted July 26, 2004 Report Share Posted July 26, 2004 Already on our list of things to do. Harder to implement than you might think (might even qualifyas a big thing) which is why you have not seen this happen yet. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1eyedjack Posted July 26, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2004 I forgot one. *Fairly* high up on *my* wish list is to get the %/IMP scores assigned in the MyHands listings to agree with those displayed in the tournament results. They are never far adrift. But adrift they usually are. Is that a "biggie" or a "smallie"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted July 26, 2004 Report Share Posted July 26, 2004 If that is pretty high up on your priority list then we mustbe doing a good job B) Myhands is Uday's thing and I have no idea how it works,why the numbers are different, or what it would take tofix this. I suspect that this is a small thing and that Uday has notput it high on his list of small things to do (which seemsreasonable to me given all the other small things he hasdone and continues to do instead). I am not trying to make fun of your suggestion. This isthe sort of thing that we need feedback on. It would nothave occurred to me (or likely to Uday) that very manypeople would care about this. We could easily be wrong. If we are we would like to knowand it would then be likely that the fix you request is bumpedup in the priority list. Fred GitelmanBridge Base Inc.www.bridgebase.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1eyedjack Posted July 27, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 27, 2004 For sure, if I am a lone voice in the wilderness on that one then forget it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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