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A new beta version is almost certain to be released today (look for an announcement in forums).

 

This version contains a filter in the Partnership Desk window to display only people willing to pay their own entry fees.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

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It would be nice to see BBO become customisable. A game called Championship Manager (Now Football manager) is fully skinable. This means that the user can modify the look of the software. They are then free to post their "skins" online.

 

If Fruday could do this, I am sure BBO members would pretty quickly come up with 3 or 4 designs superior to the current one (Which I actually think is OK, but I have friends who don't). (One friend prefers to play on Bridge Club Live because it is more user friendly. I vehemently disagree, but he still exists). (IMHO Bridge Club Live sucks majorly, and anyone who prefers it to BBO needs their head examined).

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Here are some of my 2005 wish list for BBO enhancements/improvements. Many have already been suggested and I'm simply adding my voice to those.

 

-CK

 

When you are invited to a team game, having the ability to tell (by color) whether your opps, partner or teammates are your friends, or enimies

 

Ability to bring up a saved pre-alert (ie: Greetings opps, we play 2/1, ud/ca, multi) instead of having to type it each time. More beneficial when playing in tournaments.

 

Dramatic overhaul of the Teams invite system

 

The ability to click on user's name and going to their table

 

The ability to cut and paste BBO chat

 

The ability to send a private message to multiple people at the same time

 

Ability to bring up a saved alert to a bid

 

Swiss team tournaments

 

Ability to include defenses to conventions on the convention card for conventions that are not famialir to many players (ie: Multi)

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"Ability to include defenses to conventions on the convention card for conventions that are not famialir to many players (ie: Multi) "

 

Um, why? With all due respects, why should I provide a defence to Multis and other 2 suited 2 bids.(Especially the multi 2D which is very commonly played). If you take the game at all seriously, then you have meta defences to cope with most of what is thrown at you. Bidding is part of the game as well, and you don't include instructions on how to play a squeeze on your convention card.

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If the opps play multi and I've never heard about it, I just google on "defence against multi". I don't see why the opps should advice us to play a particular defence. That would mean that I would play 100 different defences depending on which oponents I play against.
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Fred / Uday:

 

I don't think I've ever seen this suggested, but how about this:

 

When I play on Poker Stars, I can make a decision (check / bet / raise / fold), minimize the window and go back to doing other things. When its my turn, the Poker Stars window maximizes. How big of a deal would it be to do the same with BBO? Especially in a long auction (or when I'm dummy)that takes a few minutes, it would be nice if the window automatically maximizes when its my turn to make a decision (bid, play, etc.)

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First Off - the Ability to Copy the General Chat would be nice (mopst prople realize they can do that from the Temp Chat File anyway). You can already copy/pate to the Chat Window now !

 

2nd Off - when a Tournament is Canceled BBO should notify anyone who registered for that Tournamant. Perhaps a (max 128 charactor) explaination could be typed by the person who canceled it could be Msged to them.

 

Thanks

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First Off - the Ability to Copy the General Chat would be nice (mopst prople realize they can do that from the Temp Chat File anyway). You can already copy/pate to the Chat Window now !

 

2nd Off - when a Tournament is Canceled BBO should notify anyone who registered for that Tournamant. Perhaps a (max 128 charactor) explaination could be typed by the person who canceled it could be Msged to them.

 

Thanks

cut and paste would be very nice. But I wonder, how often are tournments cancelled? Do you mean before it starts or after it has already started. When I have to jump in and cancel a tourney (as part of yellow duty) becuase director and half or more of the players are missing (done this maybe a total of three times), I of course announce to the remaining people that it is being cancelled and why with tourney chat. Seems like that would be sufficient. As far as cancelling one before it starts, notifying everyone is not so easy... but how big an issue is this?

 

Ben

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Here is my suggestion for improving the team matches (I think it's similar to what hrothgar suggested):

 

Create a team matches room similar to the "main bridge club" for those team matches that are not yet complete. Once a player starts a team match, 8 seats appear, and players can click on the seats to join. Of course, the "owner" of the team game can accept or reject players.

 

On the right the form of scoring is shown, as well as the number of boards, and a title (e.g. "short fun match" or "only star players welcome").

 

Once a team match has started it is removed from this room (or perhaps moved to the bottom of the room).

 

 

Haven't thought about this a lot, would this work well?

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For 2005,

a linux version for BBO ... great

:)

This linux question thing pops up every now and then. Uday actually addressed it once, where he said, among others, that developing a version for linux wasn't an issue for them due to the relative size of the userbases (this would be windows users worldwide versus linux users worldwide).

 

He did say he was going to see if he could improve (or at least investigate) how well netbridgevu ran under windows simulators in linux.

 

But other users (including now you guys) have already been doing this....I refer you to the following threads...

 

Version 3.9.8 & Linux Cedega

BBO for Linux

BBO/Linux?

 

From my perspective, it is great that BBO can run under a simulator in linux. But I get the feeling a number of the linux posters want a native linux version of netbridgevu. Of course, I can't speak for Fred or uday, but I sure hope their answer would be "You got to be kidding". The reason is with two programmers working on BBO gaming software (and BBO server) I don't want them splitting their time between trying to maintain and support two different source codes. That is a selfish "ben" reason.. I like the rate of improvement and new features we get, and the attention to bugs. A second reason is the way the program works. While Microsoft took a lot of grief over the "embedded browser" issue thing, the ability to use these embedded tools has no doubt saved uday and fred thousands of hours of programming time. The linux community works by sharing the source code and having thousands of people (or hundreds) work on improving it for free. Here Fred and Uday have a commercial product, and might well have security concerns if source code was out over password issues, money issues and BB$ accounts, not to mention their own intellectual property issues. I can't imagine them wanting to turn over the BBO code so that any competitor (or unhappy player who gets booted for cursing like a druken sailor) can start up competiting sites overnight using his own source code.

 

There are probalby a lot of other reasons for not native linux code.. the biggest is the userbase number and the effectiveness of the existig simulators for the small number of linux enthusast who play bridge on line. I think the solution is for BBO members who use linux to continue sharing their success (and failure) stories on what linux installations work with BBO and what problems exist.

 

Ben

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Ben's answer is right on. Given the current state of our company and the number of Linux users out there at this point in time, it would be a ridiculous business decision to create a native Linux version. Sure that could change, but I am betting against it happening in the next couple of years.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

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What I would really like to see is a change to the way lists are displayed in BBO (i.e. the list of tables, list of people in the lobby etc.). At the moment all the names are continually moving around as they are updated, which makes it very hard to keep track the one you're interested in. Particularly annoying is when you're hovering over one name and want to move to a different one - by starting to move you sometimes cause everything to change round, so that the place you're heading for is different.

 

If this has been discussed before then sorry for bringing it up again. But here is what I think would be an improvement:

 

At the moment, if your mouse is over a name in a list, then that name stays still. Why not go further, so that when your mouse is anywhere on the list, the entire list stays still? If a name were to disappear from the ones being displayed, it would be replaced by a blank space. This way, if you want to allow the list to update, you keep the mouse away from it, but if you want to keep the list still while you have a good look, you move the mouse onto it.

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This linux question thing pops up every now and then. Uday actually addressed it once, where he said, among others, that developing a version for linux wasn't an issue for them due to the relative size of the userbases (this would be windows users worldwide versus linux users worldwide).

From my perspective, the debate over Linux is being framed the wrong way. I'm a big fan of Linux and use it extensively in my daily life. However, much as I would love to see the a Linux client for BBO, I think that it would be a very poor investment of resources on the part of BBO's management team. Plain and simple, the Linux user base isn't dense enough to justify the development resources that would be required.

 

Equally significant, Open Source development philosophy is very much based on the concept that if you have an itch, you should be the one to scratch it... I strongly suspect that if a Linux client for BBO is ever going to be developed, it will need to be developed by group of programmers separate and distinct from BBO, operating as a traditional Open Source development project.

 

Those individuals advocating a Linux client should NOT be pushing for Fred and Uday to write them a client for Linux, but rather that BBO establish a well-defined and open interface between the client and the server. This type of interface would be an necessary prerequisite for any successful private client development project.

 

Fred has pointed out in the past that defining a standard interface would also require a substantial investment of resources, while simultaneously limiting his flexibility in improving the product. For example, BBO was experiencing some significant congestion problems. Fred and Uday were able to quickly push out a patch that modified the way in which "Lobby information" was transmitted between the client and the server. If BBO were forced to follow a standardized interface, these types of redesigns would become much more difficult.

 

In short, its unclear to me whether Fred would (or should) be willing create an open interface. However, if you really want to see a Linux client, this is probably the best way to do so.

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A clean way of doing this would be to develop the client in Java or to target a  .NET environment that might be available for Linux too.

Java.. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH... can you imagine a java-based bridge environments.. slow and painful. Dummied down to lowest common java-compatible device. No wait.. you don't ahve to imagine, go suffer with J-bridge... or help them improve.... but there is your model.

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