How to chat to club?

[1eyedjack]

Sorry for ridiculous question, am trying to drag myself kicking and screaming into the Flash interface.

 

But: How do I send a chat message to "Club". And I don't mean "Table", and I don't mean "Lobby". They both have clickable buttons to assign the addressee of message.

 

I would expect a similar feature for sending chat message to "Tournament" or to "entire team game", which may or may not appear as a context sensitive button - not got there yet to try it. But I was playing in a bespoke club just now and there was a fair bit of chat to the club which I could not contribute - at present I am assuming that the others were all using the downloaded windows interface (which I can see does allow chat to club).

 

I was using the full Flash interface on PC, not the mobile android version (which I use increasingly these days). I sort of expect cut down functionality these days with the mobile interface, but I thought that the Flash one was supposed to be more powerful than the Windows one. Maybe the method is there but I just can't see it.

[FM75]

That is not a ridiculous question. Chatting to club is mysterious in web version.

 

Sometimes you have a club button and select and chat just like you would expect. Other times you don't.

 

You might be kibbing a table in a club, but not be able to do so. Perhaps it depends on whether you looked for tables in a club, then joined one? BBO probably should improve this.

 

That said, chatting to some clubs can be very irritating. For example, you might reasonably want to say "We need a fourth" or "We need two.." If someone is teaching at a table in the same club, it can be quite disruptive to have club chatter at what other-wise was kind of a private session.

 

Blocking chat from club, might also be useful - for a game in which the players - or a player might not be interested in receiving it.

[1eyedjack]

Thanks. In case it helps, I only got there by clicking on a friend’s name and then clicked on an empty seat on the table tab of friend’s profile. I never expressly navigated to the club before sitting. But I was playing, not kibbing

[barmar]

I thought that the Flash one was supposed to be more powerful than the Windows one. Maybe the method is there but I just can't see it.

They each have some features that the other doesn't. E.g. Flash has Bridge Bingo, but didn't have lobby chat until a few months ago.

[1eyedjack]

They each have some features that the other doesn't. E.g. Flash has Bridge Bingo, but didn't have lobby chat until a few months ago.

 

Yes I sort of realised most of that. I simply thought that features available in Windows but not in Flash were as a result in limitations imposed by Flash. This does not seem to be one of those.

[barmar]

Yes I sort of realised most of that. I simply thought that features available in Windows but not in Flash were as a result in limitations imposed by Flash. This does not seem to be one of those.

Some are (like saving all hands to files). But others are simply because we haven't gotten to them or decided they weren't important to retain (the limited number of user preference options is in the latter category).

[FM75]

Some are (like saving all hands to files). But others are simply because we haven't gotten to them or decided they weren't important to retain (the limited number of user preference options is in the latter category).

 

I am an old fart (in the software industry).

1) Using Flash as an excuse is inexcusable.

a) Maybe Flash is optimized for slow networks and is still relevant for a good user experience. (probably not with advent of javascript in the browser, even absent HTML5.)

b) But it is really not a good excuse for trashing user preferences (EXPECTATIONS).

c) One could grant that the idea of "Lobby chat" or maybe even "club chat" was anachronistic, based on the massive growth of BBO.

d) But the massive support for it suggests that it should have been continued. (Scaling it is problematic, and eliminating it by users who don't want to hear "fire" in a crowded hotel/club also needs to be addressed.)

e) Saving hands should have been a huge win for BBO. They could have promoted that when users lost hard drives or bought new computers they would still have their dear hand histories.

f) BBO still could do this. (Please don't. I want to make a viable small business by not only doing that, but adding additional analytics.)

[jillybean]

e) Saving hands should have been a huge win for BBO. They could have promoted that when users lost hard drives or bought new computers they would still have their dear hand histories.

 

This is the feature I still miss the most.

[barmar]

The Flash vs HTML5 issue has nothing to do with the technical merits of one versus the other. At the time the web version of BBO was written, HTML5 didn't exist (or it was in such an early state of development and adoption that it could not be considered for an application like ours -- IE7 was probably the dominant web browser then) -- the only options for a responsive web application were Flash and Java (not Javascript). Be glad Fred chose Flash, as Java has almost totally disappeared as a web application language.

 

Rewriting it in HTML5/Javascript would be an enormous task (and Javascript has many similar restrictions). It's not likely to happen unless we really have to. We have more important things to do with our limited resources. It would bring its own share of headaches, due to compatibility issues with older IE versions. And it probably wouldn't solve much -- Javascript has many restrictions similar to Flash (it also can't write to local files without involving the user).

[FM75]

The Flash vs HTML5 issue has nothing to do with the technical merits of one versus the other. At the time the web version of BBO was written, HTML5 didn't exist (or it was in such an early state of development and adoption that it could not be considered for an application like ours -- IE7 was probably the dominant web browser then) -- the only options for a responsive web application were Flash and Java (not Javascript). Be glad Fred chose Flash, as Java has almost totally disappeared as a web application language.

 

Rewriting it in HTML5/Javascript would be an enormous task (and Javascript has many similar restrictions). It's not likely to happen unless we really have to. We have more important things to do with our limited resources. It would bring its own share of headaches, due to compatibility issues with older IE versions. And it probably wouldn't solve much -- Javascript has many restrictions similar to Flash (it also can't write to local files without involving the user).

 

I understand the historical reasons for Flash. But you don't need access to anything on the computer - except recently the microphone. Hands, preferences, etc. can be stored on the host without requesting permission. Java was never really workable - and it would have been a nightmare to manage.

 

Anyway, we are straying from the topic. The original question is still not definitively answered. What does one have to do to chat to club? Will the other paths to playing at a table be fixed so that chat to club is an option regardless of how one gets into a club.

[barmar]

FYI, we do have every hand played on BBO in the last 8 years saved. Just not in a form that's currently accessible to the app.