BBOFlash Comments Thread3 Release 6
#1
Posted 2008-April-29, 22:48
You should access BBOFlash through the yellow link "click here to play or watch bridge" on our home page:
www.bridgebase.com
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#2
Posted 2008-April-30, 00:10
#3
Posted 2008-April-30, 01:07
Robert
#4
Posted 2008-April-30, 04:28
One small suggestion: move the vugraph button to the "play and watch bridge" section. Also I tend to choose which (vugraph) room to watch based on the number of kibs, so providing this info on the vugraph table list would be a bonus.
#5
Posted 2008-April-30, 06:55
Now I have to click to get the same results.
This restriction is not so nice I think.
#6
Posted 2008-April-30, 07:04
barmar, on Apr 30 2008, 06:10 AM, said:
I expect we will make a serious effort to arrange this (and that it won't be particularly hard) once BBOFlash becomes an official product.
But nowadays our priority when we release a new beta is to make sure that everyone gets a completely "fresh installation" (mostly so that we know that whatever bugs are discovered are necessarily consequences of the most recent version and not an artifact of something that no longer exists).
Sorry about the inconvenience.
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#7
Posted 2008-April-30, 07:31
mghatiya, on Apr 30 2008, 12:55 PM, said:
Now I have to click to get the same results.
This restriction is not so nice I think.
This is one of those no-win situations for us.
One of the most common complaints we get from new BBO members is "I hate that things pop up constantly as I move my mouse around the screen". In BBOWin I attempted to address that problem by adding a slight (but configurable) delay before mouseover would take effect. The change, which I think is clearly an improvement even if you like mouseover, seemed to reduce the volume of complaints but the issue has not gone away - there are definitely plenty of people out there who don't like these mouseover effects regardless of whether or not a delay exists.
Then there are people like you who like being able to use mouseover instead of click for such purposes. My wife happens to think just like you in this regard. I am somewhere in between - I prefer mouseover for profiles, but prefer click in the movie window's list of results.
The seemingly "obvious solution" of adding an option for this is far from perfect because:
1) We still have the problem of selecting defaults for this option. Whatever defaults we choose there will be 1000s of people who would have preferred that we use a diffferent default.
2) IMO each option we add reduces the utility of the options that already exist. Eventually you end up with a situation like that which exists in BBOWin: so many options that you need strong computer skills and a lot of patience to find the ones that do what you want. The temptation to continue to add options never ends. For example, a recent Forums post suggested an option to "hide other table results in team matches". The person who made this suggestion had a perfectly good reason for wanting this option, but my personal opinion is that very few people would ever use this (mostly because most people wouldn't want to use this option, but even for those who did it there are so many options already that it would be all but impossible for us to put this new option, or any new option, in a place where people would notice it).
So our general attitude with BBOFlash is to keep the # of options small (so that people will actually be able to find and use the few options that they really rate to care about). Originally we had not planned on a mouseover/click option (or options). But if enough BBOWin veterans complain I suspect we will do something about this eventually.
But please don't pass judgment on this immediately. Some people (including me) seem to get used to clicking after they have used BBOFlash for a while. Even if they prefer mouseover, some come around to find clicking to be OK too.
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#8
Posted 2008-April-30, 11:02
Firstly, the login cycle was much smoother and predictable than the stutters I was having before.
I like the color change quite a bit for it shows contrast; I hope that our colorblind users are able to have the same ability to quickly differentiate as I did.
I don't have the disappearing player name issue I reported in the other thread appear as of yet.
I prefer a fresh installation for each new version - especially when there's a browser change involved (FTR -> I did not have much success in Firefox 3 beta 5, but 2.0.0.14 is much smoother and predictable).
Me thinks that I may be using this Flash version for a while now instead of dealing with an at times shaky WINE. So far, well done Fred and crew, well done.
#9
Posted 2008-April-30, 11:09
a separate button for that, seems simpler and easier to access
#10
Posted 2008-April-30, 13:08
A small request - when selecting the VuGraph table, can the screen be offset in such a way to show that the table has been chosen. The screen currently blocks the table in its entirety so once has to close the screen then verify the table is selected.
#11
Posted 2008-April-30, 15:13
Secondly, no profile on mouseover is very bad. THat alone is enough to make me not use BBO Flash. Far to annoying when e.g. trying to find an open table with a compatible partner.
I should add to this, I'm not a fan of flash, or web-browser hosted applications in general. The availability of a native client was one reason I came to BBO in the first place. For a flash client to be of use to me, it would have to provide a real benefit in usability and functionality. As it stands, BBO Flash doesn't provide that. Pretty? Sure But it's not as responsive and the windows client, and again, I have a strong distaste for browser-hosted applications.
If it was available as some sort of stand-alone bundle, not hosted in a web browser. I wouldn't like it if when, say, Quicktime decides to crash my Firefox session, I lose my BBO connection as well.
#12
Posted 2008-April-30, 15:45
#13
Posted 2008-April-30, 22:36
Luckily, when you have that long a suit, it's not too important what the last couple of spot cards are.
#14
Posted 2008-May-01, 06:57
TylerE, on Apr 30 2008, 09:13 PM, said:
Hi Tyler,
I am sorry you don't like the new version, but I think the previous version was a lot "brighter" than this one
I am not sure what area(s) you referring to when you talk about informational elements and main background having the same color. If you could either provide some more details or (better) send a screenshot by e-mail to fred@bridgebase.com I would appreciate it. It is definitely possible that either our artists missed something or that I made a mistake in the process of incorporating their designs into the program itself. Once I have a better idea of the specific area(s) you are referring to, it will be easy for me to correct the problem (if our artists agree that it really is a problem).
Thanks,
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#15
Posted 2008-May-01, 07:00
keylime, on Apr 30 2008, 07:08 PM, said:
A small request - when selecting the VuGraph table, can the screen be offset in such a way to show that the table has been chosen. The screen currently blocks the table in its entirety so once has to close the screen then verify the table is selected.
Hi Dwayne,
Can you please confirm that you are referring to the position of the window that appears when you click "BBO Now" then "Vugraph"?
If yes I will try to improve things but you should know that the program is designed to remember where you move things. So for now I suggest you move the window to a place you like it. In theory the program should "remember".
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#16
Posted 2008-May-01, 07:30
#17
Posted 2008-May-01, 10:52
The window it seems is now remembering the 3 inch slide I gave it, so I can see the table change beneath it. It was rather annoying admittedly!
In the latest flavor of Safari, it took a while to load, but now it's functional.
2nd problem: When logging into the Flash interface, I'm getting an immediate connection lost. This is happening on both my Windows box and my NC8430 box. The strangest thing too because this box, the D630, and the HP one, are IDENTICAL in every way O/S-wise. I went ahead and reinstalled the Flash on both without success.
#18
Posted 2008-May-02, 00:32
1. Basic interface works except that card animation is slow so I deselected that for now; perhaps this will be resolved later.
2. The ability to resize the window is great.
3. I'd like to second mghatiya's point: the "mouse hover" features of BBOWin are really nice. Each and every one of them speeds up my interaction with the client. They are certainly not essential -- I wouldn't have thought of them if they weren't there -- but you should keep them if at all possible.
4. The "BBO Now" menu is great. One issue: if you attempt to join the table you are currently kibitzing, you get the error message: "Error. could not join table." This happens both through "Interesting tables" and "all tables". Possible alternatives are: a more informative message ("Error. You are already kibitzing this table."), silent success (if the user is asking to join the table he's at, there's nothing to do), or the BBOWin behaviour (leave the table then rejoin it).
5. A problem with both BBOFlash & BBOWin: the default chat target for a kibitzer at a table should be the other kibitzers, not the whole table. Inadvertent chat to table is a very very common error. If non-players had to make an explicit click to chat to the table this problem would disappear.
--
Aside: It's difficult for a flash application in a broswer to compete with stand-alone compiled code: BBOWin + Wine provides a faster, smoother experience. Of course it's not as portable. As a free-loader, all I can say is that I will test the flash client occasionally but would probably stay with the existing client under Wine until the future evolution of the client/server protocols breaks it.
Cheers,
Lior
#19
Posted 2008-May-02, 06:21
TylerE, on May 1 2008, 01:30 PM, said:
Thanks for clarifying, but as I am sure you noticed the list of players where these white squares resides has a light gray background. To my eye at least it is not a problem to use white here even though white is used in other (non-touching) areas as a background color. Apparently our designers (who are really good at this stuff) feel the same way.
Maybe this is something you will get used to before too long? I know that happened with me. At first I was very unsure about the new color scheme, but after looking at it for an hour or so I began to really like it.
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
#20
Posted 2008-May-02, 06:48
I can "JOIN" a tourney, and "ADD" my name to the partnership desk.
But why is the invite area in the partnership list not colored cyan?
If the number of participants of a tourney has reached the limit, it would be nice to have this information easier to find.