mink, on Jun 4 2008, 05:43 PM, said:
6. I liked the option that profiles are shown when I hover over a name. However, it would be even better if the profile is displayed as long I hover there and immediately removed when the mouse moves somewhere else, as it was in BBOWIN. And maybe try to display the profile so that it does not cover the area where the mouse points to.
I'd like to second the quoted suggestion and then some.
Currently, when I hover over a name, the loading process for the profile is fairly slow and fairly resource intensive (CPU cycles, in particular). The location of the popup appears to default to the right edge of the primary pane, where it blocks the "Join", "More", and "Description" fields of the table list (I would rather see it at the bottom of the right pane, where it takes up less valuable real estate). The time it takes for the popup to disappear after I remove my mouse is entirely too long by my standards. When coupled with the fact that the table list no longer auto-refreshes, this means that my original method of finding a game - mouse-hover over profiles of potential partners, find a profile I like, and sit down in a hurry - is no longer feasible. I'm not sure how many people prefer this method, but I'd certainly miss it.
Additionally, the same event / timer that governs the profile popup on mouse-over seems to take effect when I switch to the "Private Chat" tab. I'd much prefer to have the popup auto-pin when I switch to the private chat tab. Mouse-over popups no longer seem to work in the chat section, sadly.
Resource-wise, and especially memory-wise, BBOFlash is quite a hog. Simply getting to the login screen took up over 100MB(!) of RAM, and after a relatively minimal amount of use, ballooned to over 200MB(!!) - a full order of magnitude more than the EXE client used. This behavior persists across multiple browsers (FF2, FF3 RC1, and IE6) and is one I commonly associate with flash. Considering this box's specs (WinXP, 512 MB RAM, 2GHz CPU), the flash client is just too much to handle.
Insofar as the overall layout, I find it to be vastly improved over the old layout. It took me some time to find everything, but most things were placed in an intuitive location, so no real navigation issues. I dislike the white background on the home screen, but as I do not expect to be seeing it for extended periods of time, it's no big deal. Using the right pane for results is a vast improvement over the old client. The IMP scale on mouse-over for team match scores appears to have gone MIA in the flash client, nor did I find it anywhere else - am I looking in the wrong place?
One disappointment on the feature front - I was hoping the new BBO version would have a played-systems profile option. Allowing players to edit which bidding systems they play (For example, checkboxes for a half-dozen or so common bidding systems) would make seeking a game much more pleasant from my point of view. Currently, the lack of this feature is the reason I do not use "Take me to a game" when I want to play.