[fred]

You should use the yellow "play bridge now" link on our home page (www.bridgebase.com) to access the BBO web-client. In theory you will automatically pick up the most recent version if you access the web-client in this way.

Changes in V30 include:

- "Help me find a game", "Kibitz - list interesting tables" uses a smarter method of deciding which tables rate to be interesting to you (in particular, tables in which your friends are playing are included). Probably you will see more changes like this in the future. This is really Ari's area - if you have any feedback about this, please let him know by e-mail (arigreen@bridgebase.com).

- If you try to close your browser window or navigate away when you are logged in, you will receive a warning message that asks you to confirm that you really want to do this. This is designed to prevent people (like me!) from losing their current BBO sessions when the make a mistake like clicking the browser's back button instead of the web-client's back button.

- If you make the chat area sufficiently small in the vertical direction (by clicking and dragging the "slider" just above it downwards), the chat area will move to a "tab" at the right of your screen. This configuration works well if you have a large monitor with a high horizontal to vertical aspect ratio (like 16x9) or if you want to look at a lot of chat at once. You can restore the chat area to its normal position by moving the slider upwards.

- There is a new facility called "Chat Manager" that will allow you to save and later recall frequently used chat messages. Click the "My BBO" button at the top of the web-client screen and then "Chat Manager" in the menu that appears in order to access this facility.

- The Windows client option for "notify me when a vugraph match starts" (via an automated chat message) is now included. You can turn this on/off either by right-clicking in the chat area or through the window that appears when you click "Options" (button at top), and then "More options" (on the menu that appears). When you see one of these messages you can right-click on the name of the vugraph operator (at the left of the chat message) and then "Join table" on the menu that appears in order to go and watch the vugraph match in question.

- The Windows client option for "follow X as a kibitzer in this tournament" (where X is a BBO user) is now included. When you are kibitzing at a tournament table you can right click a player's name in order to enter/exit this mode for the player in question.

- Chat->club has been implemented.

- You can now see when a player at your table enters or exits "be right back" mode.

- The web-client is now smarter about when it includes "Join table" in the menu that appears when you right click a user's name in the chat area.

In addition to the usual bug fixes and the possibility that there are new features that I forgot to mention here, V30 is the first version of the web-client that is based on the latest and greatest version of the programming language that we use (Flex). Adobe has fixed some annoying problems that used to exist in Flex, but I would not be surprised if they (not to mention we) have created some new ones.

So please let me know if you find any problems, either by sending me an e-mail (fred@bridgebase.com) or by posting in this Forums thread:

Link to Forums thread for web-client comments

Of course feedback and suggestions not related to bug reports are also welcome.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com