[fred]

stresp, on Jan 7 2010, 05:53 PM, said:

fred, on Jan 6 2010, 12:01 PM, said:

stresp, on Jan 6 2010, 04:16 PM, said:

I still can´t find any way to adjust GiB playing speed in the web client. Will this come?

Svein

Currently we have no plans to implement this. If I had to guess I would say that I expect it to happen one day but that I would be somewhat surprised if it were to happen in 2010.

The main issue here is cost. Would you be willing to pay more than $1 per week to play with a stronger version of GIB? If we thought that a lot of users would answer "yes" to this question, it might speed up our development in this area. If not we will have to wait until the cost of running GIBs goes down.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I would be willing to pay severak times more, but I have no idea what others would be willing to pay.

From my point of view, GiB is of absolutely no use as is. At about 70-75%, it starts to get useful.

After all, GiB is one of the few things that costs anything on BBO, so I feel that the cost argument is a bit strange? I borrowed a windows PC in order to buy a half year subscription of GiB - just to find out that my subscription was useless:(

Svein

Thanks for your response. About the cost issue, I will clarify...

When a member uses a rented GIB with the web-client, the GIB is actually running on one of our servers. Servers cost money. Increasing the skill-level setting of the GIBs that run on a given server results in fewer GIBs being able to run on that server. We then need to get additional servers to handle the extra load and this costs money.

I don't know the specific details (and I would not post them if I did), but I am quite sure that if we gave these GIBs (say) twice as much time to think, instead of making a small profit on each $1 rental, we would incur a substantial (in terms of %) loss.

As servers continue to become faster and less expensive, the equation will change, but for now the only way we could afford to provide better rented robots for web-client users would be pass this cost on to our customers (by charging them more than $1 per week). It is good to know that there are people out there who would be willing to pay this.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[stresp]

fred, on Jan 7 2010, 01:08 PM, said:

stresp, on Jan 7 2010, 05:53 PM, said:

fred, on Jan 6 2010, 12:01 PM, said:

stresp, on Jan 6 2010, 04:16 PM, said:

I still can´t find any way to adjust GiB playing speed in the web client. Will this come?

Svein

Currently we have no plans to implement this. If I had to guess I would say that I expect it to happen one day but that I would be somewhat surprised if it were to happen in 2010.

The main issue here is cost. Would you be willing to pay more than $1 per week to play with a stronger version of GIB? If we thought that a lot of users would answer "yes" to this question, it might speed up our development in this area. If not we will have to wait until the cost of running GIBs goes down.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I would be willing to pay severak times more, but I have no idea what others would be willing to pay.

From my point of view, GiB is of absolutely no use as is. At about 70-75%, it starts to get useful.

After all, GiB is one of the few things that costs anything on BBO, so I feel that the cost argument is a bit strange? I borrowed a windows PC in order to buy a half year subscription of GiB - just to find out that my subscription was useless:(

Svein

Thanks for your response. About the cost issue, I will clarify...

When a member uses a rented GIB with the web-client, the GIB is actually running on one of our servers. Servers cost money. Increasing the skill-level setting of the GIBs that run on a given server results in fewer GIBs being able to run on that server. We then need to get additional servers to handle the extra load and this costs money.

I don't know the specific details (and I would not post them if I did), but I am quite sure that if we gave these GIBs (say) twice as much time to think, instead of making a small profit on each $1 rental, we would incur a substantial (in terms of %) loss.

As servers continue to become faster and less expensive, the equation will change, but for now the only way we could afford to provide better rented robots for web-client users would be pass this cost on to our customers (by charging them more than $1 per week). It is good to know that there are people out there who would be willing to pay this.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Thanks for your reply! I have been developing Internet applications for nearly 20 years and have no problem understanding the cost issue. Maybe an idea could be that if you pay more, you can get more CPU cycles. Anyhow, thank you for bringing this splendes service to the bridge community.

Svein

[matmat]

did i misclick something somewhere or did you change the way user lists are displayed in the flash client? now i get one per line with a note about what they are doing. this is quite annoying, actually, I much prefer to be able to see what stars or friends are online rather than what a small fraction of them are doing and have to scroll for the rest.

[barmar]

I just noticed that tonight, too. It's OK for short lists like Hosts, but it means long lists can only show half as many users at a time.

[bb79]

I actually like the new display of online players.

[fred]

We (quietly) put out a new version of the web-client yesterday.

You can read more about it here:

Liink to announcment on new version of web-client

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[kfay]

fred, on Jan 14 2010, 01:01 PM, said:

We (quietly) put out a new version of the web-client yesterday.

You can read more about it here:

Liink to announcment on new version of web-client

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Just have to say...


I LOVE how the friends are listed now: you can see what everyone is doing without having to mouse over their names. This is great great great great GREAT!

Nice idea

[matmat]

kfay, on Jan 14 2010, 04:45 PM, said:

fred, on Jan 14 2010, 01:01 PM, said:

We (quietly) put out a new version of the web-client yesterday.

You can read more about it here:

Liink to announcment on new version of web-client

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

Just have to say...


I LOVE how the friends are listed now: you can see what everyone is doing without having to mouse over their names. This is great great great great GREAT!

Nice idea

except when you can't see all the names who are logged in because they are off the bottom of the page.

[uday]

Y , maybe we 'll make the font smaller ; but lets say the screen holds

50 names in the new single-line format
200 names in the old multicolumn format

For people who tend to have fewer than 50 friends online at once, the new format rates to be better. For people ( presumably like MatMat) who tend to have 50+ friends online at once, the old format rates to be better ( or not , depending on whether the goal is to glance and know they're there vs glance and know what they're doing )

Most people seem to fall into the fewer-than-50 category, fwiw.

Anyway, lets see how it goes.

[matmat]

uday, on Jan 14 2010, 05:28 PM, said:

Y , maybe we 'll make the font smaller  ; but lets say the screen holds

50 names in the new single-line format
200 names in the old multicolumn format

For people who tend to have fewer than 50 friends online at once, the new format rates to be better.  For people ( presumably like MatMat) who tend to have 50+ friends online at once, the old format rates to be better ( or not , depending on whether the goal is to glance and know they're there vs glance and know what they're doing )

Most people seem to fall into the fewer-than-50 category, fwiw.

Anyway, lets see how it goes.

i don't have that many friends I just have people marked who i like to kibitz... and there's a lot of those.

Also, there are usually more than 50 stars logged in.

Maybe something as simple as using abbreviations


Playing Team Match (username) replaced with just M(username)
or
Kibitzing (username) with K(username)

and that way can, perhaps, fit two columns?

or just have an option, though that's a lot of work, i imagine.

[matmat]

uday, on Jan 14 2010, 05:28 PM, said:

Y , maybe we 'll make the font smaller ; but lets say the screen holds

50 names in the new single-line format
200 names in the old multicolumn format

For people who tend to have fewer than 50 friends online at once, the new format rates to be better. For people ( presumably like MatMat) who tend to have 50+ friends online at once, the old format rates to be better ( or not , depending on whether the goal is to glance and know they're there vs glance and know what they're doing )

Most people seem to fall into the fewer-than-50 category, fwiw.

Anyway, lets see how it goes.

also 50 is an overbid.

I think my mactop only fits about 23 names on the screen at once.

[TimG]

matmat, on Jan 14 2010, 05:34 PM, said:

i don't have that many friends I just have people marked who i like to kibitz... and there's a lot of those.

I also have quite a few players marked as friends because I might be interested in kibitzing them. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to add another category in addition to "enemy", "neutral", and "friend" to denote a person of interest.

[barmar]

A minor thing that's bugged me for a while is how many clicks it takes to enter a tourney. First you click on "Register", that's obviously necessary. Then you have to OK the entry fee, that's reasonable. But then when it displays that you successfully registered, you have to click OK to dismiss that notice, and this one seems superfluous.

How about changing that last one to one of those floating notices that fades away by itself after a couple of seconds? I think that's what is displayed if the tourney starts as you're trying to pay.

[cherdanno]

matmat, on Jan 14 2010, 05:52 PM, said:

uday, on Jan 14 2010, 05:28 PM, said:

Y , maybe we 'll make the font smaller  ; but lets say the screen holds

50 names in the new single-line format
200 names in the old multicolumn format

For people who tend to have fewer than 50 friends online at once, the new format rates to be better.  For people ( presumably like MatMat) who tend to have 50+ friends online at once, the old format rates to be better ( or not , depending on whether the goal is to glance and know they're there vs glance and know what they're doing )

Most people seem to fall into the fewer-than-50 category, fwiw.

Anyway, lets see how it goes.

also 50 is an overbid.

I think my mactop only fits about 23 names on the screen at once.

For me it's 19.

[eleanorsf]

I love the new Friends list format. Much easier for me to find potential partners who are not already playing a tourney. Well done Fred.

[eleanorsf]

The good news is that the Club button is there. The bad news is that the chat message with destination Club doesn't go out.

[cherdanno]

Btw, the main feature I miss from the old windows days is how a team match automatically transformed into a chat room after the last board. Was much more social, and made it very easy to organize rematches.
Maybe one could just leave the table who finishes last open after they have played the last hand?

[jdonn]

cherdanno, on Jan 16 2010, 06:42 PM, said:

Btw, the main feature I miss from the old windows days is how a team match automatically transformed into a chat room after the last board. Was much more social, and made it very easy to organize rematches.
Maybe one could just leave the table who finishes last open after they have played the last hand?

I forgot all about that! Yeah that was nice.

[eleanorsf]

Club chat is working now, must have had a glitch on my side yesterday.

[eleanorsf]

On the new Friends List, I've noticed that when stars log off they remain on the list. Or at least some stars some of the time. Their profiles show them as offline.