[fred]

Version 3.2 of the BBO mobile app has been released. You can find out more about version 3.2 here:

Click for more information

Please post in this thread if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments. Every post in this thread will be read by at least one BBO staff member, but we may not respond to every post that is made.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[dillydream]

Pleased to see an update to the Mobile App, but the link for comments thread, which is on the 'click here for more info' link, seems to bring me back to this post.

Mo

[Antrax]

This version runs significantly slower than 3.1 on the iPad 3 I tried it on.

[fred]

 Antrax, on 2012-September-11, 10:36, said:

This version runs significantly slower than 3.1 on the iPad 3 I tried it on.

We have had a few other reports of slowness, but so far I have been unable to replicate.

Can you please let me know in which context(s) the app appears to be slower? Is it only during anonymous play?

If you are referring to anonymous play, can you please try to be more specific about what seems to have slowed down? For example, do the robots themselves appear to be slower, is the card animation slower, or something else?

Any details you can offer would be appreciated. So far you are the first person who has reported this problem who might actually be able to help us get to the bottom of it.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[semeai]

Looks wonderful. Tournaments etc are a great addition.

One really minor note (this might have been present in the previous version too): I clicked the arrow in the upper right and selected "review the bidding" and got the bidding review. It covered some cards for North and East (I was kibitzing), so after reviewing the bidding I tried to tap it to get it to go away, but it wouldn't leave. Eventually I realized maybe I had to click the arrow again and select "review the bidding" again, and this did get it to go away, but it was fairly unintuitive.

[fred]

 semeai, on 2012-September-11, 12:16, said:

Looks wonderful. Tournaments etc are a great addition.

One really minor note (this might have been present in the previous version too): I clicked the arrow in the upper right and selected "review the bidding" and got the bidding review. It covered some cards for North and East (I was kibitzing), so after reviewing the bidding I tried to tap it to get it to go away, but it wouldn't leave. Eventually I realized maybe I had to click the arrow again and select "review the bidding" again, and this did get it to go away, but it was fairly unintuitive.

Tapping the bidding again should make it disappear (as long you don't tap on a bid that has an explanation). Sounds like there might be a bug. I will investigate and, if there is a bug, fix it in the next version.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[semeai]

 fred, on 2012-September-11, 12:36, said:

Tapping the bidding again should make it disappear (as long you don't tap on a bid that has an explanation). Sounds like there might be a bug. I will investigate and, if there is a bug, fix it in the next version.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

I played with it a bit just now. I can get it to go away just by tapping, by tapping on the red bar with the names at the top of the bidding panel as opposed to on the light blue bidding area itself (even with no bids with explanations). The red bar with the names is really small though, at least on my phone (it's a 4S in case that helps), so even knowing that now I'm not hitting it every time.

I guess if you make tapping the light blue area make it go away, then there will be people who try tapping for an explanation and miss and have it go away. Whatever you do is fine, just thought I'd let you know.

[fred]

 semeai, on 2012-September-11, 13:41, said:

I played with it a bit just now. I can get it to go away just by tapping, by tapping on the red bar with the names at the top of the bidding panel as opposed to on the light blue bidding area itself (even with no bids with explanations). The red bar with the names is really small though, at least on my phone (it's a 4S in case that helps), so even knowing that now I'm not hitting it every time.

I guess if you make tapping the light blue area make it go away, then there will be people who try tapping for an explanation and miss and have it go away. Whatever you do is fine, just thought I'd let you know.

Thanks. I confirmed that the behavior in this area is less than ideal. I will improve things for the next version.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[lalldonn]

Fred, are there any plans to include bidding practice rooms on the mobile app?

[Antrax]

 fred, on 2012-September-11, 12:00, said:

We have had a few other reports of slowness, but so far I have been unable to replicate.

Can you please let me know in which context(s) the app appears to be slower? Is it only during anonymous play?

If you are referring to anonymous play, can you please try to be more specific about what seems to have slowed down? For example, do the robots themselves appear to be slower, is the card animation slower, or something else?

Any details you can offer would be appreciated. So far you are the first person who has reported this problem who might actually be able to help us get to the bottom of it.

So far I've tested only anonymous play. I've turned off animations. In the bidding phase the GUI seems less responsive but bots still insta-bid from my human perspective. So let's say I want to bid 1♥ - it takes longer now for the suit menu to come up once I've clicked on the "1", and then even if I want to see the bid explanation, it takes much longer than before (almost a full second of holding my finger down).
In the play, the bots seem to play much slower (sometimes pausing for as long as two seconds before playing to a trick), and the same GUI jerkiness is still apparent - I click a card, I can see it highlighted, then a while after it appears as played, then a while after the next trick begins. It used to be instantaneous with animations off in the previous version.

If it helps, I've seen the same slowness in the 3.1 app on an iPhone, so possibly there's just something going on eating CPU cycles, and not any particular tweak to robot settings that makes 3.2 slower than 3.1.

[uday]

Antrax, thanks for the input. Mind running a couple more experiments for us?

1. I assume it won't help but try 'Hand diagram' ( ie, turn off pictures of cards ). Is it more responsive now?

2. Regardless, try a power cycle of the device. Is it more responsive now?


Our direct emails are fred@ and uday@ if you'd like to take this offline
edit: Fred asks you, if you don't mind, to email him directly so he can try sending you custom/experimental/debug versions until we sort this out.

Thanks much

Uday

[barmar]

 dillydream, on 2012-September-11, 09:51, said:

Pleased to see an update to the Mobile App, but the link for comments thread, which is on the 'click here for more info' link, seems to bring me back to this post.

It takes me to the post in the announcements forum. Maybe Fred fixed it since originally posting.

[toufou2]

I have just updated the BBO app for iPad. Playing he cards is so slow it's like watching paint dry. Every players cards advance in sacaded incriminates taking about 2 seconds each to reach the center of the table. I tried reinstalling the app and resetting the iPad with no success. ????

[bernard]

I too find the new version of the mobile app 3.2 to be noticeably slower. In particular when using anonymous play

1 Logging in takes longer, both to get to the screen to select the scoring format and once selected to bring up the hand

2 Card animations are really slow, turning off is a necessity to make it playable

3 Selecting cards to play is sometimes slow, but other times fine, but is noticeably slower regardless compared to the previous version. On the other hand bidding seems fine.

iAd is a pain in that the bottom of the screen is now covered. I appreciate why you have iAds so perhaps the bridgebase screen could be made slightly shorter to accommodate the iAd better.

Happy to be of assistance to help you improve the app.

Bernard

[bernard]

I have just tried with card diagrams off and it is still slow. It's a similar speed to having card animation off, but much faster than animation on which is extremely slow.

I should point out a correction from my previous post, when playing anonymously bring up the initial scoring selection screen is fast, it is only once a scoring method is selected that there is a wait for the hand to appear.

Finally I have 'power cycled' and it made no difference.

Bernard

[fred]

Thanks to everyone for providing information about the slowness problem. I am working on it...

For those of you who have seen this, what type of device (iPad/iPhone) and what model of that device are you using?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[bernard]

Thanks for the quick response.

It's the new iPad, aka iPad 3

Bernard

[SimonFa]

Using the iPad 3 to watch vugraph has slow graphics.

Simon

[sach_t]

 fred, on 2012-September-13, 08:58, said:

Thanks to everyone for providing information about the slowness problem. I am working on it...

For those of you who have seen this, what type of device (iPad/iPhone) and what model of that device are you using?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

How do you claim using this software?

[fred]

 sach_t, on 2012-September-14, 16:13, said:

How do you claim using this software?

There is a button with a down arrow on it in the top right corner of the table. If you click that a menu will appear. If you are allowed to claim in the current context then "Claim" will appear on the menu (among other useful things).

You are not allowed to claim when playing against robots (at least not yet).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com