I thought I better stop giving everyone the same old line about ‘please be patient, things are coming, etc’...and show some of the work in progress. I was nearly finished with this work over a month ago, but I have been sidetracked by some work outside the site.
Anyway, rather than wait any longer before making it available, I have packaged one of the more interesting things in the works and uploaded it as a demo. I set out to create the best board interface possible without using a plug-ins, such as Java & Flash. Demoing this now should reveal any early problems.
http://www.redhotpawn.com/demo/index.php?gameid=1054591
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Notes :
-The game ids can be changed by modifying the URL. (User friendly, eh?) Old’ish games may not be accessible with this demo – so stay with fairly recent games.
-All images are temporary/incomplete - and need more work. Some boards and pieces are still missing from this demo
-You may move pieces around when the game is not playing (Note, no green square at the moment).
-This is the core of the new move board interface as well as the game history viewer – all animated ( including en passant and castling – prior to the move being submitted.) -This code will also form the basis of the new much improved analysis tool.
Slightly more techy notes :
-The entire game history is created from moves in JS rather than the traditional way of creating FENs on the server and passing them to the client JS script. This means your computer works, not our server 🙂 (but the saving is almost insignificant, truth be told)
-Anyone who has created external tools to read the RHP FENS in the past will find their stuff will not work in the future. Please speak to me soon if you want to know how I can support your tools.
-You will notice the JS source code is mainly obfuscated. Sorry about that if you are the curious type, but there is a lot of work in there, and I am not ready to release it yet. Once I have finished (and added PGN parsing), I will probably distribute the source code to those who are interested so others can have a DHTML only animated boards (with navigation) on their sites. I am not committing to this quite yet, but I think it would be nice to share this if people like it.
Supported browsers:
The recent stealthy release (which added no new functionality to the site) has set me up now for a whole range of new features. But, they are all dependant on recent browsers. (I posted something about this in Site announcements last week) Anyway, some browsers just do not work with this new board code. I will maintain a revision of the current board interface (one bonus of my recent efforts is that any number of board interfaces can be supported easily, so hang on in there those after the PDA/mobile version).
But, to use a lot of the new stuff, you will need a modern browser.
So far, I have tested this on IE 6, Firefox and Safari 1.3. All are good. Konqueror worked with a past version. I am particularly interested in anyone using IE 5.X on Windows though. Mac IE 5.X is completely broken, and I will not be supporting this browser in future. There is surely no good reason to still be using it anyway, right? (Go on, prove me wrong&hellip😉
Anyway, there you have it. I better scurry back to the work I am meant to be doing at the moment…
-Russ
I think my question was unclear. What I meant was: Will it be possible to move around the pieces on the analysis board and then lock the position so you can go back to this fantasy position again? When I try to calculate a line, I often do the same first moves over and over again in the process and it would be very nice to do the initial moves once and then lock the position.
Russ-
It doesn't take stains out of my shirts and order out for pizza too ? This sucks !
I've got to check this out on a better computer . I'm afraid it will crash my dino100 I'm presently on .
The question I want to know , and you'd better have a damned good answer to , Russ - WHY ARE YOU WORKING ON YOUR VACATION ? Get the hell out of here ! Go somewhere nice with the wife and forget about us bums for a while !
Originally posted by Moldy CrowUnfortunately, I am not on vacation, just doing some work for someone else on a tight deadline. But when it is all over, I may well head off to the sun.
Russ-
It doesn't take stains out of my shirts and order out for pizza too ? This sucks !
I've got to check this out on a better computer . I'm afraid it will crash my dino100 I'm presently on .
The question I want to know , and you'd better have a damned good answer to , Russ - WHY ARE YOU WORKING ON YOUR VACATION ? Get the hell out of here ! Go somewhere nice with the wife and forget about us bums for a while !
-Russ
Originally posted by Moldy Crow"dino100" - LMAO.
Russ-
It doesn't take stains out of my shirts and order out for pizza too ? This sucks !
I've got to check this out on a better computer . I'm afraid it will crash my dino100 I'm presently on .
The question I want to know , and you'd better have a damned good answer to , Russ - WHY ARE YOU WORKING ON YOUR VACATION ? Get the hell out of here ! Go somewhere nice with the wife and forget about us bums for a while !
Originally posted by CrowleyYes, in Opera 7.54 as well... And when using the fast animation, it gets worse - the pieces (i.e. all those white kings 🙂 ) don't even always end up in the middle of a square. I think they move only half the way. Very weird. I guess it's time I update my browser...
Looks fine in all the browsers I usually use and test with, including Avant, which I never use.
FYI, looks funky in Opera 7.23 though:
http://www.aargh.co.za/images/nb_opera.gif