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Site Enhancements - 2011.06.16

Hi, chess-lovers!

Here's a quick update on some things we did during this morning’s interruption.

Online Chess Changes

We added new tab behavior to the right of the board. Because not everyone chats, “Moves” is now the default tab selection when the page loads.

But we’re not being anti-social! The Chat tab will always have focus as players make their first moves in each game. And the Chat tab will also have focus any time you have new messages to read. (If you like to chat during your games, you may not even notice the change. But if you don’t chat often, the emphasis will generally be on the move-history and other features there.)

Also, for players who like to consult the Explorer for opening statistics, we’ve made the Explorer window bigger. Until now, users had to scroll horizontally to see the whole thing if they linked to it from the "Moves" tab in Online Chess.

Finally, for unrated players we’ve replaced the default “1200” in most contexts with the term “unrated,” which is easier to understand for many new users. (This is just a change in presentation; ratings calculations for unrated players still use 1200.)


Other Stuff

  • If you like, you may now turn off Tactics Tags in your Tactics Trainer Settings. (Several users complained that they didn’t like getting “hints” before retrying a failed puzzle.) If you don't ever want to see or vote on tags, just uncheck the box that says "Show Tags."
  • We made some nice cosmetic improvements to Messages!
  • Again, lots of little bug-fixes… For one, we fixed the problem that prevented people from downloading the PGN from a Vs Computer game.


That’s it for today! Fire away if you’ve got questions or comments.

Cheers!

 Always the last to know? Don't despair - track the Webmaster!

Comments


  • 18 months ago

    motleyt

    dear poop, this first game is unrated, therefore your rating remains blank until you complete a rated game. challenge or enter a tournament. I will be happy to play you rated  (i'm 1494 now)   just challenge motleyt

  • 22 months ago

    poopbuttmouth

    im a recently a new member and just won my 1st game on here against one of the greeters, a 1340 rated player, but it still shows me unrated. why is this, and when will i actually get a rating?

  • 23 months ago

    DavidStyles

    Glad to have the default window set to chat again - thanks for listening!

    Sure I'll tab between all the windows when hopping through games making a move and moving on, but it makes a big difference to have the chat tab set to default when I'm playing a large portion of a game in something like realtime, chatting with my friend/opponent, to not have to click "chat" every time one of us makes a move if we wish to continue the conversation.

    So yes, thanks for giving us the option of keeping it that way :)

    The openings explorer being a sensible size is a good move too!

  • 23 months ago

    maapalaa

    I completely agree. Chess.com is number 1. I tried few other sites, but none comes even closer to chess.com. I so far had a wonderful learning experience playing in this site

  • 23 months ago

    C-Saw

    More great changes..chess.com still number 1! Of course you will always have those people like above that no matter what you do they still wont be happy...
  • 23 months ago

    artfizz

    DeepGreene announced this 'fixed' 7 days ago (earlier in this blog):

    "Ok, in the light of everything we've heard and discovered to date, we have decided to go back to the original plan and introduce a new echess setting:

    Your options on a new "Default Info Tab" setting will be...

    MOVES (unless new chat)

    CHAT

    DETAILS (unless new chat)

    NOTES (unless new chat)

    Coming very soon...  People who want things to be as they were before will have to change their setting to "Chat," as the default will be "Moves" (so as to not change default behavior yet again).

    Cheers, and thanks again for all the input!"

  • 23 months ago

    tintinman10

    they need to stop changing things and leave them alone. It pisses me off that the chat tabdoesn't come up on my online games anymore and it doesn't come up automatically when you have a message like they say. Don't fix what ain't broke. leave things alone.

  • 23 months ago

    Chuggerboom

    Thanks to Chess.com for making the required changes.....I can now delete my account with your competitor :-)

  • 23 months ago

    maapalaa

    Is it possible to have some conditional moves in vote-chess. For example in few moves where checks are involved only one legal move is available and both teams have to wait for the time.

  • 23 months ago

    IM Kacparov

    thanks, looking forward to that

  • 23 months ago

    artfizz

    A creative solution - nicely done, DeepGreene!

  • 23 months ago

    Takahe

    Great news! Thanks to chess.com for listening to their customers. And apparently for having found a way to keep everyone happy!! That's rare.

    a happy takahe:)

  • 23 months ago

    sollevy10

    thanks DeepGreene.

  • 23 months ago

    vinpaysdoc

    Wonderful!

  • 23 months ago

    Larsera

    DeepGreene,

    That is wonderful news - thank you and chess.com for listening, for your flexibility, and for continuing to take care of your clients!

  • 23 months ago

    DeepGreene

    Yes.

  • 23 months ago

    DeepGreene

    @ sollevy10 - you should be seeing a red asterisk on the Notes tab whenever that tab is not empty. If you aren't, then please message me with details about your browser version and operating system!  Cheers.

  • 23 months ago

    sollevy10

    one more suggestion please:

    sometimes i put in some notes or a game plan in my note box, but with so many games i could not recall which one has my notes. is it possible to have an indicator on the note tab indicating that it is not empty?

    thanks deepgreen.

  • 23 months ago

    DeepGreene

    Ok, in the light of everything we've heard and discovered to date, we have decided to go back to the original plan and introduce a new echess setting:

    Your options on a new "Default Info Tab" setting will be...

    MOVES (unless new chat)

    CHAT

    DETAILS (unless new chat)

    NOTES (unless new chat)

    Coming very soon...  People who want things to be as they were before will have to change their setting to "Chat," as the default will be "Moves" (so as to not change default behavior yet again).

    Cheers, and thanks again for all the input!

  • 23 months ago

    artfizz

    DeepGreene wrote: @artfizz - Yes, I catch myself up on the action there as well, at least on a daily basis. :)  A couple of points:

    - (Mostly @artfizz:) I'm not sure I understand what "sticky" means, but in theory, even if a user decides to "stick" with the Moves (or Details or Notes) tabs, a new Chat message should "un-stick" their choice at least long enough to show the message (?). This sounds like it might be more complicated than the per-user preferred-tab Setting that has been rejected to date.

    No, it seems to me - if a user has selected a tab, that tab should stay selected on that game. So if they've chosen the MOVES tab, it means they're not interested in CHAT.

    A refinement I would make to this is: if a tab other than CHAT has been selected - and new chat arrives, put an asterisk against the CHAT tab until the CHAT tab has been opened. (It's the same idea as when you have modified a file but not saved it - helpful editors put a flag next to the filename to remind you.)

    DeepGreene wrote:
    - Individual preferences aside, the fact that viewing a game on, say, an iPhone marks a new Chat message as 'seen' is definitely a problem. We're assessing that now.

    Don't allow iPhone users in.

    DeepGreene wrote- Speaking entirely personally, the idea I find perhaps most interesting (short of introducing a new Setting) is increasing the amount of time (i.e. number of moves) it takes for a recent Chat message to go “stale” - triggering the system’s preference for the “Moves” tab. Based on what I understand of the current implementation, however, this might be significantly more complicated to introduce. It’s worth asking though, so I’ll see if that’s a viable path.

    Better than what we have now - but not ideal. If it's set to 7 say, I'll feel under pressure to make a comment every 6 moves just to keep the CHAT box open.

    Flagging up that the CHAT tab has something (or something unread) in it is a key idea - without actually opening it!

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