New Features & Fixes - May 3 2009

I noticed that the analysis board for mobile excludes the bottom rank.  Once that is fixed, the mobile product will be amazing!

How about a "what's new?" link on the front page pointing to a blog-like page of changes and improvements with the newest at the top?

Yep, the mailer was thorough and good.  Admittedly, I didn't know about this thread until Karl sent a letter out to his entire Fast Tournaments group...and I got the mass mailing about 6 hours later.  :)  Thanks for keeping us apprised Karl_!

It's because of the "Analysis Board" header -- I'd suggest that the menu items at the bottom of the screen being different from the main board should be sufficient for users to understand that they are looking at the analysis board and that the header is extraneous and can simply be removed.

As an upgrade request for the analysis board, I think the ability to step backwards and forwards through the game (and analysis line) is really important.  Right now you can only make your analysis moves and then reset the board to the current position.  I hope this is in the works.

That's a good idea Higgs...

o0o0o - just got the message at the top about chess video lessons... looks great, attention getting, but not too intrusive.  Great way to announce and let everyone know about it.  Will it be there first time someone logs on?  Or is it for a few days regardless of when someone logs on?

i'll leave it on for a few hours, then i'll turn it off :)

It's a great way to get the news out, and another great example of your guys' responsiveness.  Unfortunately I somehow seem to have been conditioned to associate that header alert bar with an impending shutdown.

I'll have to adapt.

i just need to control what that bar looks like to differentiate.

Have I mentioned how outstanding I think the 3D pieces are?  I really thought they'd be awful and distracting, but the design is really well done and the high perspective angle eliminates the issues I thought we'd see (pieces blocking the view of other pieces).  I think I'm going to keep using them.  Great work once again.

Not everybody uses ChessBase.  It's not even the only commercial database, not to speak of the free (both as beer and in the other sense) scid, which I use.

http://scid.sourceforge.net/

I wasn't suggesting everyone (or anyone) use chessbase, I was theorizing about the posisbility of the functionality of Chess.com's game explorer being built out to allow the exploration of custom databases.

On the new mobile version, now that I can see games in which it is my opponent's move I notice that all of the games have a status of "Waiting" despite a couple of my opponents being on vacation.  On the site the status of those games is listed as "Vacation".

How about the ability to just print out the current game - diagram of the board!

Thank you so much, although I rarely used them.

Well, you did write "[including this Chessbase related functionality] would have mitigated the backlash".  I read that (wrongly?) as you suggesting that as long as this other functionality is included, the removal of PGN would be OK.  It wouldn't - I want to use my database program, not Chessbase or a Chessbase-like web widget.

Yes -- that's what I was asking, thanks for the feedback.  I still think it would be a great feature, but evidently not a replacement for downloadable PGN/FEN for games in progress in your view.

I like the way pieces move now.

I think that the current viewing angle is perfect -- it addresses the concerns that I thought might dissuade me from using 3D pieces altogether (cluttered appearance and an inability to seepieces immediately behind other pieces), as it stands I think I'm going to keep using them.

Fair enough, although for my purposes it's fine in it's current form -- I think there are for more pressing opportunities that the site developers could better spend their time on.