Do you miss something on BrainKing.com and would you like to see it here? Post your request into this board! If there is a more specific board for the request, (i.e. game rule changes etc) then it should be posted and discussed on that specific board.
1. Quick-play game pages. (This is where all unnecessary information is removed from the game page.) So all the is left is:
Game name Submit move right under game name to submit without scrolling. Opponent name IMPORTANT Game info (like captured pieces, Cube points, etc..) Game Board Message for opponent box notes for self box 2nd submit button draw/resign/delete links Link back to main page Link to switch back to "more info" game page
What is not needed to take loading time: User Icons User flags User ratings User graph link User "what are they doing" user last moved Rules link Brainrook.com links no smileys link no autosave is disable link no switch to rich text editor link no change message area size link Discussion board links Tournament info & link Game ID Time per move info public game info rated game info layout info board size info Weekend day into Automatic vacation info User agreement, Brainking staff, etc... links
Having just what is really needed to play games would speed things up.
2. Move number is needed to be displayed on Ice Age Chess. It is stupid to have to show the game notation just for these games so i can see what move a game is on, then have to hide it again when I play something else. MOVE NUMBER IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR THIS GAME - IT AFFECT GAME PLAY so it needs to be put near the board (like point total for cubed gammon games)
3. For Dice Poker, I still find it hard to always make sure the very little box is clicked. Is there ANY way that if you click on the dice, it checks the box for the dice? I can't tell you how often I have thought I had a box checked, to only find out opps - I did not.
BIG BAD WOLF: Yes, I'd like to have smaller pages as well. I started my CSS file with the one posted here offering the classic look, and most of what I have added since is { display: none }. Unfortunally, most classes are very generic and labelled for the visual effect (like 'to-right') instead of what it is ('user icon', 'user last move', etc). And many things are quite hard to select (due to their encapsulating element either not having a class or an id, or having a class or id that is used elsewhere as well).
AbigailII: Maybe this part of the discussion should go over to the design board, but I'm looking for speed - speed of the page loading. Right now the system has to calculate ratings change on each game page before displaying it. It has to create / figure out the time left for the move on each game page. The system has to look at all past matches between the 2 players, and display the results on each game page. Things that I would think slows the page load time down a little. And I'm new to .css files, so maybe I don't understand it - but if every element has it's own label, and you have a very long .css file saying "don't show this", and "hide this", and "show this here" - wouldn't having to read that .css file and create a custom webpage every time also slow the page load speed down? That is more then lets say having the system create the page without all those things in the first place, taking away the time it takes for the system to create the page in the first place.
BIG BAD WOLF: We're talking about text here - page size isn't significant here. You won't note the difference between a few letters more. Rendering the page however may show a difference - and that's what you can surpress with display: none.
As for the size of the the CSS file, two things. First, having ids and/or classes for all elements doesn't mean the CSS file should have an entry for each id or class. Second, a CSS file is rather static - the CSS file typically doesn't change between page requests. Which means the browser only has to check the CSS file hasn't changed, and doesn't have to download it.
As for the server side calculations needed to generate a page, I have no idea how much is calculated on the fly, and how much is pre-calculated.
AbigailII: Server side calculations have nothing to do with BrainKing design (they are already optimized anyway) and I ask everyone to move this discussion to the BrainKing design board. By the way, the purpose of the new CSS system is not to allow people to customize everything.
Fencer: That is why I placed my request to have a quick-play game page option since I know it would be hard to have something similar with just .css alone.
Would you like a very useful request like that to also go to the BrainKing design board, or just the .css file related stuff?
BIG BAD WOLF: css allows you to not show things. However you still download them even though they are not shown. So modifying your css file to not show them will not speed anything up at all.
I to want to see a quick play mode something with absolutely minimum output so even on really slow connections it will be fast. Preferably some output that needs to be interpreted by a client side application.
BIG BAD WOLF: hexkids greasemonkey script does 90% of your number 1 and does number 3, and i agree with both them. Sadly he seems to have vanished, would be nice if someone could carry on his great work. Just hope he is ok
mctrivia: Hey, thats great news, just to know he is ok, been worried about the guy, he is always so helpful. We could post a Feature Request here and by the end of the day he would have written it into his script. Hope he comes back soon