rednaz23: Yes, it could be done. But imagine the huge amount of data to transfer to the browser if someone starts 1000 games and only a half of them contains a last move message.

Fencer: I would think that most people that play a lot of games aren't taking the time to write messages... Any chance a checkbox in the settings could be added to turn this code on? Or does that still cause the code to be there for everyone?

I don't care that it may take an extra two-tenths of a second, I would still see it as worthwhile to me. Others may too, and for those of us like that we can turn this feature on. Otherwise people can leave it off in the settings page.

Fencer: But imagine the huge amount of data to transfer to the browser if someone starts 1000 games and only a half of them contains a last move message.

Really? The extra amount of traffic would be a single image (which typically will be in the browsers cache anyway), and 500 times an 'IMG' tag in the HTML code. Surely it wouldn't take more traffic than if half of the games where played against opponents that are online?

Personally, I don't care for such an image, and I would use my style sheet to filter it out, but I find the extra traffic argument baffling.

AbigailII: Actually a little bit of extra data can add a lot. 1 image at 100characters for 1000 games adds an extra 100kB of data. Some pages are already over 1MB in size on this site for some players. My Auto Player script is already having to download about 2GB of data per day off this site. However in saying that this would actually reduce the data for me since i would not have to download the game to check for a note.

mctrivia: It wouldn't be an image... it would be a * next to the game...

mctrivia: Unless Fencer makes a different image for each game, or if you have a really stupid browser, adding an image a 1000 times to a page will only count for one download of the image. Which, after the first time, will be in cache anyway.

Noone complains about the overhead of the image marking online players - yet that suffers from the same "problem". Heck, if one would use the same image as for online players, the only increase in traffic would be the extra 'IMG' tags in the HTML page.

Furthermore, a single simple image is a huge traffic problem, smilies should be abandoned. The images are much larger, and what's worse, a typical boards page has many different smilies. But no, there are no complains about traffic if someone makes a 35k smiley; instead, it is welcomed and added to the collection.

Now, as I said, I'm not interested at all in such an image (not caring about in-game chats - the medium is too awkward and slow), but I don't buy the 'traffic' argument.

AbigailII: As I stated before, the problem how I would see it is having to check the database on every game to see if there is a note on the game or not - so if you have 1000 games on your main page, that is 1000 more times the database has to be accessed to load the front page - so for that, I could see not only taking more time to load the page - but depending on the equipment - slow down the database for others who are trying to access it.

Maybe it is set up differently where it does not need to do that, but that is how I image it setup.

coan.net: I don't know how fencers database is but I know on my server I can do several thousand searches a second no problem.

AbigailII : My math was just on the HTML required to display the image

rednz23: a * would be excelent it would only add 1 byte of extra HTML output

coan.net: It already has to access the database to show the gametype, eventname, opponent, your colour, the current move number, and time left. Surely you'd think Fencer is able to change the SQL in such away that it doesn't require more accesses to the database (although he might need another join depending on how the database is set up)?

Beside, Fencer's objection was huge amount of data to transfer to the browser, not "more accesses to the database".

AbigailII: If rednaz23's idea was used there would only be an addition of 1 byte/game to send to the User. For me this would drastically cut down bandwidth usage because I do not check games that the last message had a note.