Well...this thread has been around for a while, and, unclear if anything was ever done, but here's a few ideas:

1. Opening explorer similar to chess.com or chessgames.com. So that its easy to find all updates related to a specific position or opening variation. Generally this would be a huge upgrade for both desktop and mobile usage. I feel like there's been almost no attempt to satisfy the use case of a new user that hasn't been on the site following the updates for the last 10 years. It's really built around "I want to see the updates for this month (or last month)" vs. what I feel like is a way more common use case of "what are all the updates for this specific variation that I happen to be interested in right now."

2. Bigger forward/back buttons for mobile game playback. It's almost impossible to navigate on a phone.

3. Related to #1 (and not really needed if #1 is done) but the site search is almost worthless. It's pretty clear that it's just indexing the text of the update pages, which doesn't really surface anything interesting.

4. The PDF e-books should direct link to the games they reference. Otherwise I really have no idea how to find the game in the archives, especially since the site search doesn't really work.

Not sure my 5 cents will be of help but personally I am happy with the site as it is although not against a redesign.  As a relatively new subscriber my main purpose is to download the new games in pgn format so that I can then play through them on my very old MacBook using HCE (Hiarcs Chess Explorer)

I have just tried the site on my tablet (iPad) which was actually quite a good experience,  I found the web-page text to be a little too small but if I resized it then I had a problem viewing the replay board at the same time as the game text.  Also, it would be better if the replay board floated to the top of the page rather than the bottom, I tried to use landscape mode but then the board floated off-screen so that was a problem for me. 

In summary, the current site worked well on the iPad and the laptop whilst the game replay was also quite good if a little awkward.  Hopefully whatever you decide will still work on non-Windows devices once implemented.

Thanks for a great site, best wishes for 2014!

Göran wrote on 12/15/13 at 16:20:58:


Good, thanks!

Göran wrote on 12/15/13 at 16:57:48:


I thought this only worked on MSIE anyway?

Göran wrote on 12/15/13 at 16:57:48:


Yes, I think this is really a big problem, and is the main reason I'm getting someone to redesign the site.

It is very good on the ipad.
Would it be possible to move the board a little bit to the left I think there would be a liitke bit broader place for the text as well. However I think it is working fine playing through the game.

GMTonyKosten wrote on 12/14/13 at 20:56:59:


I'm just experimenting at the moment, but you can check out the Istratescu-Greenfeld game from this month's Antis update and tell me if you think this is an improvement, size-wise.

LeeRoth wrote on 12/14/13 at 03:48:51:


Actually they even look pretty small on my desktop! I'd never noticed before as I don't use them, and I suppose no-one else does on ordinary computers otherwise someone would have mentioned it before!
I will try changing this myself tomorrow ... it shouldn't be beyond my basic computer skills! Maybe I could remove the 'go back/forward 5 moves' buttons as well - surely no-one ever uses these?

LeeRoth wrote on 12/14/13 at 03:48:51:


Me too. I have all the annotated games in one database, and when I look through the latest games I use ChessBase. That way I can consult the Chesspub Guides to see what it says about any line that interests me, then do a position search in the games database to see the previous annotations.
If I want to go further I can use the ChessBase reference function (I use MegaBase as the Reference database) and Houdini or Komodo to analyse - all very quick and powerful. No App can ever hope to match the functions of the top Chess Database programs.