Quote:


Yes, and you're certainly correct that it's a significant improvement from prior times. But for example, if you go to the King's Indian Previous Updates and try to find something on the Mar del Plata Kozul Pawn Sac line, there's no mention of it, even though it has been covered  quite a bit on the site. So while its a huge improvement there are still some gaps.

Anyway I love the site so please don't take the criticism the wrong way. Thanks!

Hi Tony,
To reply to a few of your comments, being able to download the PDF e-book is definitely useful on mobile, because for example my android phone has a pdf viewer and so if I just want to read the overview of something, its nice to be able to do that. (I got around it by sticking the PDF e-books on my google drive, so not a huge deal).

With respect to the opening explorer, I did see the ECO code search (and also previous updates is grouped by ECO code). But for example, many times a game notation will say something along the lines of "12. ...Qd6 has been covered on the site in previous updates". And my first instinct is "Hm that sounds interesting, I'd like to see those updates". And there's no easy way to do it from web (or mobile) only (besides downloading everything to SCID). Or alternately, if Im interested in what has been covered in the line 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. Nf3 dxe5 5. Nxe5 g6, because maybe I'm considering playing it, again SCID is my only recourse. And I just think it would be really awesome to have _something_ available so I can do it on the web-only. And who cares if it's inferior to native chessbase or SCID? It's really, really, convenient, which makes up for a lot (in my book at least). And there are good examples of opening explorer for web out there already, for example chessgames.com, chess.com, and 365chess.com all have one.

kevinludwig wrote on 11/03/16 at 16:47:01:


No, no links to the PGN Archive or any of the subscriber-only material, nor Previous Updates (although you can click back through the updates one-by-one). The question is: is this important on a smartphone? I personally prefer to simply read things on my phone and do any 'heavy lifting' on a computer. However, I'm not so young!! All views on what should be shown on the Burger are most welcome.

That page is pretty decent on mobile, but one thing I just noticed is no link to the pdf ebooks for download. Even on the home page it has a link but it only shows the list, not actual download links.

GMTonyKosten wrote on 10/22/16 at 12:39:26:


If you're talking about the site and not the forum, the thing that stands out is the complete inability to navigate the games because the controls are so tiny (on like a Note 3 phone). Basically my only option is to click on the move text to move from move to move because clicking on the forward/back buttons is impossible. Having a more limited control bar (maybe just forward and back) but very big buttons would be great.

Also the same view (board playback) looks bad in portrait view (less of a big deal) but it would be nice if it had some reasonable layout.

This thread has been going way off-topic for some time (partly my fault, I'm afraid), should I split it up?

GMTonyKosten wrote on 10/05/16 at 08:52:42:


If I could make a request for updating an eBook, it would be for the 2c3 Sicilian one to be redone by Sam Collins. It was last updated in 2005 and his input on a modernized version would be very nice and valuable, especially after all the work that David Smerdon put into the various lines.

harryt wrote on 09/21/16 at 04:14:14:


The problem is that there were often lots of different authors over the years, and many lines change evaluations. We obviously can't rewrite the eBooks every month, just make small adjustments, so unless the line is really clear you have to look at the appropriate games to see what that author thought of the line.

RoleyPoley wrote on 09/01/16 at 18:58:16:


I don't think they are possible with YaBB Forums, but I might be wrong, I'll have a look.

I'd like to express (and just in words) strong agreement with kylemeister here.

I'm the other way -- I'm rather glad to have at least one forum to go to which doesn't use "likes."

Jesse Gersenson wrote on 08/25/16 at 20:34:46:


I don't know what others think, but I've never liked all those square brackets around the annotations in pgn4web, but maybe it's possible to remove them?

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 08/25/16 at 00:10:04:

I'd like your feedback on this page:
http://www.jesseo.com/chess/pgn4web/t2.htm?a1

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 08/23/16 at 20:50:19:

The forward and back buttons are easy to hit.

That interface is designed to PLAY chess, as opposed to read analysis and follow along on a board. I don't see where 6 lines of text and variations would go.

I sketched out a few ideas, here's one:
http://www.jesseo.com/chess/pgn4web/test1.htm

Only works on mobile devices (or in firefox/chrome you can click F12 for developer mode and then find the icon for 'responsive design mode').

You can move forward or backwards, one ply at a time, and can click on moves when they appear in text.

Things I plan to change:
1. The variations doesn't appear on their own lines, and aren't indented, as is done in most chess GUI's.
2. game text & analysis could be in a box which the user can scroll through,and which autoscrolls as the moves are played.

3. (optional) To get more space, I considered using the RIGHT side of the chessboard as the 'move forward' button and the LEFT side would be the 'move backwards' button.

Off to the store to get an old used android phone -- to replace yesterday's old used android phone which isn't starting today!?

kevinludwig wrote on 07/17/16 at 04:33:13:


Can mobile phone users please suggest any online chess board(s) they find pleasant for replaying games. They should include a short description of what they like about it and an example url.
Many thanks!

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.

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


Do the forward and back arrows on the keyboard work on mobile devices (for playing through the moves on the JS popup games)?

Thanks for all the feedback, I don't use internet on my phone so I really need your views - keep them coming!

TonyRo wrote on 12/12/13 at 04:10:53:


This made me think that there was a ChessPub.exe app many years ago (from 1999 onwards) where you could search for games and play through them. I might be wrong but I think we had to scrap this as it only worked on Windows.

I agree that the site needs to be redesigned for touchscreens - and not just because of phones and tablets.

I am using the latest Windows 8.1 on a new touchscreen laptop and the arrows on the javascript pop-ups are not big enough for my fingers! These days people hardly use the mouse with Windows 8.1 PCs as the Metro interface is designed for touchscreens.

TonyRo wrote on 12/12/13 at 17:41:59:


Do you think that adding some search capabilities to the PGN Archive would be enough? If so which additional searches would be most useful?

TonyRo wrote on 12/12/13 at 17:41:59:


Yes, I agree, this really needs sorting out. I suppose that redesigning the site to look good on a phone should be simple enough, but I'm not sure what it would take to make the popup games mobile friendly.

TonyRo wrote on 12/12/13 at 04:10:53:


I suppose we are talking about mobile devices here, otherwise you would just download the games and search on your database program?!

TonyRo wrote on 12/12/13 at 04:10:53:


Does that mean the JS popup games don't work on Android phones?

I agree. It would really be nice with an app to be able to browse the games of the updates in the chesspub.com on my iphone especially (it is always available) but also on my ipad.

In light of TonyRo's question, I will assume this is a re-design of subscription part of ChessPub.
I will out myself as a lapsed subscriber who is only a novice sub-2000 rated player with an inordinate unhealthy fascination with opening theory blessed unfortunately with a very leaky memory.

Seriously, Tony, if you wish to attract more subscribers (and I assume this as a basis for this post), I think you need to make it more user friendly. The majority of chess players in the world are club-level sub-2200 rated players. I think (and here I might be overgeneralising) they may be interested in compact succinct easy-to-learn opening repertoires. At present, I think the existing e-books and pdf-books, whilst excellent, are a bit unwieldy. They are designed like a reference tome. Need to make them more user friendly. Distilling from my years of lurking on the Pub, reading tons f chess book and my educational background, my humble suggestions:

In line with another thread (http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1382573395)and a suggestion by Matemax on the usefulness of material/resources on/behind an opening, how about combining that with what Chess Stars are doing (there is no copyright in ideas), i.e. their quick repertoire. Also, how about adding to the mix, ideas from books like Sicilian Attacks, where the standard tactical themes et al, positional considerations are considered. But make them opening specific.

So, perhaps something like this:
1) Sicilian GP (just as a totally random example) Introd/historical - 2 f4 vs 2 Nc3 3 f4
2) Strategic aims - exchanging light-sq bishop on c6 for a doubled-up pawns? (sorry I did say I am only a novice and making this up based on what I see my friend plays in a GPA)
attack K-side? pawn storm hacking style? Q-side?
Knight manoeuvres?
3) Tactical themes/ideas
4) Endgames - any typical endgames
5) Opening theory
6) Complete games annotated

This is like a template but does not mean each field has to be filled with stuff. depends on the opening/var.
Important this is simple, succinct, short. A subscriber can learn this in 1-2 hours, go an delay a few games OTB, online etc and come back to check ideas, theory.

Also make these modular (which means you can actually drill down to Variations level as well) so that subscribers can chop and change their openings in their repertoire. Perhaps have a few suggested repertoires with different themes (the ones on ChessPub is really old and not that interesting). One that I found interesting reading here on the Pub as well as from Lars Bo Hansen's book is based on strategic ideas, i.e. his mixing of French Winawer with Ragozin 'cos of Bb4 move.
There is also the Qa5 Scandi with the Triangle based on the c6 and e6 pawns clamp.

If you like, you can make these as part of special member package for an additional one-off payment. Since they are modular, you can charge them using iTunes method, i.e., 1.99 or 2.99 per module.

I would suggest continue to maintain the existing pdf/e-book reference on theory as additional for a subscriber who has gone past the initial stage of learning the opening.

PM me if you wish to discuss.

As a subscriber I am mostly interested in the chess content of the site. I don't care too much about a member section and so on... I will NOT use it - I just want to download the monthly games and have my fun replaying them.

Getting new subscibers? Well - you will need some refreshment and a more clearcut message. Perhaps some free stuff to bring back people to the site more than once - they may become subsribers in the long run. Moreover I think there are a lot of old contents that should be deleted. But that's a decision the owner has to make and I am (luckily!) only a customer.