ChessFlash

First off, please allow me to Thank You for all the hard work You have put into this most valuable tool. Chess players around the globe, couldn't thank you enough for the time and energy you've invested into Your ChessFlash player.

My request is something along the lines of me wanting to create a blog in my myspace account that will allow me to display my top 5 and worst 5 games of '09. Nothing special, I just thought it would be a nice place for my friends to go check them out in one place, rather than multiple blogs. And after finding the ChessFlash player a couple months back.... I couldn't resist trying to create such a blog / post in the forums I frequent

I tried a test blog, and after posting the first game and previewing, all looked fine. but after copying and pasting code from a second game, it doesn't seem to work. (2nd game is broken, only a slide bar is present) Is there something I should be doing on my end to make this a reality, or is this something that creates 'confusing code' and the browser won't interpret correctly?

eitherway... Thanks again for all you do. Take Care & God Bless,

--aaron

If you look at the game I posted, starting move 31. After the black pawn promotes, it turns into a White Queen. The color is corrected after a Queen move.

The following issues were identified by likesforest at our previous, test website. I'm logging them here with current status.

Update: June 7, 2008: FIXED in V0-046: now moves are bold commentary is not - Feedback #1 - (moderate) - It's sometimes hard to read the moves vs the annotation because they're the same color and weight. Chessbase uses a different color for annotations (navy blue by default) to help differentiate them.

Update: June 7, 2008: FIXED in V0-046: the selected variation turns red with the moves bolded (not new); now as a variation navigation aid, the moves stay bolded (but color reverts to default) when you select another variation - Feedback #2 - (moderate) - When there are several variations for a move, eg 7...Bb4, 7...c6, 7...Nb4, and 7...Be6 it would be better to put each one at the beginning of a new line (at least the first level of variations) to make them easier to read and understand. Move 26 is also hard to untangle. ;)
[I do want to eventually do more for this issue including user preferences/options for how to display the text, variations, text size, etc.].

FIXED - Feedback #3 - (minor) - The title looks nice, but the second line doesn't have as much info as we're used to. For example, "Philadelphia, 2007" or "chess.com, 2008" follow the standard format of (site), (date). "World Open" and "Online Chess" are less meaningful... although an argument could be made that "World Open, 2007" and "Online Chess, 2008" are fine ways to display it--the missing date is most important.

FIXED/WORKAROUND (link to PGN) - Feedback #4 - (minor) - It would be nice to have a "View PGN" button available. Perhaps I'm spoiled from chess.com but one of the nice features there is that I can quickly drop the game into Chessbase when someone asks for help analyzing it.

FIXED - Feedback #5 - (major) - In some places ChessFlash is eliminating spaces between words. For example, in the source pgn it's "may be able to" and "trap my queen". This ChessFlash-introduced typos make my annotations look less professional.

OPEN - Feedback #6 - (minor) - On chess.com you simply cut + paste the PGN rather than creating a PGN file and then uploading it. That shaves 45 seconds off the uploading process--although I still was done within a couple minutes.

Update: July 11, 2008: FIXED Feedback #7 - (minor) - Having a default height/width or options like "small", "medium", and "large" might help people not so used to thinking about how many pixels make up a webpage or screen (not an issue for me, just a thought).
[In the new Basic Publishing Dialog width and height are no longer options -- they are supplied automatically based on the orientation].

FIXED - Feedback #8: Apparently, ChessFlash does not support the PGN "FEN" option which allows you to begin at the middle or near the end of a game rather than at the beginning.[The problem was actually caused by commentary before the first move. That has been fixed].

FIXED - Feedback #9 (minor) - If no player names are present, perhaps we can omit the "? - ?" as it adds no information. Plus, it doesn't really look so nice on top of an otherwise good endgame study. I imagine the same thing would pop up when illustrating a tactic.