ChessFlash

July 14, 2008. Coming soon: voice and sound. See this post on glennwilson.com/chess for an example. The initial versions of this functionality will be very limited and will require that you provide the mp3 sound recordings to use (ChessFlash does not have a "record mode" but see this YouTube: Audacity and Lame and Audacity Tutorial for Podcasting for some free software that lets you record mp3s). I consider ChessFlash audio to be "experimental" at this point.

You can now upload MP3 files using the file browser but your quota is limited to 10 MB per directory and 20 MB total. To use an mp3 with ChessFlash today you will need to hand-modify the generated html/embed code. If you want to know how, ask; otherwise I'll get around to documenting it soon-ish.

July 10, 2008. In the "less is more" department, there is a new simplified Basic Publishing Dialog. Previously published content is not affected. This is intended to address some ease of use issues, performance issues (you can now embed more viewers in a single web page with good load times) and make it easier to publish in sizes and colors that look good in your blog.

Also see the new Getting Started...

This is the new dialog you get when creating content and you click the CF logo at the left end of the toolbar. The old classic dialog is on the right end of the toolbar, for now, but it will be discontinued very soon.

On the Basic Publishing Dialog you must select a PGN file to publish. Everything else is optional. However, if you are publishing to a blog with narrow columns it is recommended that you select Vertical for the orientation. You may pick a color theme or take the default. The two override choices are optional and allow you to override the colors used for the dark squares and the background if you do not like those supplied by the theme or ChessFlash.

Blogger preview will not show anything where the ChessFlash Viewer will ultimately show up so you have to publish it to see what it will look like in your blog. Colors and sizes may appear different in your blog than they appear here on ChessFlash. If no "Dark Color Override" is selected and the default theme is used, ChessFlash will guess at the color to use for the dark squares of the chessboard. Sometimes it guesses very well, sometimes not. If any other theme is used the dark color is supplied by the theme. If no "Background Color Override" is selected ChessFlash will guess at what color to use for the background, regardless of the theme. If it picks a bad background color for your blog, you may override it by supplying a color in the override box. Colors may be specified as hex color values (FFFFFF is white, 000000 is black) or by typing the name of a common color such as purple or darkred.

For an example of what you might get, see the July 10 post at: ChessFlash on Blogspot. In this case I used the default color theme and ChessFlash picked colors that worked well with the blog. ChessFlash is not always perfect about picking colors for you, hence the ability to select color themes and override the color of the dark squares and the background. Another example is the July 10 post here.

This does use javascript so this will not work for any of your readers that have javascripts disabled.

The Gallery pages on Color Themes and Layouts are updated for the new Basic Publishing Dialog and I've added a new Custom Colors page to the Gallery that explains how to use your own color values.

If you encounter problems please email me at glenn.wilson [at] gmail.com.

June 26, 2008. IMPORTANT NOTICE. I have been doing some stress and performance testing and want to make everyone that is publishing using ChessFlash aware that embedding more than about 25 instances of the ChessFlash Viewer in a single web page will cause bad things to happen to your web browser (out-of-memory, crash, etc). There is always going to be some limit but I am looking at different ways to increase (significantly, I hope) that limit. This will be a limitation on my Houston Chess blog for certain labels pages (like the "chessflash" label) so I have changed to use a "Read More..." technique described by blogger in this post.

June 23, 2008. The html generated to embed ChessFlash in your blog or web page has been fixed for an IE7 performance issue. This also simplifies the generated script. The downside is that from within blogger the Prevew does not show the ChessFlash Viewer if you are using IE7 (but it publishes fine). Let me know if you notice anything unusual.

If you registered with the user name Admin or similar you will need to re-register under a new name.

June 17, 2008. ChessFlash PGN Viewer Version 1.0 is now official! Thanks everyone that's helped by trying out the early versions!

June 13, 2008 5:00 pm CST. ChessFlash PGN Viewer Version 1.0 Release Candidate 1 is now live. Games published from this point forward will use the latest version of 1.x. This build adds minor changes in the size and location of the "Click to Play" button. Before the game is started, the Move Text Header area is now a hyperlink to ChessFlash. Previously published games will continue to use the version they were published with unless they are republished.

June 12, 2008 4:00 pm CST. Please visit our Gallery to see examples of different publishing options and layouts.June 11, 2008 8:00 am CST. A pawn promotion bug was found in V0-047 and fixed in V0-048. V0-047 was replaced with V0-048 to fix this defect in a published game. The formatting and spacing for annotations is also improved. Now, we are live with V0-048 (the previous announcement was premature). V0-048 now (6/11/2008 8pm) has better sizing of the rank and file labels around the board and shows a title.

June 10, 2008 6:30 pm CST. V0-048 of the ChessFlash PGN Viewer is now live. The previous version was V0-047. Games published from this point forward will use the new version. Previously published games will continue to use the version they were published with unless they are republished. V0-048 introduces puzzle or study mode and related features.

Now, when publishing games there are four additional options in the ChessFlash Dialog. These can all be ignored unless you are interested in publishing in puzzle mode or want to specify a special starting FEN.

• Puzzle/Study Mode No - not puzzle mode; Yes - is puzzle mode. In puzzle mode, the reader is allowed to enter moves for one side by clicking the board.
• Human Plays White or Black. Only applies in puzzle mode. The side the human plays.
• FEN An initial FEN position to display before loading the PGN file. Always optional.
• Board Only No or Yes. If Yes, then no moves, text or commentary is shown -- just the board(s).

For examples, see Puzzle Mode and Study Mode.

June 9, 2008 11:10 am CST. V0-047 of the ChessFlash PGN Viewer is now live. The previous version was V0-046. Games published from this point forward will use the new version. Previously published games will continue to use the version they were published with unless they are republished. V0-047 improves the appearance of the start button, improves the appearance of the focus rectangle and makes scrolling smarter (forward scrolling includes the next move where possible; backwards includes the previous where possible). Also, when using the variations tab with just one board the main line shows up as the first tab.

June 7, 2008 11:00 am CST. V0-046 of the ChessFlash PGN Viewer is now live. The previous version was V0-045. Games published from this point forward will use the new version. Previously published games will continue to use the version they were published with unless they are republished. V0-046 improves the text formatting to distinguish between moves (bolded) and commentary (not bolded). When you select a subvariation it will become red and bolded (moves only). When you leave that sub variation the color reverts to the default but the moves stay bold so you can see where you have already been.

V0-045 of the ChessFlash PGN Viewer is now live. June 5, 2008 7:15 am CST. The previous version was V0-044. Games published from this point forward will use the new version. Previously published games will continue to use V0-044 unless they are republished.
V0-045 fixes a text sizing defect and a color defect for the board2 buttons when there are two boards. For demonstration of the problem and the fixes, see:Large Board, Small Board, and Two Boards, Different Colors. V0-045 also sets focus on the forward and back buttons when they are clicked so you can just keep pressing space or enter (after the initial click on the button) to repeat that action (move forward or backward).