Big update today
Posted by david on 17 Sep 2010 at 02:12 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Jim and I have been working on the site a lot more than usual in the last couple months. Today we’ve pushed some big changes we’ve been working on up to the main site. Here’s a list of some of the things we did:
- We got rid of the card size popup. Instead of choosing card sizes manually, the game picks the best card size based on how big your window is. If you want bigger cards, make the window bigger; a smaller window makes cards smaller.
- We (re)added pause support. It has been improved based on the feedback we got last time. It pauses automatically when you click away from the window, or manually if you click the pause button or press the pause key (Control-P). The auto-pause after 15 seconds of inactivity is not enabled at this time. We may add an option to enable it in the future because we like it, but we realize it’s confusing and annoying to some play styles.
- We fixed a ton of Internet Explorer bugs. A huge percentage of our users use Internet Explorer but it’s not convenient for us to test since neither Jim nor I run Windows on our main computers. Side note: we still haven’t tried the IE 9 beta out–if any of you have it we’d be very happy to hear feedback on how the site works with it.
- We added new, hopefully tastier looking buttons to the solitaire games. These buttons only show up on newer browsers–Firefox, Safari and Chrome users will see them right now. IE 9 may or may not show them and IE 6, 7, and 8 definitely will not.
- We added pause support to Asteroids.
- We added a high score table to Asteroids.
- Hopeless got its high score table re-enabled after being dead for 2 or 3 years.
Those are the big visible changes. There are, as always, many more changes under the hood that should make our lives easier in the future.
As usual, we’d love to hear what you think. If you find any bugs, make sure you report them.
please put print side back for personal adjustment. the cards are too large for play!
is the “pause support” that’s been added to asteroids the reason I now get a “paused” message that keeps popping up & makes my cards disappear?
Jim C, #2 in the list is what you are talking about, I think. Is should only pause the game if you click the pause button or switch to different window. If it pauses under any other conditions it is a bug and you should report it.
Audrey, Can you tell me a little about your computer screen? How big is it? Do you normally keep the browser sized to as big as it can go? Try making your window smaller and tell us if that makes things better for you.
The new feature is *supposed* to make the cards the “perfect” size to fit in the whole browser window so the game is playable and pretty. If it is anything other than that (especially unplayable) then we need to know. Thanks.
Hi,
The the new auto sizing works fine, for me, but for the following exceptions:
In Addiction and Maze, the cards are sized for the height of my screen, and, thus, are too big, so I have to scroll to see the cards at either end, of the board.
In Flower Garden, the cards are, again, sized for the height of my screen and, so, are too small to play easily.
My laptop screen is 11.25″ x 8.5″.
Hope that helps… Sage
Sage, you are right about Addiction and Maze. I had forgotten to make the auto-size detection live for those games. They should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out.
The auto-sizing works such that the initial deal of each game fits entirely in your visible window. So you like the cards to be bigger than fit on your screen so that you have to scroll? Maybe we should only fit them horizontally?
Thanks Jim, Addiction and Flower Garden are great. In Maze, the cards are still a bit small, .75″ high x .5″ wide, on my screen. But, perhaps, it’s my eyes…
Gosh, no, I don’t want to scroll, it’s far too distracting and time consuming! 🙂
Ok, I’m reporting a bug then. On both Klondike & Canfield, the screen will randomly show “paused” & the cards will fade from view, unless you click on the deck quick enough, in which case they come back. However, this makes it very tough to ever score a high score, not to mention that it’s very tough not to take a 9-iron to the computer when it happens while I’m on pace with a high score!
Love the new buttons, havent had any real problems so far, but have a few more games to play yet.
Thanks for putting the card size option back, I have trouble seeing the standard size card. It’s my eyes, not my computer that’s the problem.
You know, not all your fans are young pipsqueeks.
Lex
I have had same problem as Jim, cards often pause of their own accord and go all faded. Very frustrating at times.