A new version went up early this morning. It should speed things up a lot, and fix many of the minor bugs that y'all have been reporting. There's also a first draft of score list "abbreviation", in which only the most "interesting" parts of the list (i.e. you and your team, people you have marked, the top 5, and the bottom 2) are shown right away.
Oh, and it had a "fix" for the problem of pop-up blockers preventing the links to this blog and to PayPal from working. This "fix" rendered those links completely inert, even for players without pop-up blockers running. The situation has now been remedied, and those responsible (me) have been smacked.
32 comments:
I really liked Wordsplay better than WEBoggle -- I like having all of the setup options. But it doesn't load on Safari for Mac anymore, and I can't play. Bummer!
I don't like the abbreviated players' list. :-\
help! I cannot make the letters smaller -- they're huge as of today/as of today's update...nothing I do fixes this -- not changing font size, not refreshing, restarting, clearing the cache, nothing. :(
To erin: you can make the board smaller by pointing at its bottom edge to get a resizing icon (double-headed arrow) and then clicking and dragging upward.
I'm ambivalent about the abbreviated player's list. It means I know immediately how I did, which is good, but it makes my usual "goal" (get on the first screenful) useless, which is bad.
I like how you can immediately see your rank following a game. Is there any way this could be translated into a percentile?
Oh, and I have Safari for Mac and it works fine for me.
Thank you for the abbreviated players list - it's perfect! The only other suggestion I would make is some sort of server side tally of scores / rank per game so you can see how you're doing over time?
the letters are very big. is there a way to resize the letters without making the whole board smaller?
Hooray! Every "problem" I had with the last beta of Wordsplay is now fixed! Thanks!
I have to agree with the other people who said that they don't like the abbreviated players list. I like trying to get my score high enough to rank on the first page. I think it would be a lot better if you could somehow make that feature optional, so that players can decide themselves whether they want the abbreviated score list or not. Just a friendly suggestion...
I also dislike the abbreviated players list. I think it should at least keep the setting so you don't have to click "show whole list" after each round.
I have noticed the speed increase though, thanks for that.
We also do NOT enjoy the abbreviated players list! Is there any way to make it optional? Also, the bar that gives the "total words scored out of the total" that comes up on the players list always covers up one of the players and we can't move it. Any possiblity of having it always at the bottom of the list? Thanks! Otherwise, the changes are fine.
Is anyone else having trouble with the "guess" bar? When each new game comes up, we have to minimize the field and then open it up again in order to type words. Please advise!
Thanks a lot!
The guess "text entry" box is only visible for me if I hide the side menubar. As soon as I expand the side bar, the guess box loses its textbox, although the letters and words I type are still accepted. But, since I don't usually want to see the side bar anyway, it's not a problem for me.
I've also noticed that occasionally the total "bar" for the abbreviated score list seems to get stuck, obscuring some of the names rather than relocating to the bottom.
Otherwise, it's working well for me on IE6.
Wow I hadn't been here for awhile--you have done an amazing job. It was fun before, and its still fun. I agree with the folks who don't like the abbreviated list. Same with the giant letters. But my only real complaint is that I now can't play it at home, late at night, like now, where we only have a dial-up. I used to be able to play Webboggle if I was willing to accept occasional interruption. Thanks for all the hard work!
I lost the ability to enter my words using the space bar. Is that permanent? I just got used to that little trick and it was a big help! I suppose I could learn to type too -that would help.
I like the abbreviated name lists.
i too, have to minimize the guess bar and bring it up again to start to play. Otherwise, seems to be working great!
Webboggle used to play fine on my wife's old PII 500mhz, but wordsplay is slooow now on that machine. There's 2 or 3 second delay to rotate and the letters highlight way behind the typing. Can anyone suggest what might be the minimum speed I'd need for Wordsplay?
FINALLY able to get the game on mac/safari. First and foremost thank you for providing us all with so much fun. I'm still adjusting to the new game. I too find a lag in the time I type the words vs when they show, and wish I didn't have to click on the word bar every time I start a new game. The thing I really preferred though was having the word lists separated between "words everyone got" "words no one guessed" etc. I realize it saves space this way but I always liked to check what I missed and this is harder to discern and takes more time. Now here's my biggest problem - I notice that often my score on my word list doesn't transfer over to my ranking. For example I racked up 62 pts then when the list posts my name shows up with 44 pts. This happened over and over tonight. Lastly I agree that it's motivating to see your name on the long list without having to click it open. I feel like I'm spending too much time between games checking everything out.
To Debra
If you click on the Customize symbol on the Word List bar, you can click "Divide the word list into four groups". This will divide them up in the way you prefer eg. Words only you found, Words other players found,etc.
Have fun
sI really wish we could have live chat with other players while playing the game.
suggestion: I really liked the format for guessed words better on WEBoggle - I was thinking about it and realized it was because a) I could see more clearly if they were correct, because of the color scheming, and b) it told me whenever I guessed a word - if it was in the dictionary, if it wasn't on the board, if I'd guessed it before - I really liked being ablt to see that on a line-by-line basis (not in paragraph format). Just a suggestion.
Noticed the speed improvement, thank you!
I'm ambivalent about the abbreviated score list, too, for the same reasons as mentioned - I like immediately seeing where I stand, but the goal of "getting on the first page" is nullified.
I'm thinking perhaps the bottom few scores are not really interesting to anyone except the bottom few scorers. (They're usually people who started playing with just a few seconds left, anyway.) So a way to achieve both goals would be to only put in the "skipped" bar *above* my score, and then only if I wouldn't otherwise fit on the screen. For example, say my screen fits 30 scores. If I come in 28th, there's no "skipped" bar, just a scroll bar. If I come in 35th, then put in the skipped bar for 20 through 30 (or so), and provide a scrollbar for seeing everyone below me.
Dunno how this would work with teams or people you've marked.
i don't know what has changed, but the field where you enter your words isn't open to me anymore. it's sort of gray. when i click on it, nothing. dead.
please help. i'm going through withdrawal.
otherwise, i like the new format ok.
where do you guys get these words at i looked some up in the dictionary and they werent there?
I'm unable to get in. Only one time in the last three days could I play. Is it down when this happens, or is it something I'm possibly doing, or too busy?
I am bummed. My desktop Mac will play this new version but my laptop ibook will not run it. The game board is a bunch of grey squares. I can see all the words used on the right from the previous game, the time runs, but I can't type in the box nor can I see any letters- just gray skinny boxes. The boxes that holds the letters is smaller than the typical boxes.
Please help. I have been playing this game religiously for all of 2007 and part of 2006. I almost wish that since I can't play this new version on my ibook that I want to play the old weboggle.
Please let me know what I need to do.
Well...I still can't get on since Weboggle left Shackworks for Evan's site Wordsplay. I have Mac and Safari, an apparently fatal combination. And I don't think I'm the only one with this problem...
I was unable to get on for weeks. I too have Mac/Safari, however I have been reconnected for the past 10 days or so. Can't tell you why.
I'm still having the problem of my score being posted as much lower in the rankings than it shows with my guesses?
I like most everything about the new format (now that I've gotten used to it)....but I would like to request that teams get their own list. On the old format I was often in the top 10 or 20 and now I struggle to stay up there. I doubt I've suddenly gotten dumber, I think the high scoring teams (maybe there are more of them as I believe there used to be more than one game running concurrently on WEBoggle) really knock out those of us who solo!
Keep the ability to upsize the game!
Nebo said...
Webboggle used to play fine on my wife's old PII 500mhz, but wordsplay is slooow now on that machine. There's 2 or 3 second delay to rotate and the letters highlight way behind the typing.
WEBoggle.info was designed to be lightweight, and will run on as low as a PII at 400MHz. I've tried it on my Celeron 400 laptop, and works fine as long as you have IE6 or Firefox installed.
I MISS THE OLD SET UP :( i feel that the words you type in aren't as easily seen, the old format- Not in a paragraph was easier. Also- I liked scrolling the list to see how i ranked-better competition. But... thank you for the upgrade & more professional set up!
Some observations and suggestions.
First, to other commenters: It probably helps Evan in triaging problems with performance and code if you specify operating system (OS), CPU speed, and web browser version.
To wit, mine is: MacBook ("Late 2007"), 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, Safari with nightly WebKit update. Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Tiger). Broadband connection - cable modem.
Safari preferences/configuration:
- Tabs are enabled
- Command-click opens a link in new tab
- New tabs are NOT selected when created
Mac-specific problems:
- Command-clicking on words link doesn't spawn new tab for dictionary lookups; it spawns only a new window. Ideal behavior is to spawn a new tab in background.
- Shift-Command-] or -[ doesn't switch between tabs when weboggle is the active tab. Sometimes it works, but not always.
- Sometimes no command keys work. This is kinda capricious. I don't often run into this problem with other websites, so it may be some JavaScript gremlins at play.
General suggestions:
- Please show one's game name on screen; it doesn't appear at first, only in the completed-game scores. This is relatively minor, but...
- Create fallback version for slower machines (CPU-wise and Internet-connection-wise) that's a "lite" version. Make it configurable in prefs/cookie so it's remembered.
- Previous post mentioned rule variants such as no plurals. Sometimes I play with a five-letter minimum. Be nice to have a top 3 or 5 list of common variants, and perhaps the audience can be polled on their favorites.
Cheers for a great game implementation!
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