JavaFIBS Development - New Features needed

[Tom]

What I really think the guy wanted in the first place is a way to mark several friends in the list, then click the colour box and select a colour which will be applied for all marked persons in the list.

Yes you are right! socks I guess I need to read too!

[cthulhu]

The way some people seem to be using the list, maybe one should make another list with "players met" also to separate them from your friends which you can colour?

[Tom]

That is an interesting idea.. or maybe a few empty friends lists and you can define the title?

One tab named FLG the another Team League, etc

[cthulhu]

Yes good idea, or why not let the user create lists as many as (s)he wants. Like the programmable buttons.

[Peyo]

...and while you're at it: use the lists to detect when players log in. In other words automatize the "waitfor" for each player in the lists, and in addition use the list colors to highlight the "finally logs in" messages in the server log panel.

I guess you don't want that for all your lists, so turning on/off the "auto-waitfor" could be an option on each list.

[Peyo]

Sortable match converter window:
- by name
- by date

[Peyo]

And I hate to say this, but those icons are way too small (I'm showing my age here), plus they look like... well let's just say they look like icons from Microsoft Apps, and old versions at that 

If any of you know a graphic designer, this is a nice and simple way to "modernize" an app. I will try to convince one I know to propose something.

In addition, I like the typical Mac Apps toolbar buttons/text/both option. But hey I'm a machead...

[socksey]

All friends on the list are automatically colored blue first.  I still like my idea best to sort out the special friends, tournament match players (could be different color for each league or tourney), td's, cyber friends, etc.    I don't like the idea of having a bunch of lists, unless they were on a wordpad/notepad file on my desktop, maybe.  

After begging for years for a friends data feature, I have made my own alphabetized wordpad file listing most of my friends and acquaintances on Fibs along with any notes I want to remember, multiple nicks info, and isps in some cases.

We can all use our imaginations and adapt.  

socksey



The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt

[Tomawaky]

Personnaly I like the list idea

[Tom]

After begging for years for a friends data feature,

What is that?

Network stored lists?

[socksey]

BBGT paid version had it.  I lost that when my old computer went down.  It stored all the info you wanted on any player.  It was a great feature.   

socksey



Sparkle laugh, delight! Encourage silliness. Know joy. - unknown

[inim]

Feature requests in no particular order.

• Command line panel should support for  auto-completion of player names in tell and message.
• Command line panel should support auto-completion for server commands, a rather small set


• Repbot integration


• Tourneybot integration


• Jellyfish export should use a better file selector
• Jellyfish export should not block (currently does with many recorded games as it reads all before displaying dialog)


• Pulldown menu structure should use standard layout (File, Edit, ..., Help) where applicable. E.g. jellyfish export should simply be moved to "Save" and "Save As" etc.


• Preferences should use an tabbed dialog, not pulldown menues.


• Messages should be internationalized (I18N)


• Exceptions should be reported to the user, not silently ignored when running under javaw. Probably this is achived easiest using some real logger, such as log4j


• Resumed matches should be handled more gracefully


• Messages and shout/kibitz/tell should be optionally be prefixed with a timestamp


• Country codes should not be hardcoded but derived from Runtime Locale


• Audio samples should be of better quality. Currently they are 8Khz WAV, we could easily support CD quality and/or MP3 (to save space) and still improve sound quality.


• Javafibs should be packaged using an install shield.


• Permagag should use actual server side gag mode rather than silent filtering


• Hall of Shame information should be used to autogenerate permagag suggestions for well known droppers


• Color of checkers should be flippable with the same ease as the board can be mirrored. A friend of mine strongly prefers to play dark pieces over white pieces, and setting this via the color dialog is a bit cumbersome.


• Messages should be optionally spellchecked


• CLIP events should be exposed to the user for customization, e.g. via some sort of public API and Java Scripting. This would allow for oodles of nice user hacks, such as filtering shout (I wanna highlight all occurences of my name in shouts) or data (i wanna ring a bell when someone from host host.mybuddy.com logs in).


• Support menu hotkeys (e.g. ctrl-t for toggle ready)


• Other clients (CocoaFibs and 3DFibs) should be investigated for better GUI paradigms, especially for what now is the Command line panel.


• Sound volume should be adjustable, currently JavaFibs always plays as loud as it possibly can. This doesn't integrate well with today's multimedia environments (listen to music while playing e.g.).


• The server's built in help texts should be read and presented in a convenient way (cheap way to offer better integrated help)


• Fibs has two IP adresses, of which sometimes one is reachable and the other is not. Exploiting this in the connection code could improve reachability of fibs.


• JDK 5 or even JDK 6 features should be exploited, currently only JDK 1.3 is. The latter is long in the "end of life" state. However, keeping a JDK 1.3 version would allow to support JavaFibs on small devices, which have limited JREs.


• Better textures for the Vectorboard should be included (maybe stealing from the excellent Gnubg textures)


• DNS name resolution should be asynchronous


• An option to log shout and kibitz to external log files should be offered


• Clicking on a player in the player tab should open an integrated dialog which offers all actions w/r to that player (status, gag, message, even image import from fibsboard). In short: present all options at a glance.


• more robust player list code, working around the well known rawho bug in the server


• Non-binary preferences format (XML) for improved robustness and extensibility (using e.g. JAXB for serialization)


• Support more server commands in an "Action" pulldown menu, e.g. away and waitfor come to my mind


• Add client version to login client version ("JavaFibs2001 1.0.10" vs. "JavaFibs")


• Rename from "JavaFibs2001" to just "JavaFibs", as 2001 sounds so retro today

[webrunner]

Integrate the sound options similar to 3DFibs. That way more poeple can hear them.

[cthulhu]

Feature requests in no particular order.

That's quite a list you got there.

[adrian]

Please, please , please Peter, we want them all !

[inim]

That's quite a list you got there.

Don't panic, it's just a braindump without any considerations of timeframe, feasibility or priority. 

[marekful]

I have thoughts around this topic from long ago, unfortunately never started to document them..

I can think of two things right now:

1) A minor bug I found is that when the board is detached and you click look or watch on some player then the player list (still in the tabbed pane) is deactivated (disappears) but the board window doesn't get the focus.

2) I think implementing the ongoing games and watchers in the following way would be particularly useful:
There's a list of 'tables' with some nice and considerable GUI integration. These could be just small iconic elements displaying the two players' (and maybe the watchers') name. Mouse over event should then display a small sketch of the current board state of that game and match info (i.e. score).
This is just a rough idea and should be improved.

Any comments on the latter is appreciated.

[marekful]

I think I will follow the 1 bug and 1 feature request/enhancement per entry..

1) OK, it's actually not a bug but could be improved: I found that having JF run for over say 60 hours results in the swing becoming what I would say inoperable in the means of slowness. I couldn't exactly figure out what is the proportion of JF to KDE in this without having seen the sources and I don't know if it exists in Windows (but I suppose it must) but I'm pretty sure that it could be improved by freeing more resources during such long runs. (I.e. those used by all text outputs.) This probably would also involve a new feature that would allow those outputs to be logged into files (after a configurable number of lines) rather then kept in the running environment (who needs 60000 lines in any of those text areas?) (OK, another thing: who wants to run it so long? ME!)

2) A bit extreme but would be useful to be able to have empty lines in the kibitzes/says text area by pressing enter in the empty command line. (E.g to separate contents for repbot queries, etc.)

[marekful]

(after a configurable number of lines)

What I exactly mean here is of course to save everything to plain text files depending on user setting but only keep a limited amount of data (lines of text) in memory thus ensuring the smooth running of JF on the long term.

[inim]

keychain integration ala CocoaFibs?

Could you elaborate what this means? The last Mac I used had 8 bit, so I've never seen CocoaFibs running ...