New User Interface, and Some New Features
(The hot dog stand and other themes will return as options, someday)
Hi, bridge pals. You may have noticed that the bridge deal generator website looks quite a bit different now. Whereas before it was garish, like your grandpa’s Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt combo, now it’s very minimal, like your dashing European cousin’s Speedo:
While some kind of improvement had been on my to-do list for a long time, I finally made some changes based on the suggestions of a kind editor who is an expert in the fields of bridge, bridge teaching, and software. I am grateful for that advice.
The look is different and I removed some extraneous text and some user choices that didn’t actually do anything; however, the functionality is mostly the same as before. Since I didn’t announce the changes to my few users in advance, the purpose of this blog post is to let you know you have not gone mad, and to explain a couple of new features. I will eventually rewrite the user guides, but that will take a while.
Before, the buttons for saving things to files would assign a file name and you could not change it before saving. Now, file names are provided in advance but you can change them before pressing the button to save the file. Here, I have changed the name of the PBN file while leaving the LIN and script file names as assigned by the program:
Next, I added a “Print Deal” button to the right of the other buttons now situated above the deal display:
The printout will include only the deal display, which now shows you the dealer and vulnerability in addition to the cards. You can either print it or else save it to a PDF—whatever capabilities your web browser’s Print panel provides:
While having a quick print capability is nice, personally when I want to embed a deal display in a document or a blog post, I take a screen capture of the deal, and then I insert the resulting image file into my document, where I can resize it to suit.
I have saved a truly whiz-bang feature for last. Notice that the Date/time display just above the deal display is now a hyperlink. You can tell by the coloring and the underscore:
Boldly click that link (on the website, not in the above image file), and you will see this:
That’s right! Exactly the same thing! But not really. Notice that the date/time value is different. Also, “Deal Type” on the left has gone from “Random Deal” to “Manual Deal”. If you have ever used my “Browse” button to load a deal from a file, you will know that when you have loaded a deal from a file, this program switches to “Manual Deal” mode and the next time you press “Deal” it takes you to the Manual Deal page. Clicking the hyperlink works the same way, but you don’t have to mess with a file—just click the hyperlink, then click “Deal” and you will see this:
That link is very handy for going into “Manual” mode for the last deal you generated, but its main purpose is to let you save a link that will let you recreate that deal, say if you were writing a blog post about it. Click here to see the above deal live in your own browser.
Once you have that existing deal in the Manual Deal page, you can change it around however you like, moving cards from hand to hand or replacing some cards with “X” placeholders and letting the generator come up with new combinations in the same general shape.
Or, if you just want to analyze it the way it is, you can use my Bridgesolver button to go explore lines of play on the Bridgesolver website, or do the same with less computerized prompting in the BBO Handviewer, or else you may decide to save the deal as a LIN or PBN file and carry that off to play in your favorite bridge software.
I hope you find the new features useful.