[rmfenerty]

Hi,

My mom is a dedicated BBOphile. She also travels to a lot of tournaments, and I've been thinking of buying her an iPad. But since my neighbors in Cupertino have refused to support Flash on the iPad, I'm wondering if anyone has tried using BBO on an Android tablet. If so, how's the experience? Seems to me it could be very cool (like holding the cards in your hand) or very clunky...

I'm also wondering about BBO's dedication to Flash. Or maybe developing a BBO App for iOS? In general, does the presence of 15 million non-BBO compatible iPads and X million iPhones provide any motivation to consider an App, or a port to HTML 5? Arguably, your target demographic has lots of money to spend on flashy devices...

Robert

[Echognome]

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for Android will be available this Friday. That will allow for Flash on Android 3.0 "Honeycomb", including my tablet, the Motorola Xoom. I will let you know how it works out once it is available. You can see the following article for information.

http://news.yahoo.co...nfoworld/154302

[jmc]

ITS FRIDAY!!! Is it awesome Gnome? Is it playable? My credit card is ready. Tell me I need to spend the money. Does it work? I want my BBO tablet. MMMAAATTT!?!? I need info!

jmc

Engadget link and some info that faster performance will still becoming for the Xoom:

http://www.engadget....wable-720p-pla/

[jmc]

BUMP.

Anyone with android try this yet?

[Echognome]

Sorry for the delay in the review. Took me awhile to figure out where to find the app on the Android Market. I also looked at the App Brain and it didn't show up on the popular downloads today. Weird!

So far, I've been able to log in and sit at a table. Haven't been able to figure out how to bid yet. If I can figure out how to upload photos, I will let you know.

So far, I've tried on the Dolphin Web Browser, but it wouldn't pull up the keyboard to let me login. I then tried on the native browser and got to where I could sit but not bid. I will keep trying.

I did manage to chat, but it's not going to be a strong point of the tablet.

[Echognome]

Update. Now able to bid and play. Can resize the windows easy enough with the "pinch". Wish we could make the bidding box slightly bigger relative to the rest. I only played against robots thus far. Got four boards in. The play is pretty slow.

Hand diagrams look a lot better without pictures of the cards. I'll try to upload some screenshots.

[Rain]

Echo would you mind sharing a picture of what BBO looks like?

[jmc]

Thanks for the mini-review Echognome. How did the playability feel? Is the typing good enough to alert? I wonder if the powers at be would be willing to make changes to enhance tablet usability if it needs it.

jmc

[Echognome]

Trying again to attach the files. The first set were too large.
 Landscape-small.JPG (26.62K)
Number of downloads: 87
Landscape view with pictures of the cards
 Portrait1-small.JPG (27.29K)
Number of downloads: 80
Portrait view with hand diagrams
 Portrait2-small.JPG (19.79K)
Number of downloads: 63
Another portrait view with hand diagrams

[Echognome]

jmc, on 2011-March-18, 20:58, said:

Thanks for the mini-review Echognome. How did the playability feel? Is the typing good enough to alert? I wonder if the powers at be would be willing to make changes to enhance tablet usability if it needs it.

jmc

Playability is good. If I went on and simply played without chatting, it would be workable. Chatting is pretty difficult, but that is not so much BBO as it is that typing is generally slow on the tablet. I think it would suffice for alerting, but not for chatting. It is fantastic for VuGraph for what it's worth.

I think a few small changes may help. I think for tablet play I would want very little area for chat, since chatting is just not something I'd want to focus on while playing on a tablet. I would want more area for bidding. Even with the 10 inch screen, the area for clicking on the bids is pretty small. Clicking on the cards is also relatively small. All that being said, using a stylus would go a long way.

I think for chatting, an ideal item would be a clickable list of common phrases, even more ideally an editable one. That way, you can handle a lot of your chatting by clicking rather than by typing. As an example, some common items might be:

Good luck partner
Well played
Alert - Artificial
Alert - Transfer
Alert - <Whatever>
Be right back
<Create your own>

[Echognome]

Oh and even though I rented robots, I still had the ad bar on the left (as you can see in the pictures). Given how precious real estate is on a 10" screen, it's painful to lose any of it.

[Echognome]

I took a picture of Vugraph next to a dollar bill, to give some perspective on the screen size. Obviously a 10" screen is not large, but certainly a lot larger and more playable than a smart phone.
 VuGraph-small.JPG (26.54K)
Number of downloads: 45

[jmc]

I installed flash 10.2 on my HTC Incredible phone yesterday and the performance of BBO is much better than previous versions. It works fine for me for kibitzing now, where before it was even too slow for that. I noticed one thing after using it for awhile was that if I clicked and held in BBO, flash would pop up a box I could use to maximize the window full screen. I think this is very handy. Does it work on the tablet for maximizing?

I could not get the login password box to take the password I was trying to enter. The letters appeared singly and then vanished. Any issues logging in on the Xoom? Could you post a pic of entering text in a chat window? If you have time to do a video demo, I'll send you some BBO dollars as a thank you.

I went to buy a Xoom today but neither Verizon store in my tiny town of 30,000 had any in stock. I may wait and buy a WiFi only from Radio-shack on the 27th. I also know that HTC has a tablet coming that will include a stylus. Might be better for BBO.

[Echognome]

I've had on/off problems with logging in. The letters did appear and vanish, but worked anyway. I think once you log in and save your password, you are ok. Am trying to find an equivalent to notepad where I can type in my full password, copy it, and then paste it into the box. Maybe this will help me access the site on another browser.

Posting pics is a bit of a process. I take a pic with my phone, email it to myself. Open it in Paint. Reduce the size of the picture. Save it. Then upload it. I will do it, but give me a little bit.

The basics of chatting, as far as I can tell, is that you click on a user's name. It opens up a dialog box. You click in the chat space and the keyboard pops up. The difficulty is that the keyboard then covers the chat area, so you can type and hit enter and it works. However, you cannot see what you are typing.

My wife went to Verizon on the first day the Xoom was released. There was almost no hype like there has been for the iPad. She told me there were two people in front of her when the store opened. Both of them were there to pay their bills. So she was the first person to buy it from our store.

As per the stylus, I have not used one on the Xoom, but thought I could without anything special. My son has a few stylus' for his Nintendo DS. I will see if those work. They only cost about a dollar or two to buy.

[jmc]

I don't believe just any stylus will work. I think capacitive touch screens work because your finger conducts electricity and completes some kind of a circuit. Dead plastic won't do this. Some companies sell a special stylus that do this somehow. The old resistive touchscreens could be pushed with anything and could sense pressure. I don't believe capacitives can. Thanks for all your help. I'll try logging in again using cut and paste.

[Rain]

I just got the toshiba thrive. I've tried Xoom but returned it. So far, very very pleased with the thrive.

1) It has usb port!! (Also SD, mini usb, hdmi). The USB port enabled me to plug in a mouse and use that to click around at times.
It was not playing my USB thumbdrive - apparently there will be an over the air update that will allow other file formats to be read.

2) Not much bloatware. The few apps included by Toshiba were pretty useful. I quite like the news reader they have.

3) It can play BBO with no problems. The login password problem has been noted by others earlier, but typing it in and ignoring what looks like blank space works well. "Save" your password for future logins. Everything in BBO works well except trying to read news pop up, trying to click to read alerts, or trying to type to others because typing is still a pain. (Less so with a mouse) Probably a pen would work as well as a mouse and is more mobile, but I didn't want to buy one of those special styluses.

4) Seem to use battery well. Lasts about as expected.

5) Honeycomb 3.1 is probably better than 3.0. The xoom used to freeze and crash a lot more.

[hebdenb]

I have an Acer Iconia A500 tablet and have been able to access the site, but it won't let me enter my password. I enter a letter and it vanishes.

Anyone got any thoughts. Have downloaded Adobe Flash 10.3 without any success.

[diana_eva]

hebdenb, on 2011-July-17, 07:10, said:

I have an Acer Iconia A500 tablet and have been able to access the site, but it won't let me enter my password. I enter a letter and it vanishes.

Anyone got any thoughts. Have downloaded Adobe Flash 10.3 without any success.

Other people complained about this too - see Echognome's reply above. The catch is to just type your password anyway and click Log in. Even if the letters don't show, it will be recorded. Then check the "remember PW" checkbox so you won't have to re-enter it.

[chuchaque]

I just bought an Acer Iconia with Honeycomb 3.1. It works okay except that it won't let me play cards from dummy as declarer. Is there a fix?

[chuchaque]

Has anyone been able to make BBO work on and Android? I have an Acer Iconia. I can sign in, chat, bid and play my own hand, but I cannot play dummy's hand as declarer.