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Canadian & Quebec Open -Live

Posted by MonRoi on July 21, 2008, 18:03:44
Developer of chess technology

Andrei Istratescu - Alexander Huzman
Mark Bluvshtein - Victor Mikhalevski
Alexander Moiseenko - Dimitri Komarov
Surya Skekhar Ganguly - Thomas Roussel-Roozmon
Anton Kovalyov - Eric Hansen
Walter Arencibia - Eesha Karavade
Matthieu Cornette - Jonathan Tayar
Bindi Cheng - Bator Sambuev
M. R. Venkatesh - Shiyam Thavandiran

Live Chess Games

Re: Difficult site

Posted by Bruce Harper on July 21, 2008, 19:19:19, in reply to "Canadian & Quebec Open -Live "
Author - Suttles bk Vancouver

Just for fun, I tried to actually use the MonRoi site to look at some games, and gave up in fairly short order.

I agree with the criticisms below - the MonRoi people have a lot to learn about marketing.

It's no big deal, since the games are accessible by other routes (fortnately).

a contrarian view

Posted by Steve Karpik on July 22, 2008, 9:11:53, in reply to "Re: Difficult site"
Scarboro CC

The Mon Roi web site has been taking quite a beating here by various Chesstalk contributors. I have to say that my impressions are quite the contrary. Yesterday at work I pointed out the site to the web designer in my group as an example of a very well executed web user interface. We were both highly impressed. Most sites with this amount of functionality depend on either Java or Flash whereas Mon Roi took a pure HTML approach. The site works equally as well on either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox. Technically it is a very impressive web site.

Requiring visitors to create a logon account is not that unusual even for sites that offer their content for free. There are a number of business reasons why one would do so. I didn�t find the registration process to be arduous or confusing. It is pretty much like every other web registration procedure you�ll find on the web.

In short, I think that Mon Roi has done quite a nice job with their web site. Web development is hard because as technology advances, users come to expect interfaces that are more and more like desktop software rather than like a web site. Clunky page refreshes on every button click just won�t cut it. As a professional in this area, I think that Mon Roi has actually raised the bar higher for other developers of similar sites.

Re: a contrarian view

Posted by egis on July 22, 2008, 9:57:20, in reply to "a contrarian view"
Toronto Ontario

" whereas Mon Roi took a pure HTML approach."

Photos are represented definitely not with HTML at monroi.
After checking a photo from the slide-rule, I can not figure out how to get back to the slide-rule

Crosstables are really not impressive viewing with Firefox.

To the CO organizers:
MI Yuanling Yuan - Have her title (even WMI) confirmed? FIDE website still gives WFM.

Re: a contrarian view

Posted by Steve Karpik on July 22, 2008, 10:05:47, in reply to "Re: a contrarian view"
Scarboro CC

I was being a bit sloppy in my wording. What I should have said is that the presentation layer was accomplished by a combination of HTML and JavaScript. JavaScript writes to the DOM and thereby modifies the HTML (that's how you get the pop-ups). JavaScript is so much a part of modern HTML coding that I sometimes forget that technically they're separate entities.

Were you using Firefox 2 or Firefox 3?

browsers

Posted by egis on July 22, 2008, 10:29:01, in reply to "Re: a contrarian view"
Toronto Ontario

Nevertheless, how to get that slide-rule back?

P.S.
I switched back to F2 from F3 and slowly moving to Opera.

Re: Canadian & Quebec Open -Live

Posted by MonRoi on July 21, 2008, 20:44:11, in reply to "Canadian & Quebec Open -Live "
Developer of chess technology

Hi Bruce, Not sure what you don�t like specifically. No other chess viewer allows you to select several games in the same window and configure your own pages. You can drag chess games and organize viewing widows. You can vote for favorite games, get PGN or scoresheet game format (which contains time spent on each move), or embed this game within any other chess site. Scroll over names and you�ll see payer photos. Scroll over the last move and you�ll get a scoresheet on the side. In settings you can change the chessboard color or chess pieces look. Technology behind this viewer is super-advanced (this comes from our high tech geek community ). Access requires username, but so does ICC, PlayChess and many others. No other company invested in live chess webcast technology (except for guys in Netherlands). Carrier pigeons for chess move transmission proved difficult to manage...

Re: What I don't like is...

Posted by Bruce Harper on July 21, 2008, 21:12:50, in reply to "Re: Canadian & Quebec Open -Live "
Author - Suttles bk Vancouver

1. That it is difficult to register, and there is no obvious explanation of how to do it.

2. There is no explanation of why you have to register. If this was explained, people might be more willing to do so (for ICC it's pretty obvious what you get, and you have to pay for it).

Beyond that I can't say, since I was unable to access the site.

Re: What I don't like is...

Posted by MonRoi on July 21, 2008, 21:47:46, in reply to "Re: What I don't like is..."
Developer of chess technology

Thanks for your feedback. Here is a temporary login username: guest and password: guest05 to check out live chess games. Canadian Open

monroi.com Home Page has a note: "Sign-Up For Free to follow live chess tournaments, chat, replay chess games, download PGNs, embed chess games within your own website, upload your chess games, get connected to the global chess community, send a private message to your chess friend, post comments in the chess blog, buy chess products and more."

When you click on Sign-up, you will get to the following web-page: http://monroi.com/component/comprofiler/?task=registers
Register. If you do not have rating, enter 0. Enter name, email, username, password (6 or more characters).
To review chess games from any MonRoi-ready tournament, click on Games: http://monroi.com/chess-games.html?view=tournaments

Have a nice evening...

Monroi interface

Posted by John Coleman on July 21, 2008, 23:55:44, in reply to "Re: Canadian & Quebec Open -Live "
From Windsor Ontario

Monroi has too many clicks, compared with other websites. Even assuming Monroi is recognising cookies, the process is...

Monroi.com
2008 CO
games
2008 CO
live games
select game

compared with
Biel Chess festival
live games
select game

I find all the mouseover stuff useless at best, and mostly just plain irritating. For example, I would prefer to have the moves visible, not via the mouseover popup. It is interesting to be able to see the move times on the scoresheet.

Having the pgn is useful, if only because the replay feature has animation as a default, and it seems to be "stuck". I've just tried three times to turn off the animation, but was unable to do so. I can't imagine anyone wanting to replay games at a fixed speed, neither speeding thru routine moves nor pausing at interesting positions.

At least with the pgn available, I can cut and paste the moves into Chessbase, so I can replay them at my own speed, on a decent screen.

Also, though this is a matter of preference, I prefer the "tfd" screen that other websites use.

Re: Monroi chess game interface

Posted by MonRoi on July 22, 2008, 8:37:40, in reply to "Monroi interface"
Developer of chess technology

Hi John,

1)
It�s very simple to replay chess games at your own speed on monroi.com
Use arrows below the chess game, left and right, and not �>� which is automatic replay. If you clicked on �>� automatic replay, stop it by clicking on �II� icon.

Some viewers don�t allow you to see quickly all the games, but you need to click - browse. When they show a single game, all others are gone, which could be annoying if players want to compare two or more games from the same tourney (for analysis purposes).

2)
Bookmark tournament webs-site of the Canadian Open.
Click on Chess Games (on the home page of the website)- to replay games.
It has the same number of clicks from the official tournament web-site.

You have on monroi.com almost major tournaments on this continent, ready for replaying at a later date. That�s useful when chess players want to learn new moves and strategies (games are not taken down after the tournament).

3)
Personal preferences are at your discretion, and we respect that. There are users who personally feel that other chess viewers are archaic when compared with MonRoi�s. Some told us that they like for example player photos, to see faces behind the names, creating their own pages, voting for their friends or coaches and a quick overview of all games when click on Replay.

Re: Monroi chess game interface

Posted by John Coleman on July 22, 2008, 9:48:37, in reply to "Re: Monroi chess game interface"
From Windsor Ontario

Thank you for the instruction. It looks as though I was selecting "animation off" in the preferences, and then turning it back on by clicking > to advance thru the moves. I notice that both TFD and Chessbase use > to play thru the game (or, more exactly, ►.

Perhaps the Monroi interface could be tweaked to look like more established programs. Either that, provide a "help" mouseover. You like mouseovers.

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