Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I have fixed the rendering of boards with CSS, so that I can use the
DOCTYPE that lets the menus work right in Internet Explorer. I just had to
specify the the units used for the width and height of the container DIV.
But this hasn't solved the problem of some content not showing up with
Internet Explorer. I may experiment with a copy of the source code and see
if something works. In the meantime, there are better browsers than
Internet Explorer, and links to some will appear in Game Courier is you're
using Internet Explorer.

Game Courier is now working with Internet Explorer. There was a bit of
JavaScript that wasn't working in Internet Explorer. So I did some browser
detection in PHP and replaced the offending JavaScript with VBScript in
Internet Explorer. I also rewrote the code to show the message with an
alert (JavaScript) or a message box (VBScript) instead of writing it to the
screen. It's a message that shows up only on your first move of a game.

That suits me fine, as I said I have no problem putting in my ID and password over and over again. It's what I'm used to, and it would be just as acceptable to still be able to do that with comments about a page.

"Make sure you can accept cookies from this site."

The ability to block cookies has been around for over a decade and over that time increasing number ofg internet users, have adopted a policy of rejecting all cookies. It is a backward step to remove a syatem not requiring cookies, and while I can see the advantages to your offering an alternative system for people who are still afccepting them it sghoukd be just that - an alternative along the more widely functioning existing system. I would suggest displaying the "sign in" page only when a user selects it directly, and otherwise assuming that they are still using the tried and tested system of entering details for each comment being added - or edited, something else that I cannot do with any of my existing comments or messages. There are bound to be other contributors in my situation; there are certainly others who have not posted comments recently.

I would appreciate the views of CVP editors generally on this matter.

I still can't find the "Rules" button for the preset, although it looks
nice with this drop-down menu. The "Rules" button should take you back to
the description of the preset. It is very useful.
/Mats

Charles,

The policy of rejecting all cookies is what is backwards. You don't have
to make rejection of cookies an all-or-nothing matter. You can put sites
you trust on a whitelist while continuing to reject cookies from other
sites by default. All the cookies used by this site are perfectly safe and
harmless and contain no confidential information. All the confidential
information is contained in a session, which exists on the server, not the
client. Also, the cookies used by this site cannot be read by other sites.
The cookies are simply used to identify you across multiple pages, so that
you don't have to keep signing in for everything, and, EVEN MORE
IMPORTANTLY, so that I can eventually offer greater functionality that
depends on the ability to recognize you. This is all leading toward the
goal of a site-wide game rating system, and it will not work without the
ability to use cookies to recognize you. So just put this site in a
whitelist for accepting cookies.

M Winther,

I have now programmed the header to use the URL provided for the rules to
determine the ItemID used for the Related Pages submenu. The rules to the
game will be found there, along with a link to the preset page and other
related pages.

I still have problems finding a link back to the preset description, that
is the "Rules".
/Mats

Internet Explorer 8 provides two different ways to accept this site's
cookies without accepting all cookies, and it provides one additional way
to accept this site's session cookie without accepting it's other cookie.
In Tools>Internet Options>Privacy>Advanced, you can check "Always allow
session cookies." This will not allow your browser to accept the cvpuser
cookie, but that one is not nearly as important as the session cookie.
There are two other ways to accept all our cookies. In Tools>Internet
Options>Privacy>Advanced again, select Prompt for "First-party Cookies,"
then when prompted tell it to always accept cookies from this site. Or just
go to Tools>Internet Options>Privacy>Sites and enter
"http://www.chessvariants.org/" for "Address of website" and click
Allow.

The rules and the preset description are normally two separate pages,
though some people write them as one. When they are separate pages, they
must belong to the same group to both show up in the Related Pages submenu.
You should look for them in the Related Pages>Primary submenu. They will be
labeled by the page names, not as Rules or Preset.

I've now modified how the Related Pages submenu works in Game Courier. The
rules page is given a clearly identified entry in the first submenu, and it
is followed by a link to the specific preset in use. This allows entries to
show up for pages for which a group has not been specified.

I'm now able to register my email address at the change email page but, since there is no "before address", when I click on the Confirm button it appears the message:

The code failed to decrypt to the email address you wanted to change to. If you sent multiple email change requests, only the latest one will work. Please be sure that you followed the link from your very latest request to change your email.

string(32) "ߦ� �rCDO;uҪ/I��3o > 1�� f�:z;�"
string(24) "cetina.carlosr@gmail.com"

Therefore the address has not been duly registered and still does not appear in my Person Information page. I wonder if you or David Howe could make that record directly without my intervention.

The good news is that at least we can already play our Episcopal Chess game!

I would rather make sure the script is working right than do its work for
it. So I will delete my email address and see if the script needs changing.

The change email script works now. I was changing a variable name and
hadn't done a thorough job of it.

OK. The email address has been successfully registered and now appears on
the Personal Information page. Thank you very much for everything.

Chess boards generated with Table aren't quadratic anymore! They are
oblong! 
/Mats

Chess boards generated with Table aren't quadratic anymore! They are oblong!

Be more specific about what you are referring to. Whenever you report a problem with a page, give me an URL for a page with that problem.

"The policy of rejecting all cookies is what is backwards. You don't have to make rejection of cookies an all-or-nothing matter. You can put sites you trust on a whitelist while continuing to reject cookies from other sites by default. All the cookies used by this site are perfectly safe and harmless and contain no confidential information. All the confidential information is contained in a session, which exists on the server, not the client. Also, the cookies used by this site cannot be read by other sites. The cookies are simply used to identify you across multiple pages, so that you don't have to keep signing in for everything, and, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, so that I can eventually offer greater functionality that depends on the ability to recognize you. This is all leading toward the goal of a site-wide game rating system, and it will not work without the ability to use cookies to recognize you. So just put this site in a whitelist for accepting cookies."

It still looks like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The great thing about this site has been that it has been open to anyone interested in Chess variants at any level - playing other people's, developing new ones, suggesting tweaks, building sets and boards, or just studying variant history. You seem to be out to turn it into a site for an exclusive clique. Some of the most interesting comments that I have had on my own pages have been from first-time visitors to the site. You have explained about the cookies to me, but a lot of people could come to the site, try and post a comment, get an impassable (to them) sign-in page, and not hang around for an explanation. I am not asking to get rid of the sign-in system, merely to retain alongside it the tried-and-tested system that has been easy to use for at least a decade by newcomer and stalwart alike.

Mats,

The effect you're talking about may be local to you. I'm not seeing it.
What browser and and operating system are you using?

Charles,

That's quite a load of rubbish. Stop being so paranoid and start accepting
cookies. This is not the 1990's. In this day and age, it is common for the
major sites to use cookies to recognize visitors, and you can hardly make
much use of the internet anymore without accepting cookies. I have
explained in another post what you can do in Internet Explorer to accept
cookies for this site without accepting cookies for untrusted sites.

Fergus, I use Win XP Pro, and latest version of Chrome, and IE 8.0. The
boards are clearly oblong and the squares, too. However, now I tried an old
version of Opera, version 7.5. In this browser the squares are still
quadratic. 
/Mats

Mats, I have looked at the page you gave as an example in both IE8 and the
latest version of Chrome under Windows XP Home, and I don't see the
problem you describe in either browser. I have also seen no problem in
Safari, Opera, or Firefox. I also checked Chromium under Linux and found no
problem. Can you provide a screenshot of what you're seeing?

I haven't noticed any decline in comments posted to this site, but I have
noticed an increase in Game Courier activity. Overall, I'm making this
site easier to use. But since cookies are essential to the game ratings
system I have planned, I would rather get users used to accepting cookies
than try to work around them. Where cookies are needed I am putting in
messages to inform users of their need.

Fergus, here is a Chrome screenshot:
http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/scrensh.htm

I have used this version of Chrome and this operating system a long time
now.  I haven't changed hardware. This problem didn't exist before. 
/Mats

Your screenshot looks fine. I don't see what the problem is.

Have you accidentally changed your screen resolution?

No, no settings have been changed. I created a simple html table  and it is
quadratic in Chrome, so something must have changed on the Chess Variant
site. However, if nobody else can reproduce this problem, then nothing can
be done about it. Here is the simple table board that looks quadratic in
Chrome (but it doesn't show in IE on account of the empty cells) :
http://home7.swipnet.se/~w-73784/chess/blueboard.htm
/Mats

So far, I don't even have a clear idea of what you're saying the problem
is. Your screenshot didn't look abnormal, and you haven't supplied any
more screenshots of Game Courier. How about providing two screenshots for
the sake of comparison, one that has the problem you're describing and one
that doesn't, both of the same game.

I believe he's saying that the height of the squares is greater than the
width.

I finally took a look, and, yes, the height seems to be about a quarter
greater than the width.  I am using Firefox.

Using a screenshot of the default preset, I took measurements of individual squares and found them to be 50x54 or 50x55. I then edited the source code to see what could be causing this difference. I removed the images from one rank, and after I did that, the squares in that rank were 50x50. The images and the table cells were both set to a height and width of 50. I looked at the CSS code but found nothing to account for the difference. I tried setting the margin and padding of IMG to 0px, but it didn't help. I removed the header code from the source code, but it didn't help. I removed common.css from the source code, but it didn't make a difference. Removing global.css from the source code didn't help either. Finally, I removed the DOCTYPE, and that made the square sizes 50x50.

Since the DOCTYPE is there so that the menus work right in Internet Explorer, I moved the DOCTYPE within an IE conditional. This fixed the problem in Firefox, but it didn't fix it in Internet Explorer.

The DOCTYPE used was <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4-0 Frameset//EN" http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-html40/frameset.dtd">

I had copied this one from another page on this site. I did some research on DOCTYPE options and switched to this DOCTYPE:

Thanks. Now the proportions are correct both in Chrome and IE.
/Mats