[gordlink]

For the nth time I have seen errors committed by players (often me) mistaking the Club symbol for the Spade symbol. It is not rocket science to put red dot or a red slash through one of the black symbols. Good bridge players want to win by better card play. One could also do the same for the red suits. It is not like you have a thousand decks of cards to throw out, now is it?
Bridge is played mainly by seniors and many might come back with this small improvement. Just say YES to better bridge,
Regards
GordLink

[pescetom]

I have sympathy for those with sight problems (and continue to ask BBO for a client for those with no sight at all) but this suggestion is new to me.
I would have thought it was easier to distinguish clubs from spades than diamonds from hearts, and that the main problem was the use of red/black.
Am I missing something here?

As an aside, have you tried "hand diagram" rather than "pictures of cards"?
Each suit gets a separate row in descending suit order, which should at least help with your own cards.

[morecharac]

I've seen bidding boxes and decks that use orange for diamonds and green for clubs. I've never understood why this isn't the norm with boxes and cards intended for ACBL club use.

[pilowsky]

It's worse than you think.
I have pointed out previously that 5% of men are red/green colour blind. This form of colour-blindness would likely make the red symbols on the green background harder.
I believe that it is one reason that some cricketers do better in the form of the game where the ball is not red.

To compound (that's a fly-eye joke) the problem - yes I know humour works best when you don't have to explain it - different shapes are easier to discern than others.

There is neuroscientific evidence that more complex shapes are more easily discernible than less complex shapes.
The Diamond symbol only has four sides and four 'inflection points'.

The other three symbols are highly complex with an infinite (curves) number of inflection points.

If a Diamond flies across your line of sight, it is not as clear as a more complex symbol.
Possibly this is more of a problem in online Bridge compared with paper cards.

To summarise, diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but only if they are multifaceted.

On the other hand, too much complexity may add confusion.

[stanmaz]

pilowsky, on 2021-February-13, 19:47, said:

It's worse than you think.
I have pointed out previously that 5% of men are red/green colour blind. This form of colour-blindness would likely make the red symbols on the green background harder.
I believe that it is one reason that some cricketers do better in the form of the game where the ball is not red.

To compound (that's a fly-eye joke) the problem - yes I know humour works best when you don't have to explain it - different shapes are easier to discern than others.

There is neuroscientific evidence that more complex shapes are more easily discernible than less complex shapes.
The Diamond symbol only has four sides and four 'inflection points'.

The other three symbols are highly complex with an infinite (curves) number of inflection points.

If a Diamond flies across your line of sight, it is not as clear as a more complex symbol.
Possibly this is more of a problem in online Bridge compared with paper cards.

To summarise, diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but only if they are multifaceted.

On the other hand, too much complexity may add confusion.

There exists the solution you are looking for : the BBOalert browser extension already used by hundreds worldwide. One of the features is BBO user interface customiztion.

To modify the colors of cards all you have to do is :

- install BBOalert
- copy the code below into the clipboard
- start BBO and press the 'Import' button on the BBOalert panel

The code is :

bboalert
Script,onAnyMutation
$(".cardArea:contains('♣')").css("color", "green");
$(".cardArea:contains('♦')").css("color", "darkorange");
$(".cardArea:contains('♣')").css("background-color", "lightyellow");
$(".cardArea:contains('♦')").css("background-color", "lightcyan");
Script


You may omit the two records modifying the background colors if you wish to keep the white background. You may use any color names listed on the page :

https://www.w3school...olors_names.asp

On Facebook (see below) you will find other scripts modifying the user interface. For visually impaired players there is a script making the bidding box much larger. If there is a need for other UI improvement, let me know.

BBOalert is a sophisticated toolkit which aims to automate alerting. The basic feature of recording and replaying alerts is a great help. All you need to begin is to install the BBOalert extension and start playing normally. Every alerted bid is recorded and then when the identical auction occurs the recorded bid explanation is retrieved and sent to the opponents. But this feature is only the top of the iceberg.

BBOalert installation :

Firefox

https://addons.mozil...addon/bboalert/

Chrome

https://chrome.googl...lkeemegdhehnlcf


For the complete description of BBOalert features see the project page :
https://github.com/stanmaz/BBOalert

The tutorial can be also useful
https://github.com/s...tingStarted.pdf


You are invited to join the BBOalert users on Facebook
https://www.facebook...06384146770707/
There are many members playing complex system which require frequent alerts. I am convinced that you will meet there someone using a system similar to yours and who is willing to share his data with you. It can save you a lot time to encode your system.

Feel free to contact me by mail if you need help while setting up BBOalert.
stanmaz.git@gmail.com

[pilowsky]

stanmaz, on 2021-February-14, 02:12, said:

There exists the solution you are looking for : the BBOalert browser extension already used by hundreds worldwide. One of the features is BBO user interface customiztion.

To modify the colors of cards all you have to do is :

- install BBOalert
- copy the code below into the clipboard
- start BBO and press the 'Import' button on the BBOalert panel

The code is :

bboalert
Script,onAnyMutation
$(".cardArea:contains('♣')").css("color", "green");
$(".cardArea:contains('♦')").css("color", "orange");
$(".cardArea:contains('♣')").css("background-color", "lightyellow");
$(".cardArea:contains('♦')").css("background-color", "cyan");
Script

You may omit the two records modifying the background colors if you wish to keep the white background.

On Facebook (see below) you will find other scripts modifying the user interface. For visually impaired players there is a script making the bidding box much larger. If there is a need for other UI improvement, let me know.

You may use any color names listed on the page :

https://www.w3school...olors_names.asp

BBOalert is a sophisticated toolkit which aims to automate alerting. The basic feature of recording and replaying alerts is a great help. All you need to begin is to install the BBOalert extension and start playing normally. Every alerted bid is recorded and then when the identical auction occurs the recorded bid explanation is retrieved and sent to the opponents. But this feature is only the top of the iceberg.

BBOalert installation :

Firefox
https://addons.mozil.../addon/bboalert

Chrome
https://chrome.googl...lkeemegdhehnlcf


For the complete description of BBOalert features see the project page :
https://github.com/stanmaz/BBOalert

The tutorial can be also useful
https://github.com/s...tingStarted.pdf


You are invited to join the BBOalert users on Facebook
https://www.facebook...06384146770707/
There are many members playing complex system which require frequent alerts. I am convinced that you will meet there someone using a system similar to yours and who is willing to share his data with you. It can save you a lot time to encode your system.

Feel free to contact me by mail if you need help while setting up BBOalert.
stanmaz.git@gmail.com

I would have been 383 but it doesn't seem to work on Chrome on my mac.
When I searched via the 'extensions' symbol it didn't appear.
I found it by googling then installed it
When I started to play a hand and then clicked the extension it opened a new tab - the chrome web store.
Then I tried 'managing it' allowed full access
Same problem.
So I removed it.

[Douglas43]

pilowsky, on 2021-February-13, 19:47, said:

It's worse than you think.
I have pointed out previously that 5% of men are red/green colour blind. This form of colour-blindness would likely make the red symbols on the green background harder.
I believe that it is one reason that some cricketers do better in the form of the game where the ball is not red.

Hi Pilowsky

As a pretty useless (and colour-blind) cricketer, I always used to draw some comfort from that, until I found out that Ian Botham is colour-blind. [For readers from non-cricketing countries, Sir Ian Botham was a match winner at international level both with the bat and in the field, his catching was outstanding]


On the serious issue though;
Some packs of cards use black for spades, grey for clubs, red for hearts and [I think] orange for diamonds. But mainly what matters for me is having big, clear, symbols because I pretty much ignore colour as a cue, I always start by looking for shapes, then try to make out colour as a backup..

[stanmaz]

pilowsky, on 2021-February-14, 02:27, said:

I would have been 383 but it doesn't seem to work on Chrome on my mac.
When I searched via the 'extensions' symbol it didn't appear.
I found it by googling then installed it
When I started to play a hand and then clicked the extension it opened a new tab - the chrome web store.
Then I tried 'managing it' allowed full access
Same problem.
So I removed it.

There are currently 48 BBOalert users on MacOS. With some of them I am in contact personally. On the Facebook users group no issues were reported.

BTW : 383 means that you tried BBOalert at 2021-01-31. At this date there were 47 Mac users.

Please, make another try.

[pilowsky]

Quote

Hi Pilowsky

As a pretty useless (and colour-blind) cricketer, I always used to draw some comfort from that, until I found out that Ian Botham is colour-blind. [For readers from non-cricketing countries, Sir Ian Botham was a match winner at international level both with the bat and in the field, his catching was outstanding]

On the serious issue though;
Some packs of cards use black for spades, grey for clubs, red for hearts and [I think] orange for diamonds. But mainly what matters for me is having big, clear, symbols because I pretty much ignore colour as a cue, I always start by looking for shapes, then try to make out colour as a backup..

Ah grew oop in Sheffield - used t play on road. So I know what you mean.
It seems you are accommodating (pun intended) to the visual problem. I started doing the same thing when I noticed that I was mis-playing diamonds more often than other suits when I was tired.
Of course, the way I play normally, this could have been an artefact.

[jwccsllc]

pilowsky, on 2021-February-14, 02:27, said:

I would have been 383 but it doesn't seem to work on Chrome on my mac.
When I searched via the 'extensions' symbol it didn't appear.
I found it by googling then installed it
When I started to play a hand and then clicked the extension it opened a new tab - the chrome web store.
Then I tried 'managing it' allowed full access
Same problem.
So I removed it.

I'm running Chrome Version 88.0.4324.150 (Official Build) (x86_64) on my MacBook Pro running Mojave Mojave and a Mac Mini running Catalina with BBOalert 5.1.1.2. I have had no problems installing using Settings->Extensions. I thought you might have a problem searching BBOalert as bboalert, but it doesn't seem to be case-sensitive.

Have you tried restarting Chrome after installing the extension? I have found this sometimes helps if Chrome hasn't picked up the latest stable release.

I also have Firefox on the Macs with BBOalert installed, but generally prefer using Chrome.

[0 carbon]

One more way that might help would be to use fonts which distinguished . ♣♦♥♠ better and set that font as your browser default.