Please post any questions or issues in the comments. If you are having issues, please be sure to post what browser and what version you are using. Happy chess playing!
This version of the plugin is compiled using Google Web Toolkit version 1.7. Along with a small fix to nested PRE within DIV tags, this upgrade of the framework should fix the problems encountered with closed boards under Internet Explorer 8, as well as any other issues specific to that browser that may have been lurking. I also took the opportunity to clean up the code to compile cleanly with no deprecations under GWT 1.7 as well. Anyone who is compiling from source should note that the prior release used GWT 1.5, and the directory structure is completely different in GWT 1.7; the source code in this build reflects that new layout.
This release also moves the config page from the Tools menu to the Settings menu, since this is where most plugin users expect it nowadays.
Please post any questions or issues in the comments. If you are having issues, please be sure to post what browser and what version you are using. Happy chess playing!
Another minor release. Sorry for the extended delay on a major issue, but I’ve been busy nursing my fiancée back to health, and getting married. Anyways, this release primarily fixes authentication issues primarily seen when using boards inserted by the editor button. It turns out this problem was due to the wpautop() function in WordPress which automatically munges text in posts and inserts <p> tags in the middle of PGN, which screws up the client. This issue has been worked around and should not require disabling wpautop().
The PGN button has also been altered slightly to try to improve functionality when using Internet Explorer. It seems marginally better, but not all the way there yet. (I hate working with IE.)
Some compatibility issues related to user logins under WordPress 2.7 have been fixed (I think this only affected the playability of live boards).
A single blog post containing multiple live boards should now work correctly – moves are posted to the post under the correct board, and multiple players should no longer interfere with each other.
A new PGN button has been added. This opens a new browser window with the PGN content of the board, this can then be saved to the local drive. This feature is somewhat experimental and I would be interested in any comments (note that due to browser security, there isn’t much I can do from JavaScript to make this prettier).
Live boards can now automatically refresh themselves on a regular interval, to reflect moves made by the opponent. This interval can be configured in the plugin control page (under Tools in WordPress 2.7).
By the way, since a lot of my users seem to be overseas, I’m still looking for volunteers to help with internationalization – this would amount to translating the strings that are in the user interface. If you’re interested, please drop me a line.
Please post any questions or issues in the comments. Happy chess playing!
The plugin can now be installed one subdirectory lower – i.e. if you unzip while in the WordPress plugins directory and leave all the files where they are, it should still work correctly. This should make installation simpler.
PGN comments are now supported. They will be shown in the status field when you click on the corresponding entry in the game log. Game entries in the log which have comments are shown in italic (in the default themes). Recursive Annotated Variations are, for now, treated as comments.
Event, round, date, and location information is now displayed with the board (this can be configured on or off).
The “JsCom” tag is now supported. This can be used to specify a starting display position for the board which is not the last move. The syntax is: [JsCom "startply X"], where X is the starting halfmove (i.e. specifying 5 will show the board after White’s 3rd move).
The plugin will now try to respect the display name preference of players. (This can only be done when the board is first created, it is not dynamic.)
Some compatibility issues related to WordPress blog theme style sheets have been fixed.
By the way, since a lot of my users seem to be overseas, I’m looking for volunteers to help with internationalization – this would amount to translating the strings that are in the user interface. If you’re interested, please drop me a line.
Please post any questions or issues in the comments. Happy chess playing!
Time for a new release! The previous release was 1.0.3, in case you were wondering. Anyways, new features:
Long overdue: the game history can now be browsed. There are new navigation buttons, and the gamelog can be clicked on directly to display the board as of that move. Check it out on the examples page.
There is now theme support. The intention is that new themes can be written in much the same manner as WordPress themes, and can be installed in the same manner as well: they’re subdirectories which only require a style sheet ChessByBlog.css, and are installed under the chess-by-blog/themes folder.
In conjunction with theme support, there is now a new management panel added for the plugin, which allows you to switch themes easily and control board display options.
The default themes now use image packing and CSS sprites, which should reduce board load time.
Other user interface tweaks!
As usual, here is the Chess By Blog blurb page. For this release, however, I’ve switched hosting of the source to the WordPress.org plugin repository. You can download the release: chess-by-blog.1.1.0.zip directly from there, or first take a look at the Chess by Blog page on wordpress.org.
Please post any questions or issues in the comments. Happy chess playing!
When playing a closed game, the plugin no longer uses PHP sessions. This avoids problems with PHP configurations where output buffering is disabled (thus preventing cookies from being set correctly in the plugin) – this would manifest as an inability to post a move in a closed game. Note: this requires the WordPress nonce feature, which was introduced in WordPress 2.0.2.
When playing a closed game, users with Contributor access or lower (or those without the unfiltered_html capability) no longer corrupt the special div tags in the post after posting a move.
For closed games, players are now only required to have the Subscriber role. Unlike the previous version of the plugin, this should work in versions of WordPress prior to 2.2.
Draw offers, acceptance, and refusal should now work as intended.
A bug which allowed a player to force an opponent to castle in certain circumstances has been fixed.
The toughest release I’ve ever had to work on; and that included 13.0, the first multi-threading capable release. (And I moved in the middle of 13.0.) February and March of this year were particularly killer months. I was a particularly mean SOB during that period, and not too proud of it. Refactoring a lot of code and redesigning rendering algorithms in multi-threading land does that to you. Anyways, I’d take a bunch of time off now, but there’s the small matter of getting another dot release out the door within a month to wrap up some ends here and there. And so the software treadmill churns along..
Three smallish reasons why last weekend was not, in fact, the best weekend ever:
I took the dog to the vet and got her the one shot I wasn’t supposed to get (live vaccine, dangerous to immuno-compromised sweeties). As a result, Kaylee was quarantined from Susan until yesterday.
I hit a jogger while driving, turning right around a corner. Just nudged him, braked hard thankfully. I like to think I wouldn’t have run him over even without Susan yelping a warning, but I wasn’t looking right when he came jogging along. I’m bad like that. Fortunately the jogger was nice enough not to sue my ass over the incident.
Just one more day to the long weekend. Should be a marked improvement.
Full support for Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) has been added via the FEN tag. This allows for arbitrary positioning of pieces on the board.
Fischer Random Chess (aka Chess960) is now supported. You must specify the opening layout via a FEN tag. The castling rules specific to this variant are handled correctly.
Capablanca chess is now supported. The Archbishop and Chancellor pieces have been added. Capablanca Random Chess is also supported. Caveat: arbitrary positioning of the first rank is supported, but castling always follows Capablanca Random Chess rules (i.e. the King ends up on the c or i files). This is at odds with Capablanca-derived variants such as Embassy Chess.
Limited support has been added for arbitrary board sizes; the plugin detects the implied board size based on the FEN tag. Note that en passant, castling, and pawn promotion makes some assumptions which change based on the board size, and not all chess variants will work correctly.
For persistent games, users now only require Contributor access, not Editor access, in order to play the game. Note that this will only work with WordPress 2.2; users in WordPress 2.0 and 2.1 still require Editor access due to WordPress issues.
Because of the potential castling ambiguity caused by the random chess variants, castling must now be done via the new buttons, rather than by direct manipulation of the King piece on the board.
A bug in en passant capture has been fixed.
The server side now correctly escapes text before posting moves to the database. Previously there were SQL issues preventing some posts from being updated correctly.
Various cross-browser/platform user interface glitches have been fixed.
José Raúl Capablanca invented (or at least popularized) a chess variant played on a 10×8 board and named after him: Capablanca chess. There are two new pieces in it: a chancellor that moves as both a rook and a knight, and an archbishop that moves as both a bishop and a knight. These are pretty powerful pieces; for example, the archbishop can checkmate by itself (opposite king in a corner, archbishop two diagonal squares away).
While working on some user-requested features for Chess By Blog, I realised that supporting Capablanca chess wasn’t going to be a big deal. Behold:
Note that this isn’t quite the first rank layout that Capablanca envisioned; this is the layout for Embassy chess, itself a variant on Capablanca chess. (Confusing matters further, I’ve implemented the castling rules in the applet to follow Capablanca random chess.) Anyways, check it out on the board above. I haven’t played it against anyone yet, but so far it seems like the two new pieces make for a very different opening game from standard chess: the archbishop and chancellor wreak havoc on the midboard early since they jump over the pawns immediately. Very interesting!
On track for a Chess By Blog 1.0.2 tomorrow or Monday.
