Chess Tempo Forum

I lose ton of my pts from accidental touching of my computer. Touch and arrow key *woops* lose the tactic. Touch the mouse pad to hard(laptop) *woops* lose the tactic. I don't understand why this option is there at all.

Is there a way to only have the arrow keys show the moves AFTER you complete the tactic?

Hi Zel,

The original idea was that the forward buttons (or arrow keys) would essentially behave as a "give up" button and show you the next move (and fail the problem).

In hind site it probably wasn't one of my better ideas :-)

I already have a task to deal with a similar issue so I'll merge this into that.

Regards,
Richard.

Ideally any action which would abort the problem and so lose the points (other than a wrong move obviously) should give some kind of "Are you sure?" dialog. However, I can see it might be difficult and, anyway, your rating is determined by comparison to everyone else here and everyone else has the same problems so it probably doesn't affect ratings much.

As a side note I should mention that I think Richard has created an AWESOME site. Even if, from time to time, it makes me insanely frustrated when I lose a tactic :o

Yes, I think Richard already has this on his to-do list and it was mentioned a couple times in the Forum already.  Anything you do while a problem is "live" besides making a wrong move should not fail you.  That includes clicking on "Stats" or "Forum" etc while a problem is live, or clicking Next Problem or arrows.

Of course Richard can't stop you from closing the browser or typing in some other address, but single-clicks on anything on the page should not fail you without a warning.

i've had failure for just about every conceivable source, sufficient that i just don't touch anything while the problem is "live"... i would like to loosen up a little bit though.  can anyone tell me what exactly is taboo at this point?  what's in the pipeline as far as restriction changes?

Hi Apsyrtos,

Basically anything that isn't moving the pieces should be considered unsafe, so forwards or backwards with the keys, forwards or backwards with the buttons and the "next problem" button. I'm in the middle of some large changes at the moment so smallish changes like this are probably still a number of weeks away. My current preferred approach is to keep the current functionality but provide a warning dialog the first time the user tries any of the above interactions to confirm that they know this will be failing the problem.

Regards,
Richard.

On my touchpad I de-activated the clicking.  Now the only way to click is to push the button next to the touchpad.  So I can do anything on the touchpad without worrying that it might be interpreted as a click.  I never understood why people would want the pad to both move and click, it causes lots of mistakes.

Left index finger on the button, right index finger on the pad, works just as fast as a regular mouse for playing ICC blitz (and for doing Chess Tempo problems).

Yup, Great advice. I disabled mine tonight! Now I just have to avoid the arrows  :o

revenant: the squishy fumbly laptop IS my at home computer... so an extra helping of thanks goes to you for sharing your "end" key-stroke tip.  and of course you guessed correctly: trying to scroll down and hitting the right arrow key by mistake was one of the "every conceivable sources" of failure.  it's not like i'm typing with sausage fingers either.  i'm 5'11" and weight in at 172.  i'll be the bad artisan and blame the tools: this computer is tiny.  12.1".  can't let it go, though.  we've bonded.

My wife calls the unnamed 5th appendage an "undeveloped leg", which cracks me up every time...

Yes, those five reasons, and so many more, are why I <3 my lappy more than the girl that I kinda dated for 2 months.  Although truth be told, I wouldn't trade that for anything... the break up is probably the best dating story I have at my disposal.