Check out Modern Chess, our featured variant for January, 2025.


[ Help | Earliest Comments | Latest Comments ]
[ List All Subjects of Discussion | Create New Subject of Discussion ]
[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]

Single Comment

Game Courier History. History of the Chess Variants Game Courier PBM system.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Aug 1, 2012 01:11 AM UTC:
I have added a new feature to tablet play. When you're playing with the Play form, and your browser's user agent string reveals that you are using a tablet, it will turn pieces upsidedown for the second player. This allows you and your opponent to sit on opposite sides of the same tablet and each see the pieces from your own orientation when it is your turn. This will also give you a visual cue that it is your turn.

Note that this works only for pieces that do not normally flip. It will not flip Shogi pieces. Otherwise, they would have the wrong orientation. Since the visual cue of flipping the pieces is not available for Shogi, it also mentions whose turn it is to move underneath the form.

If you don't want pieces to flip, because you and your opponent are looking at your tablet from the same orientation, you can turn it off by changing your browser's user agent to one for a desktop. If your user agent includes one of these keywords--Android, iPad, Tablet, or Mobile--in any case, it will flip pieces for the second player. If these keywords are all missing from your user agent, then it will not flip the pieces. On both the iPad and Android tablets, you can get browsers that let you change the user agent. On the Android, these include Boat Browser, Dolphin, and Opera. The iPad also has Dolphin and Opera, and I tested Dolphin. On the iPad, Dolphin avoids the term user agent, but it lets you turn desktop mode on or off. When it's off, pieces flip, and when it is on, they don't.