There are still network strain issues, even if security isn't a concern. Even if they are compressing the data, doing what is almost an X redirect through what I expect is a secured connection is a sh*tload of bandwidth just for playing a browser game.

I wonder if the Nova/OGS guys could just implement a GTP layer via http(s) so anyone could write a barebones client with a little patience.

There are still network strain issues, even if security isn't a concern. Even if they are compressing the data, doing what is almost an X redirect through what I expect is a secured connection is a sh*tload of bandwidth just for playing a browser game.

Re bandwidth concerns, most of the data you receive from the site is cached so you only have to download when it updates. Once connected to a game we're using websockets to exchange data, so it's a very small amount of traffic, on par with native clients when you're playing live games. For correspondence play you're looking at having to load each game up in turn, so this takes a bit more bandwidth - about 15KB per page, so playing 4 moves is about the same amount of traffic as loading up a random image of a cat on the internet.

He's referring to the serverside browser mentioned previously, not to nova itself.

There are features from OGS, that I miss on "nova OGS", however. Reviews are owned, which is probably a good way for teaching but the typical collective review featured on OGS is just not possible. Also, old reviews from OGS seem to be lost, unlike the old game records. Other than that, it already is working quite well.

I haven't checked myself, but I read somewhere that old reviews do not show up as "Review" but the comments are actually inside the game itself, so they are not really lost.

Exactly. I guess the amount of data once the game is loaded is negligible (I assume just the data to manage the game area so close to 0 with today's speeds), but a remote browser has to send at the very least 1 image per change, not sure how optimised the other side may be (it can be 30 frames/second or 1 frame for every n-pixels changed in the virtual screen.)

@skydyr, the API can be hooked a a middle layer GTP API. So, a generic GTP API is implemented and more or less fixed to the outside. When the inner Nova API changes, the GTP API changes how it connects to the Nova API, the GTP API doesn't change to the exterior. It's not like Nova can't do currently what GTP asks for.

Ahh, yeah that's kind of wild, and agreed, seems like a whole lot of bandwidth for something like this I didn't even know such things existed.. sorry for the confusion

I wonder if the Nova/OGS guys could just implement a GTP layer via http(s) so anyone could write a barebones client with a little patience.

GTP is not suitable for writing a client, AFAIK. It is meant to connect go engines only and has no provisions for such things as kibitz, chat, observing games, etc.

Would allow playing in any case. Good enough I think...

They could implement IGS-compatible commands. There are many ways this can be solved, worked around or prevented, even improved.

Lots of posts about ios browsing, what about Android? My experience so far is that, on Android 4.2, Chrome works fine, but Dolphin (my preferred browser) shows games but won't allow me to make moves (nothing happens on the GUI, and I keep getting server connection errors). Have not yet tried other browsers.

We are working a more full fledged API to interface with the system from other clients, but it has to be able to support all of the various 'things' our site does (interface with tournaments, groups, chat, profiles, libraries, etc..), so it'll be a bit more complicated.