Life In 19x19

Something which I haven't heard directly addressed (although I might have missed it) --

Android and iOS have relatively modern browsers, but I imagine that a lot of interface work will be required to get things laid out nicely for a phone-sized device. (A tablet-sized device might look pretty good with minimal effort, I suppose.)

Are you planning to have a version of the site that targets mobile devices (or independent native clients on Android or iOS)? If not, will the API be sufficiently powerful that someone could build a third-party client? If so, what devices do you think you'll be supporting in the near future?

EDIT: I dug around and found http://kaya.gs/kayags/features.php: "It will work both on Ipad, Iphone and Android mobile devices." If "work" means the user experience will actually be good on those devices (as opposed to being able to use it with difficulty and awkward zooming/scrolling) then awesome.

This can be a killer feature for kaya.gs, unless wms gets the HTML-KGS interface done soon enough. Of course kaya has a lot of nifty features coming down the pipe, but KGS has the userbase already.

cata wrote:Something which I haven't heard directly addressed (although I might have missed it) --

Android and iOS have relatively modern browsers, but I imagine that a lot of interface work will be required to get things laid out nicely for a phone-sized device. (A tablet-sized device might look pretty good with minimal effort, I suppose.)

Are you planning to have a version of the site that targets mobile devices (or independent native clients on Android or iOS)? If not, will the API be sufficiently powerful that someone could build a third-party client? If so, what devices do you think you'll be supporting in the near future?

EDIT: I dug around and found http://kaya.gs/kayags/features.php: "It will work both on Ipad, Iphone and Android mobile devices." If "work" means the user experience will actually be good on those devices (as opposed to being able to use it with difficulty and awkward zooming/scrolling) then awesome.

Its planned to fully support those devices. As it stands today, users have found it extremely usable in ipads, and androids. We will eventually optimize it for those platforms (although its almost always a styling for the display matter). Right out the box it seems to work.

On the other hand, i dont have neiher an android or an ipad, so until we get some , we will not look into it. We are thinking of putting up special donation levels (as Meijin or Kisei) to get the devices so we can test it ourselves.

An ipad would be slick for us, because it will make it very flashy to show it to potential investors and i've been hearing it works quite well there already, needing some fixes and other improvements like being harder to misclick.

For Android, you can run an emulator pretty easily from the Android SDK. I have no idea what iStuff does.

oren wrote:For Android, you can run an emulator pretty easily from the Android SDK. I have no idea what iStuff does.

Ah hadn't thought of that. On the ipad there might be an emulator that lets me see how it looks, but obviously wont be able to try how it feels to touch the screen. But not a bad idea at all, hadn't thought of that.

Thanks for the tip.

Apple's Xcode includes an iPhone/iPad emulator. I've never used it, but I think the web browser - Safari - works in the emulator, so you can test web pages.

iPhone's emulator in XCode in really good - quite fast and robust. On the other hand, Android's emulator is crappy, I strongly recommend against using it because it gives you a very bad indication of your application.

You obviously lose any multi touching capabilities while using an emulator.

uPWarrior wrote:iPhone's emulator in XCode in really good - quite fast and robust. On the other hand, Android's emulator is crappy, I strongly recommend against using it because it gives you a very bad indication of your application.

Weird, I've had very good luck working with the Android emulator while doing development.

I love the enthusiasm, but is anyone here honestly considering to play a go game on the iPhone? I mean, it would be great for 5x5 go and a must-have for professional kibitzers, but for larger boards the screen is simply too small to play, no?

I've played a few games on KGS through my mobile phone. So, yes, I'm quite certain there are a bunch of players willing to play it from a mobile device.

It's a wonderful time-killer during the night shift...

I've gone through periods where I play a daily game during my lunch break on IGS (always 19x19), via Tetsuki and the iPhone. The interface is very clever and easy to use. It even handles incoming calls with aplomb.

I play games on my Android tablet and watch them on my phone.

uPWarrior wrote:iPhone's emulator in XCode in really good - quite fast and robust. On the other hand, Android's emulator is crappy, I strongly recommend against using it because it gives you a very bad indication of your application.

I'm not sure why you call the Android emulator crappy. I got the Android client up to alpha level with only the emulator, no actual device; when I bought a phone, it was pretty much pixel-for-pixel the same as the emulator. The only problem I've seen is that the emulator is a lot slower than modern phones, even when run on a powerful computer, but for KGS that isn't such an issue.

wms wrote:I'm not sure why you call the Android emulator crappy.

Check iOS emulator and compare.

wms wrote:I'm not sure why you call the Android emulator crappy. I got the Android client up to alpha level with only the emulator, no actual device; when I bought a phone, it was pretty much pixel-for-pixel the same as the emulator. The only problem I've seen is that the emulator is a lot slower than modern phones, even when run on a powerful computer, but for KGS that isn't such an issue.

I simply can't understand how can an emulator be so slow; developing gets painful.