Transient arrow
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I notice I have received no reply from @lexulous or @sakamvari on my original question here, to which I now add the additional observation that the time limitation on the use of the arrow apparently isn't reset when the arrow is moved. I noticed this a few minutes ago when I was using the backspace key to delete letters I had entered, and I lost the arrow while in the middle of doing this though I wasn't pausing between deletions. This means it's even worse than I originally thought. Please delete this feature or at least make it optional. I find it difficult to imagine anyone's actually desiring it, so I would hope that other players would come in on this. Not that I don't think design is important, but this is a question of game play rather than appearance (except for the fact that the ugly black arrow disappears, which is the only advantage I can think of except it isn't an advantage).
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I have now given my fullest attention to @mapmakere's suggestion that I publish my messages on the McSweeney's site, and I have decided not to do so. In fact I'm thinking of not publishing them here either, but rather of dealing with Lexulous via email as I have done in the past. It is unnecessary to inform me that this will not break anyone's heart, as I am already aware of this. Thank you.
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@roymccoy Oh come on, we could use a little more unintended humor, Roy!
Surely you were going to suggest something like how the URL is not symmetrical and thus aesthetically displeasing?LOL & No hard feelings
BTW Actually I do agree with you that the arrow shouldn't disappear. I hadn't noticed it until you brought it up, but I imagine it's a problem for slow players.
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@zaph said in Transient arrow:
@roymccoy Oh come on, we could use a little more unintended humor, Roy!
Sorry, I'm humored out.
Surely you were going to suggest something like how the URL is not symmetrical and thus aesthetically displeasing?
I'm not worried about that, but thank you for reminding me that I created, or at least intended to create, macros for switching between the two versions. I'll check that right now...
Interesting: I made one to switch to the old format, but not to switch to the new one and I'm mostly playing in that one now while the old one keeps coming up – like right now when I clicked on a Mac Opera bookmark linking to https://www.lexulous.com/email/. (I put up with the new version, despite its uncorrected pain-in-the-butt aspects, to get the score-strength percentage so I can beat my opponent, whom I dastardly still haven't told about this new feature.)
So let's go the other way. I could place the cursor over the URL game number and start the macro with a double-click from there, but why should I bother myself with that when the URL always ends with the same 14 characters "&pid=2&lang=UK"? So I'll hop up to the end of the address line and delete those... and select and cut the game number... and select and delete the rest... and type in "https://www.lexulous.com/v2/g/"... and paste the game number... and not add the dash because it doesn't need it... and voilà ! I've automated the switch to the new format. Thanks again!
LOL & No hard feelings
(shrug)
BTW Actually I do agree with you that the arrow shouldn't disappear. I hadn't noticed it until you brought it up, but I imagine it's a problem for slow players.
I imagine it's a problem for you too, or you wouldn't agree that the arrow shouldn't disappear. I'm sure no one in the entire Lexulous universe plays that fast consistently, and I'm pretty sure a vast majority of players gain no advantage from the transience and will be seriously annoyed when they realize what it's doing – apparently pointlessly, though I'd be happy to read a justification if one exists or can be thought up.
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I noticed the disappearing arrow but it never bugged me enough to mention it. I just tested and it's staying up for around 10-11 seconds so perhaps they extended the time. You know what though, it's probably best that it didn't disappear. The third click on the same square removes it anyway so we always have the option to remove it. Let's just keep it where we put it to prevent potential re-clicking. Some people have impairments and have to play slower. They might not appreciate how it works right now. Less minor annoyances the better right?
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I don't think there's any doubt about this. A little over two weeks ago the arrow started disappearing after five seconds. Dan Mitchell reports that this has now been extended to ten or eleven seconds, but no reason was ever provided for its being disappeared in the first place and it's still an annoyance. I still haven't imagined any good reason for its being disappeared after five or ten minutes, or even hours. The arrow transience impresses me as yet another "somebody's bright idea" in the new version that everybody's simply going to have to accept because that's the way it is now and you're going to like it. I'm sorry, but I am not going to like it (or the bland gray star in the middle, or the ugly black arrow that doesn't work, or various other things) and the present version is not acceptable in its current form whatever lexulous or sakamvari says (though at least the ads are working in Google Chrome). Others have shared my concern about the newly transient arrow and no one has supported this new "feature", but there still hasn't been any response from Lexulous and, as in other cases (such as the ellipsed/non-ellipsed/nonexistent prompt text in the chat/dictionary/tool panes), nothing has been done about it.
I find it genuinely aggravating that this beta version is apparently being passed off as an acceptable release version. It isn't. If we're all essentially beta testers the program should be under active development, but I don't see that it is. What I see is a series of boilerplate "thank you for this suggestion, we'll forward it to our development team" messages, these following previous boilerplate messages such as "thank you for your valuable feedback" (which goes to people who praise the program, not to those who provide actual useful feedback) and "please send us a screenshot" (and then nothing happens when the screenshot is sent).
I thought sakamvari was the development team. If he/she isn't, then why isn't "the development team" on this forum? Can I be blamed for suspecting that it doesn't really exist at this point, i.e. that nobody is presently on salary for improving the program? I don't know, but that seems to me to be a likelier explanation than incompetence, indifference or inconsideration, though the latter can't be ruled out.
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S sakamvari locked this topic on