BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

It is a common problem of the present time that many people think that every web page must start with "www." prefix. It is not the best approach, especially when one tries to optimize the site address and content as much as possible but the secondary option to reach the same content negatively affects the overall site rank in search engines. I have been thinking about it and compiled a short list of points:

• BrainKing.com is shorter than www.BrainKing.com and easier to type if the site is not included in the browser's bookmarks. Furthermore, if the site URL is contained in the browser's history, typing a "b" usually brings the right URL from the list of previously visited pages but "w" would bring up a much longer list of almost all other sites.


• Some people are confused by the "www." dogma and think that everything related to the internet must follow the same scheme. For example, they register their BrainKing account with www.name@domain.com which is, of course, incorrect and they will never get a single e-mail from us.


• When a site is registered to all important search engines with BrainKing.com address (instead of www.BrainKing.com), the engines increase its rank only if they found a link to the same address (BrainKing.com) on other sites. There are services which take these two domains as the same one, but not all of them.

There could be more points to this theme and it's not important to list all of them. The conclusion is clear - we always promote our site with BrainKing.com address (or BrainKing.cz, BrainKing.de, BrainKing.sk, BrainKing.es, BrainKing.hk) and if you plan to support us by linking to BrainKing from your own pages, please make the clickable link to http://BrainKing.com (or any other mentioned domain) only.

Thank you for reading.

One of the best advantages to use a CSS file to define BrainKing's look and feel is that it is very easy to change a particular element on all pages at once, by a simple modification of the corresponding row at the style file. Which is, uh, a great feature for a developer who can launch a local version of BrainKing on his computer (only me, of course), because the officially supported styles are linked to the pages with a relative URL, which means that they are always loaded from the same server as BrainKing itself.

Luckily, we are flexible to address user requests and I have just added an option to specify a URL of your own style, no matter where it is located. If you are a BrainKing skin developer and want to test your creations as quickly as possible, please go to the Settings page and find the new field External style URL just below the list of already installed styles. If you post a full URL of your style file (e.g. http://my.site.com/styles/my-brainking.css), select the Activate external style checkbox next to this field and submit the changes, you will see all BrainKing pages with your own design. Simple and effective, huh?

Please don't forget that when you activate an external style, the style switcher won't work. If you want to switch back to BrainKing internal style, uncheck the Activate external style option.

By the way, good news for all who want to use the tournament templates - the system has been improved and the templates are now stored with tournament names and descriptions as well.

On Monday I have written something like it is really hard to address all requests of "this background color is too bright for my eyes" type and I still think the same. Hovewer, thanks to the nature of CSS (that's why there is the word "cascading" in this abbreviation), it is easy to overwrite some predefined parameters by user defined values, which is the key to, for example, the mentioned background color customization.

Please don't get me wrong - I don't plan to allow users to customize everything because the original styles could be easily changed to something totally different and the result could gives us a bad reputation. But there are some parts of the BrainKing pages which can be made more flexible, if we provide a neat tool to do it without any technical knowledges.

In order to test this system, I have added a color picker to the Settings page. It works with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera (I was not able to test on other browser) and enables a small popup to select a color either by choosing from the palette of predefined ones or defining your own, using sliders for three basic colors and making a color combination. And if JavaScript does not work well with your browser, you can always type a color code manually to the text box.

This feature currently works for game board background color only. More options can be added later. I guess they will be added.

First of all - if you were used to move a mouse cursor to the top left corner of any BrainKing page and invoke a list of first 30 games to make a move, and you cannot find this "hot spot" in the new design, here is the answer:

• In order to make the hot spot located on a more logical point, now it works exactly on the red number indicating the number of games to move, next to the Main Page link at the menu column. And, as it was already announced, the same trick works for the list of ponds. This technique allows us to place such hot spots on any elements, which is a much more flexible way to do it than before. For example, discussion board previews or message previews use the same script.


• One negative consequence - for some reason, this function is not working with Opera browsers. I'll try to find out why, of course. Firefox and Internet Explorer support this feature with no problems.

Now, what's about the styles again? Good news for those users who would like to return the former BrainKing's "no style" look and feel, which has been totally removed yesterday. The regular readers of our discussion boards might already know that one of our enthusiasts has started to write a new style which can be plugged into BrainKing style system and emulates the former view of BrainKing pages as much as possible. It's nice to see that people understand the advantages of this system and know that every big change needs some time to be established.

I have received a message from a WebTV user who says that the new BrainKing design looks perfectly on her device and she has no problems with any BrainKing page. I have also received a message from another WebTV user who claims that the new BrainKing design looks awful and it's absolutely impossible to use it. Ha, where does the truth lie? This is my favourite answer - patience is the solution. All styles can be slowly improved, including the WebTV one, although this one is the most difficult to do because we don't have a WebTV to test it and the emulator does not show any problematic issues.

Please don't panic. Everything is under control. And the work is never finished.

Right, as we have promised, it's happened several hours ago. The new look of the BrainKing site has been officially released and is available for all BrainKing pages in three optional styles (and the 4th special one for WebTV compatible devices). The new design has been tested with all major web browsers on different screen resolutions, so it should not make any problems to 99.99% users, I hope.

There are people who like the change, there are people who hate it and there are also people who don't say anything at all. All these reactions are absolutely normal and expected. If you belong to the second category, please keep in mind that the new BrainKing look and feel system is open to unlimited number of more styles (with bigger fonts, darker background colors, bolder texts, anything you would like to modify) and it's only a matter of time when they start to appear. Everybody can be involved in this process.

Please don't hesitate to submit any bug reports related to the new design. I am not a CSS guru, so it's possible that some visual elements are not positioned as they should be, especially on Internet Explorer 6 which defines its own "standards". All these issues can be fixed on the fly. As I have said, it's only a matter of time to make it perfect.

As it's been already threatened with, the official release of the new BrainKing design will happen this week and since I have just finished the last pending pages to convert, it will be definitely done tomorrow. Let me summarize what it means:

• The "old" look and feel of BrainKing will totally disappear. Since it's obsolete and does not follow contemporary standards, there is no reason to keep it.


• The "Castle" style is set as the default one for everyone. And everyone can easily switch to an alternative one (two other options at this moment) if he is not satisfied with it for any reason.


• When a new user registers on BrainKing, there is no "select if you are using WebTV" option anymore. Instead, BrainKing automatically detects if a WebTV compatible device is present and sets the special WebTV style for all pages.


• It is really hard to address all requests of "this background color is too bright for my eyes" type because we don't want to provide tons of similar styles, covering all possible combinations. The universal (and recommended) way is to learn a few basic aspects of CSS syntax (very easy) and try to create own configuration of BrainKing's visual parameters.

I am sure there will be minor bugs which were not hunted down during the test period. But there should be nothing too serious which couldn't be fixed after the release.

Well, I don't like this anomaly but it's something we have to live with and the chance to make it non-existent at all is very low. Thanks to the modern technology, there is at least one positive thing - I don't need to remember the time change dates anymore because my computer tells me about it automatically, and so does the BrainKing system because it continuously synchronizes its internal clock with world time servers.

There are several negative consequences of this event which has happened today:

• The date is not the same at all countries and since BrainKing is working with Central European Time and its daylight saving rules, our users from other continents are usually confused and send many questions to my message box. And the answer is, unlike the date, always the same.


• There are people who are more tired than usual. Me too. My former intention was to write an entry about differences between BrainKing.com and www.BrainKing.com (don't use this one), BrainKing.com and BrainKing (regarding the official site name) but since my yawning is faster than typing at the moment, I guess I'll dooooooooooooooooo it tomorrow instead.


• You might have noticed that the autosave feature suddenly stopped working on discussion boards due to the recent changes of the related pages to the new design. Yes, I am aware about it and since I already know how to fix it, it should be working tomorrow as well.

Now I only hope there is no clock I have forgotten to adjust.

As you probably know (or, at least, we have been writing about it several times), the new BrainKing look and feel system can support an unlimited number of alternative styles. It means that if you are not satisfied with the current offer of three basic options (Castle, Simple and No fonts), you can use your skills to create a new one and submit it for an approval. It is the most straightforward way how BrainKing can be customized, by users for users. Who knows your needs better than yourself?

However, we understand that not everyone is a programmer or designer and knows how to work with CSS files. It would be nice to have a web based tool, ideally built in BrainKing system, which would describe all required parameters of the BrainKing style template and allow users to experiment with the style changes on the fly. Actually, this idea seems to be very interesting to me and I have already started to think about the tool structure. We already have a system of a similar kind, the Translator Tool - when a translator submits a new entry or edits an existing one, the result is instantly available and visible.

Of course, this work won't be finished tomorrow. For those who know something about CSS and would like to contribute, I recommend to use these great Firefox extensions:

• JSView - displays a list of all external JavaScript and CSS which are loaded by the current page, a good way to recognize the most recent version of BrainKing style.


• Web Developer - an excellent tool to highlight various aspects and parameters of the current page's DOM properties and pinpoint any CSS related problems.


• Firebug - a neat add-on which allows to modify any CSS properties on the fly - a must have for all CSS designers.

Since people keep asking how they can be involved in the BrainKing development and improvement process, I think I will create a special category for the related blog entries soon.

All BrainKing pages except started game pages and discussion boards (and BKR graphs which have been overlooked) are converted to the new design, so this is what I could call a release candidate of the new and modern version of BrainKing's look and feel.

Since there were no important bugs reports related to the new CSS styles (except several small details which are not vitally important), there is nothing what should cancel or delay the next week official release. The confusion of switching between old and new pages is about to end at last.

When this big task is completed, I plan to implement more features to allow users to customize BrainKing pages to fit their needs. The reduction of transferred data (nobody wants to wait for slow loading of information he is not interested in) one of the fundamental aspects to make everyone happy, especially customers with a slow internet connection.

It seems that BrainKing is taken as an important site, otherwise some funny guys would not bother to create fake login pages and try to steal other people's passwords. Since there has been a scam attack yesterday (not a big one but several users have received a message with a link pointing to a scam page), I would like to highlight the basic rules of safe browsing:

• BrainKing never asks you to send your account password in e-mail, private message etc. If you receive a claim your account must be upgraded, please give us your user name and password or similar, don't answer that and don't click any links in such message. It is a phishing.


• If you receive this kind of scam message from a BrainKing user, please report it immediately. I have already banned several fake accounts after yesterday's attack.


• If you click a link and go to a page which looks like BrainKing Login Page or asks you to change your BrainKing password, always check your browser's location bar if the URL starts with http://brainking.com (or .cz, .de, .sk, .es, .hk, .ee). The mentioned fake login page has the URL http://mesto-zlin.wz.cz/brainking.com which, as you can see, belongs to another domain, not associated with BrainKing in any way. Never submit your user name and password before you check this detail, it is very important!

Thank you for reading.

A quick look at the BrainKing database confirms my theory that almost nobody uses the context menu feature because right-click activation brings an annoying side effect of disabling the default browser's context menu which usually contains useful links or commands and a user does not want to have them disabled.

But since I programmed it in the past, I don't want to leave it with no usage. A new solution has emerged today - I have added an option (to the Settings / JavaScript page) to make the context menu activated by moving the mouse cursor to a specific location at the new BrainKing design. This location is the same at all available styles and you can find it next to the style switcher, at the right side. It contains two links - Add (which adds the current page to the context menu, similar to the + link at the old BrainKing view) and Show which works as the activator.

And, of course, it works with the new BrainKing design only.

We have also converted more pages to the new style today, almost all except game pages and discussion boards. It seems that the release won't be delayed.

According to the yesterday's entry the final test phase of the new BrainKing design is currently in progress and since the old visage of the BrainKing pages is obsolete and will be completely replaced, all new improvements of any pages are valid for the new design only, starting today.

Actually, I have just implemented two of them:

• Style switcher - you might have noticed that To castle style and To simple style links are missing. The reason is that the "fast" switches - Castle, Simple and No fonts - now store the changed style information to the database, so when one of them is clicked, the page style changes instantly, an information box with The style has been changed text appears at the top right corner and when the user visits any other newly designed page, the last chosen style will be used for it by default.


• Pond list - when you move your mouse cursor over the red number next to the Main page link, indicating the number of ponds to make a move, a popup box with the list of ponds will appear, similar to the one of games to move. It only works if the switch Activate pulldown game menu at the Settings / JavaScript page is on.

More to come.

I have fixed several minor issues of the new BrainKing design today and made one more alternative to the main style. Its code name is "No fonts" and it has been created for people who prefer a better flexibility of the displayed pages, based on their preselected fonts in the web browser. In other words, the No fonts style defines no fixed font types and not even the fixed font sizes, so the BrainKing pages should be always adjusted to your needs. I hope this addition will make the rest of BrainKing users (who don't like the Castle and Simple styles for any reason) happy as well.

Please note that the style switcher has been included to all newly designed pages, including the New Login Page, and it currently contains the Castle | Simple | No fonts set of options. Everyone is welcome to participate in the final testing process which should cover at least the following pages:

• New Login Page
• New Main Page
• Bug Tracker
• Links
• Help
• Finished games (for example this one)

Please post all bug reports or comments here, at the Add Comment section of this article.

If nothing goes wrong and no serious bugs are found during this week, the new design of the BrainKing site should be released next week, when the rest of the pages are redesigned too.

• June 2006 - we created a 2+1 action - everyone who had purchased a 2 year membership of any level, could choose a friend who would receive 1 year of the same membership level. Ideal solution for couples. And BrainKing released Ambiguous Chess - an interesting and original chess variant invented by on of our users, almost the first one - after Capablanca Random Chess. We always supported the idea to give users an opportunity to create a game of their own and have it implemented on BrainKing, because such cooperation usually brings many advantages to all involved parties.
  There was also one negative announcement - due to continuous problems with our PayPal account and its limitations (unfortunately they didn't treat all merchants from all countries equally) we had decided to end the PayPal support on BrainKing by the end of the month.


• July 2006 - the bad news finally turned to good news - the PayPal support was renewed and everyone could use this service to pay for BrainKing memberships again. Good for all. Since the online payment system is not easy to use worldwide, it is always better to offer more options to choose from, and it would be a pity to remove one of the most popular ones. And BrainKing launched its very first experimental contest called action points. It was accepted with different opinions - some users liked it as a new option to get a free membership, some users did not - but the traffic of BrainKing site was definitely increased and that was one of the positive consequences.


• August 2006 - after a success of the first action points contest we released the second one with slightly improved rules and new prizes to win. We also extended the monthly action by adding a Black Rook Special (who purchased this level during August 2006, could ask for a new feature on BrainKing which would be implemented with the highest priority) and giving out several commercial games by 300AD.com and Rake in Grass as a bonus.
  And this blog site BrainKing.info was created as well. I guess it's not necessary to continue writing the historical events because the daily entries give much better and detailed information.

There was a downtime of the BrainKing.info site today, which is the reason why this entry has been posted a while before midnight. It is also another argument for the decision to create our own blog system which would be used for this site in the near future and, possible for personal blogs of BrainKing users if they want to try it out. The in-house solution is always the best.

I have recently checked our article site BrainRook.com which, for several reasons, was not updated for many months, and I have been surprised (positively) that its Google PageRank is 5/10 (it is a very good rating, BrainKing.com has 6/10 and there are not much sites which would have more than 7). This realization has given me an idea to implement our own article site system too, as an addition to the blog system, because the current one is lacking many important features which a good article system should contain and I was struggling with them for a too long time.

I believe that both sites mentioned in this article will get a new attention and popularity if we make them more attractive in this way and I am sure they deserve a new design as well. The work has been already started. If you plan to write an article, do it and save it. And, of course, all pending articles (already submitted) will be posted too.