Hi!
I found a bug in my bug reporting feature. I didn't read them... I have changed it so that I now get an email when a bug report is submitted which is harder to ignore.
One of the bugs that was reported was about setting board size didn't work so well on iPad. I thought a bit more about it and found that the best way is to have separate settings for different devices so on my desktop computer i can have board size=100% while on my iPad i can set it to 90% which is a better fit. This also applies for setting where buttons should show up (and most others that make sense I think).
Working a bit more on the iPad I noticed that the matches list was way too cramped and buttons were too big to fit the screen. I have fixed it so that it now looks reasonably fine on iPad also (and possibly other devices).
I also split out the 'latest' section on a separate page on iPad as this information is too big to fit on the start page. I checked the user agent for this which isn't supposed to be the way to to it. I'll look into using css media queries instead.
In the last few days i have focused on improving the showtime! stuff which has gotten reasonably nice now. I threw away the ranking of players as average error rating over only difficult problems doesn't make much sense (and mine kept falling like a rock...) so now there is a more common rating approach.
The consultation mode where you compete against another player answering 10 random positions is getting quite fun! Especially since I keep beating a friend of mine from my local backgammon club. :-)
After you complete a match you get all positions displayed with the answers each player made and you can click through them to revisit the positions and then ask your opponent about clues as to how to come up with the correct answer (or vice versa). Adding comments to the positions as you discuss them is also a possibility but I suspect often both players are in a rush to play again to have any time for that! :-)
I also brushed the dust off some old idea of having gnu backgammon provide evaluation to positions. If you play through a match and then wonder 'What if the piece as at a different position?' you can now drag the piece to to this position and then click 'Hint'. A dialog will then show up with the gnu bg evaluation:
If you want to follow more closely what is going on at my backgammon server you can always follow my flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/108019204@N07/? I upload screenshots whenever I have added something new and interesting (or improved on some old stuff).
Everybody can now register on the commercial server: Backgammon Studio. I have already copied the login details for the 250 or so (a few less since some didn't validate their email) users from the free server to this server. This is where all the fun stuff is! :-) You get a free account without the possibility to create your private database (as there isn't an unlimited amount of disk space on the server) but most other features should be available to you. At some point I may retire the other server in favor of having only one server as this means less maintenance for me.
Give it a try!
TP