Looks like there is a problem with ChessUp in Internet Explorer.   It doesn’t like the “/” character in the FEN notation (because, y’know, a slash is a really special character.  Sigh).  I’ll post a note when I get this fixed.

(Yes, I should have tested this change in IE before I put the code up.  Lesson learned.)

ChessUp now supports FEN.

What is FEN? It’s a notation system for representing chess positions. There are 8 parts separated by a slash (/), and each part represents a row. Lower case letters are black pieces, upper case is white, and numbers are how many sequential empty squares there are.

The standard starting position in chess is:

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR

Of course, you don’t have to know any of this to use ChessUp. But if you do want to see what a FEN position looks like - or create a position and then get the FEN representation - you now have the ability.  Only position information is used.  Info about the game state is ignored.

I reorganized the pages of ChessUp.

The homepage now shows the Diagram Editor tool. My logs showed that a lot of users were hitting the front page, but not going any further. Instead of using the front page to tell people about ChessUp, I decided to actually show them the tool.

So we’ll see how that goes…

I think I’ve fixed the problem that was happening in Firefox.  When you loaded the “Create Diagram” page for the first time, clicking on the chess pieces in the palette had no effect (this was a Bad Thing).  I was able to consistently reproduce the problem before applying the fix.  After putting in the fix, I can’t recreate the problem anymore (this is a Good Thing).

For those who want the gory details: the problem seemed to a particularly nasty heisenbug that effected the x and y coordinates of the images.  As the page is rendered and starts to “settle”, the X and Y coordinates are in flux.  Unfortuneately, my JavaScript code that reads and stores the “golden copy” of the coordinates was running in the middle of this flux state.  End result: some important values were really wrong and that was causing a problem.

Some seniors at UMass Amherst have invented a chess machine called autoMate.  The article is short on details, but I liked this bit:

Scott M. Fleming, a computer systems engineering student from Ware, said he hopes another team can someday improve upon autoMate by making it more compact and faster, among other things. James M. Asermely, an electrical engineering student from Seekonk, also worked on the project.

“I’d love to see another group take it on and improve on it,” Fleming said. “I would love to see it be voice-activated.”

Do we have systems that let handicap people easily play chess?  Voice activitation would be a big step in that direction.

Some users are telling me that when they load the Create Diagram page in Firefox, nothing happens when they click on the pieces in the pallette.

I’ve been able to reproduce this problem. It seems like it usually happens when I open up Firefox and go directly to the “Create Diagram” page (it doesn’t happen if I go to the ChessUp home page and then go to the “Create Diagram” page).

A temporary solution is to refresh the page once or twice. Usually it will start working.

I’ll look into this problem and post the results here. Firefox’s JavaScript console doesn’t seem to indicate any problems, so I don’t know what’s wrong right now.

According to the US Department of State, chess is gaining popularity again in US schools.

Formerly the refuge of nerds, dweebs, wonks and misfits, chess has become one of the hottest activities in schools across the United States.  The chess programs, however, are not designed to turn out more grand masters or produce a new American world chess champion.  Educators promote chess for the impressive academic gains it brings to students.

…

No one has firm numbers on how many kids have taken up the game in recent years, but one academic has said that there has been “a veritable explosion of young chess players” across the United States.

Unfortuneately, the article is pretty short on actual numbers.

The “Chess Details” problem has been fixed. You now have the option of adding extra text that will show up in your diagram.

Here is an example of the details in action:

I discovered that ChessUp’s “Chess Details” options is not working correctly.   Or to be more blunt, it isn’t working at all.  Adding details will cause an error that prevents you from getting an image.

It looks like my webhost doesn’t have the same fonts as I had on my development machine.

For the time being, keep the “Chess Details” set to “Off”.  I will post an update when the problem is fixed.

ChessUp is now live on this newfangled “internet” thingy!

What is ChessUp?

ChessUp is an online tool that lets you create and annotate chess diagrams. You can setup any position you want, and also add some extra symbols (such as crosses and circles).

You can download your image, or you can copy-n-paste the URL and send it to a friend. When the friend accesses the URL, they will see the diagram on the ChessUp website. This is great for newsgroups, forums, email, or other situations where you are restricted to text.

Did I mention it’s all free? No? OK: It’s all free.

I’m Trent, and I’ll be maintaining this site. I welcome any feedback you may have. Keep an eye on this blog for ChessUp changes and other happenings in the chess world.

Welcome to ChessUp and enjoy your stay!