Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
miniBGG.com is a mobile version of boardgamegeek, designed to run with phones and PDAs in mind. miniBGG is coded in PHP/XHTML Basic using the XMLAPI and will run on most new phones with a data connection (just point the phone browser to minibgg.com).
miniBGG features:
- View game pages in scaled down form
- Compare multiple games
- Log plays
Planned features:
- View forum threads (with posting to follow)
- View geeklists (with posting to follow)
- View collections
Planned features pending on XMLAPI update:
- View game forums from game page
- View personal info on game page (eg. own, want, wishlist, rating etc)
Change log
Update 10 Sep 2007: Added game logging
Update 13 Jan 2008: Added login info cookie for game logging, to help as a temporary fix for new BGG secure cookies. Now requires password hash from http://www.boardgamegeek.com/cookiedump.php (need to be logged in, bggpassword value case sensitive) instead of plain password. Better solution is being worked on.
Update 24 Jan 2008: Unmasked play logging hash input for easier input.
Update 24 Feb 2008: Added comment viewing (click on comment number on game page), lots of code cleaning.
Update 23 Jul 2008: Fixed submitting plays (was broken due to recent upgrades on BGG). Thanks to IngredientX and daw65 for letting me know and Aldie for giving the info I needed.
Update 25 Nov 2008: Fixed submitting plays (return page had changed, updated to reflect changes to BGG)
Update 10 Feb 2009: Temporary fix for BGG 2.0 XMLAPI. More work needed, but will be done with a more final version of the API. Game images, play logging and search count known to not be working.
Any suggestions or bugs please let me know.
-
Mika R.
Finland
Unspecified
-
I recommend to try opera mini browser. I type this from my nokia n-series phone and it works very well. Each page load takes 40-60kbytes with images, which is very reasonable. And you can use bgg as with your pc browser, controls are optimized for mobile use.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Used it today doing some thrifting, helped me pick up Twixt for a bargain price
-
United States
Fall River
Massachusetts
This is how I spent my supporter bonus Geek Gold. With more support I could have had both Over Texts.
-
I would like to see an option to log games played if possible. As it is now I just make notes on my phone then have to log them when I reach a computer. It would be much easier to just do it directly on the phone.
Otherwise the site looks great on my Q.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Yeah that would be a cool feature, but definitely wont be the easiest as I would need to generate a login cookie to pass with the request. Will look into it though. Anyone know how BGG handles login cookies feel free to let me know
Edit: The geek cookie system is easy to figure out just went cookie hunting then, gotta ask though why are the login passwords saved in cookies as plain text? Not like people getting into my account here is bad or anything, but I happen to use that password around quite a few other sites... Are the passwords saved in the database as plain text too?
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
spizio wrote: I would like to see an option to log games played if possible. As it is now I just make notes on my phone then have to log them when I reach a computer. It would be much easier to just do it directly on the phone.
Otherwise the site looks great on my Q.
A couple of hours work this afternoon and I have implemented this. Its quite cool actually but I haven't tested it very thoroughly. Go to minibgg.com, search for a game, and go to the bottom of the page and click "Log play". It will show a page with details, and the only way I could do it was to have the user input their username and password as well for authentication on boardgamegeek.com. The username and password is sent to the geek server and adds the data in.
I can understand that a lot of people wont feel comfortable inputting their username and password for the geek into miniBGG but I am afraid there was no other way I could come up with  All that is done with the details though is they are forwarded to boardgamegeek.com for authentication. Happy to share the source with others if they want to check themselves.
That aside, I hope people can put this feature to good use 
-
United States
Fall River
Massachusetts
This is how I spent my supporter bonus Geek Gold. With more support I could have had both Over Texts.
-
Cool! I just did a quick test and it worked fine. I'll let you know if I see anything funny after my weekend game sessions.
beefsack wrote: That aside, I hope people can put this feature to good use
-
United States
Fall River
Massachusetts
This is how I spent my supporter bonus Geek Gold. With more support I could have had both Over Texts.
-
Thanks for the info. I just changed my password to be specific to this site. Not that I'm worried about anyone stealing my anemic
 balance. 
beefsack wrote: Edit: The geek cookie system is easy to figure out just went cookie hunting then, gotta ask though why are the login passwords saved in cookies as plain text?  Not like people getting into my account here is bad or anything, but I happen to use that password around quite a few other sites... Are the passwords saved in the database as plain text too?
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Yeah to be honest it's no huge security risk I'm sure they hash passwords in the database, is always just a bit of a shock to see my password staring me right back in the face
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Just so people know, the new cookies that have been implemented on BGG (which are fantastic, hashed cookies are much more secure) have broken the game logging function. If anyone knows how the passwords are actually hashed I would love to know, I'll try to figure it out today so I can fix the game logging. At the moment I think it will also make miniBGG more secure too, and I am thinking of adding the ability to enter your hashed password directly into miniBGG instead of your plain password, because if it was me I would feel unsafe putting my plain login information for one site into another. Good thing it broke miniBGG because now I feel like giving it a bit of an update.
Stuff I am thinking of working on:
* Storing username (without password) in a cookie, will display ownership status while viewing game information. Possibly make it possible to add multiple usernames and on the game information page it will show ownership status of all users
* Adding a collection page
* View comments for games
* Store hashed password in a cookie so you don't have to re-enter information when logging plays
* Clean up game comparison page
* Add function to change ratings/want/trade/ownership information at game info page. This may not be implemented because other implementations I have seen can only get it working by clearing every value before setting them (entire form needs to be submitted)
If there are any requests be sure to let me know
EDIT: If anyone really needs to log games with it for the time being, instead of using your normal password, just enter your hashed password ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/cookiedump.php -> the value for bggpassword which is case sensitive) and it should work.
EDIT: Tested, the password hash works for logging. Added ability to keep login info in a cookie (off by default) so you don't have to remember the hash.
-
Kyle Walker
United States
Sparks
Nevada
-
Great site, just added it to my mobile phone, should work a lot better to check a game's rating, and now I can log play instantly instead of writing down what new games I played. Thanks!
One change that might be nice, now that the password for logging is a hash (and for some reason Pocket IE isn't letting me paste the password), could you unmask the password box, so it's easier to type in on the phone.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Yeah that's a good idea, just unmasked it then.
-
Matthew Frederick
United States
Phoenix
Arizona
-
Wow, awesome, thanks!
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Worked on miniBGG today, added ability to view comments on games and also coded in collection viewing. It's all written, just waiting on a fix in the XMLAPI before I upload it. Did a huge amount of code cleaning too it will be a lot easier to update in the future, hopefully I haven't introduced any bugs. Please let me know if anyone stumbles across anything strange.
Next thing to work on will be viewing geeklists and forums, with being able to reply to geeklists and forums hopefully not long after that. There is a lot of stuff that I would like to do like being able to view game forums from inside game pages (I like to read reviews on the run) fingers crossed one day the XMLAPI will be updated with things like that
-
Michael Pearsall
United States
Castleton
New York
4 8 15 16 23 42
-
Love the site, especially now that you can view comments!
Couple of things I would like to see...
I like to browse minibgg to waste some time, I would like it if I could click a link to get a random game. Another cool thing would be if you could see a list of the Top 20 games, most played in the last month, or the Hot Games to see what other people are looking at.
I don't know how hard any of these things are, even if none of my ideas can get implemented, I think this is awesome!
-
Lyle L
United States
Baton Rouge
Louisiana
-
Great site!
Just one comment: When viewing it on an iPhone, the site is tiny. Something makes it zoomed way out, and you have to zoom way in before you can use it.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Yeah things like top 20 and hot games would be fantastic for boredom browsing, worth asking to be added over at the XMLAPI thread here. Once that hits the XMLAPI I could implement it in a second.
Not many iPhones in this part of the world so I can't really test that I'm afraid. Any chance of a pic of it? Anyone else getting small text on other phones too?
-
Matthew Frederick
United States
Phoenix
Arizona
-
Looks great on my tiny Nokia candy bar phone. Thanks again.
-
Chris Brooks
United States
Sherwood
Oregon
-
beefsack wrote:
Not many iPhones in this part of the world so I can't really test that I'm afraid. Any chance of a pic of it? Anyone else getting small text on other phones too?
You could try testing in Safari 3.0 on your desktop:
http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
Looking at the HTML, I think the issue may be the margins you specify in the CSS. I can't test right now, but this line:
.center, .centersmall, .comparetitlesmall, .title {margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center;}
might do better with something simpler like this:
{text-align: center; width: 100%}
The HTML and CSS are very clean - I'm impressed and suspect you are a tiny tweak away from having a nice-looking iPhone interface.
-
Chris Comeaux
United States
Birmingham
Alabama
-
I love what you've done so far. Thanks a million.
But I do have a mod request. Can the log play link be near the top of the page instead of (or as well as) the bottom? My phone doesn't like to scroll very fast, so having this near the top would be dynamite. Thanks!
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Sounds like a reasonable idea, I'll have a play and try to squeeze it in higher up. Just so I know has anyone had trouble with play logging recently?
-
Sonja Elen Kisa
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
-
Is it downloadable on a Treo? I'd like to store the pages for, say, the top 3000 ranked board games or something. That way I can have the basic info (rating, weight, etc.) about most games on the go, without needing Internet access.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Sonja wrote: Is it downloadable on a Treo? I'd like to store the pages for, say, the top 3000 ranked board games or something. That way I can have the basic info (rating, weight, etc.) about most games on the go, without needing Internet access.
Hi Sonja, I'm afraid that miniBGG is purely online based so it is pretty much impossible to download it. However, the BGG XML Snapshot is pretty much what you are looking for, except it is purely data so it might be a bit ungainly to use reading and searching with a text editor. I wrote a Pocket PC app which used that snapshot to get game info offline, but I'm afraid that will only work on Pocket PC and not your Treo (and is still quite buggy, stopped working on it to develop miniBGG). You might be able to get some sort of XML reader for Treo that might help working with that snapshot. Just so you know, it is zipped in gz form so you will need a program that can extract gz. I believe 7-zip can extract the .gz file and give you the plain .xml file, and it is also free and open source which is great. Best of luck!
-
Justin Moore
United States
Louisville
Kentucky
Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter Top Promoter
Does (Top Promoter) subliminal (Top Promoter) advertising (Top Promoter) really (Top Promoter) work?
-
I tried going to minibgg.com and all I get is a "Index of /" directory page with a CGI-BIN directory.
-
Michael Alexander
Australia
Monash
ACT
-
Yeah sorry just changed hosts yesterday, will fix that up tonight. Thanks for letting me know I may have missed that one.
-
|
|
Posted Fri Sep 7, 2007 8:58 am
