Chess Game Viewer in GWT

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, November 11, 2008 @ 6:14 pm

It's not quite done (the game notation looks like crap in IE), but I thought I'd give a taste of my latest labor of love, a chess game viewer in GWT. This is the sort of thing that is usually implemented as a Java Applet. A few others have already built chess viewers in GWT, but as they say in Full Metal Jacket, "this one is mine."

As I blogged a few weeks ago, I ported the Java chess library ChessPresso into GWT, which was a blast and an example of how you can leverage existing Java libraries to write browser-based apps.

In the example, I've pulled the eleven games of the recently completed world championship between Anand and Kramnik in a single page. The GWT app identifies all of the relevant tags, reads the PGN (Portable Game Notation) in those tags, then inserts a game viewer widget into the page.

What isn't working yet:

• Doesn't look so good in IE (a little CSS work)
• The notation pane isn't hooked in so you can click on a move and jump to the position

Anyhow, have a look and let me know what you think.

Update: OK, the notation panel is hooked up to allow clicking on moves to navigate aroung the game. Still looks like crap in IE, though.

Update: for those interested in some of my very few games that make me look good, see here.

Update: Another set of tweaks to display a collection of games, one 41 games PGN chunk and a 250 or so chunk. See here.

agile ajax

Comments: 2 so far

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1. 

   Hi there this looks very good viewer in safari, (haven’t tried IE yet) could I have permission obviously with pathfinder refs to use this board and notation etc for our club games etc?

   Comment by gareth williams, Tuesday, December 23, 2008 @ 1:23 pm

2. 

   Great… could you release this javascript viewer for public use?
   It will be great

   Comment by giampaolo, Wednesday, December 24, 2008 @ 10:34 am

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