
Show HN: A simple site to make chessboard images - einaregilsson
https://chessboardimage.com
======
pflats
I really like it, but just a heads-up: the directions threw me for a solid
15-30 seconds.

"Click a piece to select it, then click on the board to place it."

Okay, cool! I clicked on the King's Pawn, then e4. The king's pawn
disappeared, and then... nothing. I clicked e3. I clicked e4 again and then...
e5? e2? Nope.

Okay, maybe something went wrong. Let's try with the queen's pawn. d2, pawn
goes away. d4? d3? Nope.

I re-read the directions: "Click a piece to select it, then click on the board
to place it."

Weird. The pawn went away instead of being selected. How do I select a pawn?
Click f2. Nope.

At that point, I look again at the pieces below the board, and click on the
pawn. It's selected! I click on e4. It's on the board! Okay, I get this now,
but it's not what I expected.

I see what you're doing with the controls, but I think it's a poor match for
your default state. When I see a chess board in starting position, my instinct
is to move a piece, not to find a way to add new pieces to the board.

My thoughts:

If you want to keep the controls the same, I'd start with an empty board and
maybe clarify the directions a smidge. I'd try something like:

    
    
      To place a piece, first select it from the case, then click any empty square on the board.
    
      To remove an existing piece from the board, click once on it.
    
      Use the buttons below for standard starting position or to import a FEN position.
    

If you're up for modifying the controls, I was expecting something like:
clicking a piece currently on the board selects it. A second click on the same
square deletes that piece, while a click on any other square "moves" the
selected piece there, emptying its source square and overwriting the contents
(if any) of the destination square.

~~~
Thorentis
Agreed. Poor controls. You can actually drag and drop to place pieces, and
clicking on an existing piece removes it, so the instructions should just be
modified to say this.

------
SilasX
Nice! One suggestion, though: a common operation is to take one board position
and move one piece on it. As it stands now, you can't just drag a piece, and
if you click on one it disappears and you have to click on its type at the
bottom.

I would prefer if you could click a piece to delete, and then, by default,
your next board click puts that piece in the new place.

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zzo38computer
That is not bad. Even if the scripts are disabled, or if images are disabled,
or if the server is unreachable, a link to it is still usable, since the URL
contains the FEN code. However, a suggestion is maybe you might want to add
<noscript><img...> so that if images are enabled but scripts are disabled and
the link is not directly to the picture, that it is still displayed without
having to alter the URL (although even the way it is now, the instructions for
altering the URL are available on that web page, so it isn't so much of a
problem).

My "Farbfeld Utilities" software also can be used for making a chess board, if
you have all of the pieces pictured in one file. So when you want to do it
locally rather than adding a link on a web page, this can be done. (You can
alter the colours and metrics below as needed)

    
    
      ff-chess 8 8 32 E5E5D7 001000 \
       | ff-composite <(pngff < pieces.png \
       | ff-text +PNBRQKpnbrqk 32 32 `sed 's.7.43.g;s.6.33.g;s.5.32.g;s.4.22.g;s.3.21.g;s.2.11.g;s./. .g' < board.fen`) 0,0,0 \
       | ff-border 0020FF 8

------
slyall
So I usually use this site:

[http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/composer/](http://www.jinchess.com/chessboard/composer/)

about once a week for creating diagrams. Have a look at them for some feature
ideas.

Looking at your site the main problem I see is you don't indicate which player
is to move anywhere.

I don't use all the features on the other site but I think my main advice
would be to have a very generic colours and piece-font as your default and
give people options to change them.

------
spankalee
If anyone's interested in a super-easy way to embed an interactive chessboard
on their own page, I very recently made a <chess-board> web component, forked
from chessboard.js: [https://justinfagnani.github.io/chessboard-
element/](https://justinfagnani.github.io/chessboard-element/)

You can put a board on a page with one tag:

    
    
        <chess-board></chess-board>
    

And set it up via attributes:

    
    
        <chess-board
            draggable-pieces
            position="8/R7/8/8/k1K5/8/8/8">
        </chess-board>
    

The element also has methods to make animated moves, set position, clear the
board, etc.

I still have a few touch-interaction bugs to fix, so I haven't submitted it to
HN myself yet. I hope it's useful to someone!

------
minigolf2000
Great tool! In case anyone is interested in an animated version of something
like this for visualizing moves, I made this tool with a friend a while ago:
[https://www.gfychess.com/](https://www.gfychess.com/)

------
osrec
Really nice! I especially like the way you can append FEN to URLs to create a
shareable link.

------
superhuzza
I feel like drag and drop would be more intuitive. Maybe slower though.

------
lonelappde
This is a feature of lichess, which is free and open source.

~~~
modernerd
How do you generate an image from a position on lichess?

They have a board editor:
[https://lichess.org/editor/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPP...](https://lichess.org/editor/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR_w_KQkq_-_0_1)

But I've not seen an option to generate an image (aside from taking a
screenshot), which is what the posted site appears to have been made for.

