Library backup and a user manual

A new version of backgammondb.com is out. The headline feature is that your library is now portable: you can back the whole thing up to one file and restore it whenever you want. Match links are also more private now, there's a user manual, and a handful of smaller improvements.

Back up and restore your library

Right now, everything in BackgammonDB lives in your browser. That's great for privacy and speed, but it's not a permanent solution. If you clear your browser data or switch machines, it's gone. Obviously that's no good for users who are starring, tagging and annotating their positions. This version introduces library export so you can back things up and move it to new computers.

One click writes your entire library to a single .bgdb file — every match, plus all the work layered on top: stars, notes, tags, and saved queries. Keep it somewhere safe, sync it between machines.

Restoring is the other half. Pick a .bgdb file and BackgammonDB replays it back into a fresh library. A few things I was careful about, because restore replaces what you currently have:

• It asks you to confirm first, and offers to download a backup of your current library before it does anything destructive.
• If anything goes wrong partway through, it rolls back. You end up with the library you started with, not a half-imported mess.

Match links that don't leak names

A smaller change. Until now the web address of a match was built from the file you imported, and often that contains player names and location. So a link could read /match/Nick vs Bob 7-pointer. It's minor, but that's putting player private info into your browser history and any analytics the site sees.

From this version every match gets a short, anonymous id instead, like /match/m-l8k2f-9x3q. Same match, nothing personal in the link. It also fixed a bug: two different matches that happened to share a filename could clobber each other — and even swap stars and notes — because they were stored under the same name. These ids make that impossible.

You don't have to do anything: your existing library re-keys itself the first time you open this version (you'll see it in the same "Updating your database" dialog), and it's all carried through backups too.

A proper user manual

I've started to build documentation at backgammondb.com/manual. First pages cover getting started, filtering the action list, how the performance rating works, and position tagging. It's a work in progress.

Smoother schema updates

When I ship a new version that changes how data is stored, BackgammonDB quietly upgrades your existing library in the background. Previously that meant staring at a blank screen while it churned. Now you get a proper "Updating your database" dialog with a per-match progress bar, so you know what's happening.

Smaller things

• Position favorites. The /positions landing page now shows featured presets as clickable cards, so it's a bit more obvious what to do.
• Double-click to open. Double-click any game or match in the main lists to open it directly in the match viewer.
• Cleaner equity loss. If a player never made a cube decision, the equity-loss figure shows a hyphen instead of a slightly silly "0.000".