Replace "Fixtures" with "Tournaments"

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In the process of setting up OBBLM for my tournament, I've been thinking
about how the standings and fixtures are setup.

To see a list of fixtures is good, and its easy to find the match you want
to report - but seeing the current standings in the league you are in, is
not easy. You have to know that its under Fixtures, and then that you have
to click the S-link.

Why not make a different setup, like this:

Replace "Fixtures" in the menu with "Tournaments". This page shows all
tournaments, both closed (former already played) and open. There could be
information about who won the tournament, and possibly a link to the final
etc. If you click a tournament, you are taken to a tournament page (big
suprise!).

This page shows:
 * The current standings (or final standings if its closed)
 * Fixture list of all played and unplayed matches (maybe collapsable to
save screen realestate)
 * Top-lists for TD, CAS, Comp and so on for this tournament only (since
the ones at the frontpage are overall top lists)

I think that its a better way to show a league. If I take part of a league
I want to be able to easily see the standings and see where my team is
positioned, and I want to be able to report a match easily.

Also, in my current tournament we have a two group structure. In each group
the teams play eachother two times, and then the top2 of those groups go to
the semifinals and finals (winners final and losers final).

Right now we've created two seperate leagues, and will create the semifinal
and final matches manually later on. But it would be great to be able to do
this in the same league. One league, two groups, with finals - and a closed
set of statistics.

Exactly how the Tournament page should be layouted and what other
information would be nice to show, I have not thought out yet. This post is
more to open a discussion about the idea, than to just request this
feature. I have a feeling it might need quite a few database and logic
changes to implement.

But please, discuss :)

Original issue reported on code.google.com by syko...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 11:02

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Original comment by syko...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 11:06

• Added labels: Type-Enhancement

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First of all I wish to sharpen my vocabulary a little for the sake of clarity:
OBBLM has no understanding of what leagues, seasons and/or divisions are. OBBLM 
works
purely on a chronological match-per-match basis between teams. There are none - 
i
repeat none - relationships between teams or matches (in any combination) other 
than
the fact, that matches can, and must, be grouped together by a common 
identifier.
This identifier is a tournament ID.
When speaking about a league I therefore assume that when you mean all the 
teams as a
whole, and not devisions of the league.
Secondly, seasons could be implemented into obblm by further letting 
tournaments have
common identifiers in the form of season IDs - linking tournaments together. 
This, in
my opinion, though, is unnecessarily complicating things since one may write in 
the
tournament name what season a tournament is a part of. 
Finally, what you are seeking is a way to schedule 2 devisions to each play a
tournament and the letting the finalists play across devisions (like American
football) to find a winner. This can only be done in OBBLM by scheduling three
separate tournaments: one for each division and the third as a Free For All
tournament in which finalists compete.
Changing the current match-team or match-match structure(s) is quite (I can't
emphasize this enough) a big job, and I won't be doing this any time soon.

Now to visuals :-)...

I personally am quite pleased with the current layout of the fixtures section
(renaming it to tournaments is fine by me). I like the unity of tournaments 
being
displayed as blocks in which everything specific to that tournament is available
through - stats, graphs, descriptions and so.
I don't (maybe it's just me) find it obscure having the standings "hidden" 
behind the
[S]-link: (1) There are few links on that page, (2) the ones in the grey bars 
stand
out (3) the only text on that fixt. page is the text describing the [*]-links.

But other than that I find your proposal quite OK.

Regarding the availability of information tournament specific standings are also
available on the front page and tournament winners are already displayed in each
tournament block in the fixt. section once the winner has been found.

I would also like to make a proposal. I stumbled over http://www.clbbbl.dk/ and 
kind
of liked the idea of a drop-down menu system. This could let us have a 
tournament
link under which each tournament would be represented and further more links to 
each
tour's stats page and more would be listed. I know jQuery lib has these kind of 
menu
systems, but I'm very worried by the fact that these libraries may not display 
the
menu system the same way on different browsers. Have you any experience Sune?

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 12:13

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"Changing the current match-team or match-match structure(s) is quite (I can't
emphasize this enough) a big job, and I won't be doing this any time soon."

I had a feeling you would say that ;)

I know its quite a big task, and I totally understand that you dont feel like 
doing
it. But in my opinion it would still be awsome to be able to plan the entire 
season
in one league/tournament, and not have to create three. Its a dream-feature 
sort of
thing :)

"I like the unity of tournaments being displayed as blocks in which everything
specific to that tournament is available through - stats, graphs, descriptions 
and so."

Yes, its a good idea to group the things, but the presentation of the data can 
be
improved. Its common usability practice to always make links logical, that is, 
you
should know what to exepct when you click the link, before you click it. And a 
link
should never have to be explained in text. The standings and description links 
both
break these "rules". Also, there is plenty of room to make the links stand out 
more,
since its quite important to show the standings, as well as the fixtures.

Are you sure its http://www.clbbbl.dk ? The link does not work for me, so I 
havent
seen the dropdown menu system you refer to. However, I think it would be a very 
good
idea to make a "Tournament/League" menu for each league on the Fixtures page (or
Tournament page or whatever).

Lets brainstorm on what kind of information we would want to show here (both 
what is
already there, and maybe new stuff) and then I'll make a mockup of how it could 
look
like.

As for jQuery and browser compatibility. Since jQuery is just used to 
manipulate the
DOM and css of a page, its all up to the CSS and HTML wether or not it looks 
the same
across all browsers. jQuery as such have no visuals :)

Original comment by syko...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 12:35

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Yep, if I had to re-write obblm I would design it differently.

Be my guest and make a mockup whenever you have time! But remember, leagues like
Mike's (fabbl.net) are quite large, and thus the standings/ranking list(s) may 
become
very long!

Yep, it's clbbbl.dk, the site must be down...
Anyway, my bad, thought jQuery had such features.

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 7:11

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Haven't read this all but would just like to add a small comment:
Several of "my" coaches doesn't find "fixtures" as the logical link to report 
match
results. Neither them nor me are native english speaking though. "Tournaments" 
or, if
I may be so bold, "Matches" would be good.

The functionality in "Fixtures" is sound, Nicholas. Though the links names are 
a bit
obscure as Sune points out. When you know [S] stands for "Standings" and so on 
it's
easy to navigate. But before you know that it can be a bit tricky.

/Daniel

Original comment by blodae@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2009 at 8:35

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Some of our coaches had some issues at first figuring out the Fixtures page, 
too.  "Fixtures" itself isn't a word that's common in American sports, so 
speaking 
from the American point of view, "Tournaments" would make more sense to us over 
here.  Some of our guys had issues finding the Fixture-specific standings, too. 

I've set the Home page to show the top 16 teams in the standings lists there, 
since 
that's how many teams make our playoffs -- so far, in our second season with 
OBBLM, 
we've had 34 teams play at least one game in each season, so more than that on 
the 
Home page would be unwieldy.  16 on Home works well, though, and that's what 
most 
coaches care to see.  If there's a possibility of adding clbbl.dk-style 
dropdown 
menus, though, I think that having a top-level "Tournaments" menu that drops 
down 
with a list of the tournaments, perhaps with each tournament list item opening 
a sub-
menu with "Matches" and "Standings," could be quite nice.

I'm not sure what the best solution would be for allowing separate divisions 
within 
the same season/touraments.  That's how I was orginally planning on running our 
league and was prepared to use the three-fixture system to do so, but our 
coaches 
decided they wanted everybody thrown together in one single group instead, 
since we 
use an open schedule structure with a points system, and so just put the top 
points-
earners from the entire group into the playoffs at season's end. It saved 
trouble 
for us in the end, as coaches wanted to be able to play the occasional cross-
division match during the regular season, too, which would have been tricky. If 
sykokaj is able to come up with and implement a good way of doing this, then 
our 
league might look back into that type of structure in the future, but for the 
time 
being, that aspect of it isn't a big concern for us.

Original comment by lahat...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 7:41

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OK. I've renamed the section tournaments and written the link names for 
standings and
the rest out in full words. See r52.

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 11:53

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Today I can access clbbbl.dk just fine. A top navigation as shown there is not 
at all
a problem to do. But that change is an issue of its own really.

As always, I'll be happy to make a mockup/prototype of how it could work, but
changing the php part to output the correct links to pages, and to build the
structure, that is beyond my php skills.

Original comment by syko...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 2:25

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I merly need the HTML/CSS/JS code as an example...
But please Sune, It's very important to me that it will be displayed properly on
various browsers, so nothing over-fancy that might create browser compatibility 
issues.

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 2:33

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I always make things that display properly on all current browsers, otherwise I
could'nt do CSS/HTML for a living you know ;)

Original comment by syko...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 2:37

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Sorry. Of course not, I know you know, heh. It's just that some things really 
get to
me, and one of them is browser compatibility, which is why there is no special 
fluff
in obblm. 

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2009 at 3:37

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Specific standings now available fro new menubar.

Original comment by Nimda...@gmail.com on 22 May 2009 at 8:47

• Changed state: Fixed