Notation coordinates

The plugin does not support showing coordinates around the board, however if you hover the mouse on each square a tooltip will show the square coordinates.

More details here:
https://code.google.com/p/pgn4web/issues/detail?id=34

If your users really need coordinates around the chessboard to find square F6, you should probably recommend a good book about chess fundamentals (rather than wasting time on websites).

As I said in the initial post, we have a lot of scholastic (kids) players that are getting familiar with chess notations and learning how to review and study other people games. The coordinates are there to assist them if they need it.

If you go to any chess learning sites (e.g. Chess Magnet School), they all have coordinates for a reason. When you buy a chess mat, they have coordinates. You are basically saying there is no need for coordinates as a learning tool.

Thanks,
Ben

>
> You are basically saying there is no need for coordinates as a learning tool.
>

No. My personal opinion is that a chess fundamentals book is a better learning tool in order to reach the point where you do not need coordinates anymore.

The design principle of pgn4web is to focus on a minimalist chessboard and avoid any unnecessary distractions as you find in other similar tools: coordinates, arrows, excessive amount of buttons and so on.
pgn4web is designed for people that have the chess knowledge to read a chess game, following the Chess Informant style of publications (hence, for example, no ‘+’ sign for checks, no ‘=’ sign for promotions, no ‘x’ sign for captures).

I have no plans to make the display worse and cluttered for my target audience in order to help those that can’t actually play chess.

For your site you should probably use a different game display tool, there’s plenty to chose from, some certainly support coordinates around the chessboard.

Thanks for replying. We just need to know if this is possible or might be considered in a future release. If not, that’s totally fine. We used your plugin because it is the best one out there. I haven’t find any other ones that work as well.

BTW, if you are interested in our audience, you can go to https://www.wisconsinscholasticchess.org. As an organization in Wisconsin, we serve thousands of kids in our state every year.

Thanks,
Ben

Thanks for the feedback. It’s very unlikely for the coordinates to be added.

A user made a custom version of the core pgn4web.js file that would enable coordinates, but this is not endorsed or supported by the pgn4web project in any way, use at your own risk:

https://open-chess.org/blog/?p=388

In case you are interested, please ask the blog author directly for more details and a copy of his code.