Wednesday, 8 August 2012

Chess Book Study v1.5 released

Today was an exciting release. Chess Book Study v1.5 has an interesting 'Talk to Move' feature!
Yes, you just speak the move and it will be played on the board! 
If you wish to try, please enable it from the app settings.

What's new in v1.5
Talk to move! Careful in public, people may think you are crazy. Enable it from the app settings.
How to use

Option to Hide board and read the book in full screen. Especially useful on small screen phones. Now you can read the book commentary without the board getting in the way

Open any Web sites like, etc and follow the moves on the board. Many of these sites publish games without a javascript board. This makes it difficult to follow, till now!

Paste FEN. Especially useful to copy from websites like chesscafe (they always have a fen string underneath the diagram)

Copy game as PGN. Future versions will have direct PGN Load/Save support. Till then, you can manually Copy the game as PGN using this feature and paste in your favorite program.

Zoom out to upto 50%. User Carl mentioned that some of his PDFs are too big on a 7in screen. Well, Carl, you can now zoom out to 50%

Option to show coordinates! With coordinates on, its easier to follow the moves, especially for newbies.

Takeback/Forward buttons! Yes, yes I know. The existing method was not always intuitive and would also cause false touches. Now, you have dedicated buttons that get out of your way (hide themselves), so that you can just focus on the position!

Minor enhancements and bug fixes - Resize board option has moved to the Settings. Clear Board option is now in the Edit Board popup. Also, "Black Move" option has been added to Edit Board popup which can be enabled if the position you are setting up is with Black to move.

PS. For the above features to work properly, you need to upgrade EBookDroid (customized for Chess Book Study) 
(Talk to Move is an experimental feature and may cause occasional freezes/crashes. If you face problems, please disable the option and report to me :)  )


  1. These improvements make the app better. I like it.
    However there are still some problems:
    1. When studying endgame, there are no board features to empty the board and set up the pieces.
    2. There are no buttons to reset the board.
    3. Auto-play would be better. When finishing entering the moves, the game can be on auto feature.
    4. Analyze this feature would make this a cool deal so as to compare book analysis with engine
    5. Can board color be black and white so as to match with the book. That would be great.

    Again, thank you for the app.

    1. Hi Lam,

      1. Long press board -> Edit Board -> Clear
      2. You mean to set a new board? Long press board -> New Board
      3,4. Good suggestions, noted. Currently you can start analysis for the current position by Long press board -> Analyze This.
      5. Will add more colors.


  2. What does Long press board does? I am using Toshiba Thrive Android 4.03. I don't see "long press." I see the two arrows.

    One more thing, without instructions above, users can not navigate. Maybe you can add these features in the More button (day/night, zoom, etc.)

  3. Sorry for adding more comments. But I've figured it out. For users out there, press your finger on the board. A menu will pop up with choices described above. I will play around with Analyze this and let you know.

    One more thing, can the coordinate letter be a little bit bigger? It's very tiny in proportion to board size. Can the coordinates go around all sides?

    When all the features are added, I definitely will buy this and analyze this. This is a new trend in reading chess books.

    I highly recommend this to all chess fans.

  4. Sure, will take care of the coordinates.
    I am constantly working on improving the UI and will make sure the hidden options are easily discovered in the upcoming versions.

    Appreciate your feedback. Thanks

    BTW, I post frequent Tips/updates on my G+ page:

  5. Great App ...I am using in my andriod device . Any plans to launch it in Apple app store also ?