Draughts Diagrams - Create and Publish!

A picture guide to the online Diagram Making Tool

Introduction

Several years ago Dutch Grandmaster Alexander Presman could not sleep. He turned in bed one way, another, an idea in his head would not let him sleep. Finally he left the bed and went to his computer. What he had done that night was a priceless gift to all checkers players in the World - a simple Diagram Maker that revolutionized checkers communication. And him administering a large web site, he made the program free and always available for all!

Part 1 - Where do I go?

Let us learn how to use it - click the following link to go to the Draughts Diagrams page:
http://fmjd.org/dias2/index.php?game=64

What are these buttons for?

Let's put a few checkers on the board - click on the black checker in the tool bar (under number 64)

Now just start clicking dark squares on the board - on every click you will see a black checker appear!
Let's put some white checkers - click on the white checker (under the ? mark) and again start clicking on the dark squares to paste.
Do an experiment - click on every button in the tool bar, see what they do. For example clicking the right-most button will put 24 checkers on the board, and clicking the empty board button next to it will remove all checkers! Also clicking on the same square a second time will replace the checker there with another one, rotating between white man, black man, white king, black king and empty square.

Your first position

For this lesson place white and black checkers exactly like on this diagram. Remember that you can always remove the wrong checker, add another one, change colors, etc.

Your first diagram

The next step is to fuse the checkers with the board to create the diagram picture.
Click the Send button under the board.

There are several interesting options here like changing the design look or saving the diagram on the server.
For this lesson we will not do any of that - instead we will learn how to save the diagram on your own computer.

Saving the diagram on your own PC

Right-click the diagram and there select Save Picture As...

The "Save In" Dialog Box

This opens a window on your own computer similar to the one below, offering to save the picture.
Note that by default (in most cases) that will be a My Pictures directory inside the My Documents folder.
Agree to by clicking the Save button.

That is it - you just created your first diagram and saved it to your computer!

Part 2 - But wait - where is it? Where do I find it?

Your diagram is easy to find. Click the Start button in the bottom left corner and in there on My Documents.

Find the Directory

Remember that you saved the diagram inside My Pictures directory - double-click on it to open.

A different look

Keep in mind that your own screen might look different - for example you might see boxes instead of the list - the idea is to open the My Pictures directory no matter how it looks!!!

I do not see the diagram!

But what if you do not see the diagram inside the My Pictures folder - you just see a list of files?
In this case just change the View to show Graphics by clicking on the View button (on the top menu bar) and in the opened sub-menu select Thumbnails. (a thumbnail is a tiny copy of the larger picture).

Thumbnails

And here is the thumbnail of the diagram we just made!

If you double-click on it you will see the original larger picture - you found your diagram!

Part 3 - but how do I email it?

Emailing pictures depends on the Email program that you use. All email programs can attach the pictures - attaching means the pictures will be there, one just would need to click on the name of the attached file to see what's inside. But we want to see the pictures immediately, inside the email, we do not want to have a second step.

Let's fire up the Outlook Express, everyone's favorite Email program.
Click Create Mail.

 

I want to see the diagram in my email!

Make sure your Outlook Express is set to show "inline" pictures.
Click on the Format and in there select Rich Format.
Also make sure the Send Pictures with Message is selected.

Insert the Diagram

Now click the Insert button between the View and Format buttons.
If the Picture option is grayed out just click away and then click the Insert again.
Click the Picture:

The Insert Picture selection box

You will see a standard selection box offering to Browse for the file to insert - click the Browse button:

Find Picture selection box

It is unknown which directory is going to be opened - but it fairly easy to navigate inside
the Browse by clicking on the button on the left of the Look in: combo-box.

Find Picture selection box - more details

This open the directory structure of your computer - you can go from one directory to another.
In this particular example I just needed to double-click on the My Pictures directory.

Here it is!

Find and click your diagram and then click Open. Notice that clicking on the diagram places its name inside the File Name box for you.

Return to the Find Picture selection box

The selection is complete and you are back at the Find Picture tool - this time the Picture Source box is filled with the picture you chose. Click OK.

You are done!

And now the fruit of your efforts - the picture inserted directly into the body of your email - just add the text, the subject and the destination and fire away!

Part 4 - Changing the Look

You can give your diagram a different look, with different colors and checker styles.
The Diagram Maker offers several prebuilt styles that closely resamble the styles of many popular checkers programs such as TDam, Vog and Dambo. It is fun to hover above the number "64" on each choice line - miraculously a sample diagram appears to demonstrate the style. You can select the style on this screen but better wait to do the same on the next screen (after you click Send).


Here I clicked on the Dot (such dots are called "Radio Box") next to the DAMBO SP and then on the Change Design button.
The board now is much brighter with vibrant sparkling checkers!


Play with this - click on every Radio Box button and then on Change Design to get familiar with different looks.
As a shortcut you can just hover (hold the mouse above the corresponding number 64 without clicking anything) to see a quick preview. Here I was holding the mouse (the mouse pointer does not show on the picture) above the 64 on the TDAM line:

Part 5 - Saving the Diagram on the Server

Making a diagram is easy - it is much harder to email it, one must first save it on his own computer and then send it back up to internet - why can't it just stay in there? But it can!

The Diagram Maker program (I like this name better than Draughts Diagrams) offers to save you pictures on FMJD site. With that you can just send the address of the picture to your friends instead of the picture itself. That is much easier and "lighter" on the size of the email - the pictures (not diagrams) tend to be very large and could take much room in the email box. But the address is always tiny - it just tells where to find the picture.

So let's do just that - click Save on Server button.
 

The most important thing on the screen is the text between quotes "http://fmjd.org/dias2/save/11940209546.png" - that is an address of your diagram on the internet. Let's make a quick test:

• Ctrl-C (Copy) the text between quotes (http://fmjd.org/dias2/save/11940209546.png)
• Open your Outlook Express and make sure it is in Rich format and it accepts Pictures
• Click Insert Picture and in the dialog box
• Ctrl-V (Paste) the address http://fmjd.org/dias2/save/11940209546.png

Click Ok and voila! - the picture appears!
But wait - there is even an easier way!
While on the server right-click the diagram and in the menu that appears click Copy:

Now go back to your Outlook Express and Click Edit/Paste (Ctrl-V works great too) - your picture is inserted!
This should be a preferable way to insert pictures for it works with ALL email programs, be it Outlook Express, Gmail, AOL, etc.

For those who like to tinker with HTML (that is the computer language that drives the internet) you can insert the whole line <img src="http://fmjd.org/dias2/save/11940220822.png"> and it will show the picture instead.

There is also a very interesting option to create a poll - when you click on the button you will see this: 

How do you like this shot?

Credits

Alexander Presman holds the title of an International Grandmaster on the 10x10 board.
He is the webmaster of the FMJD site.

 

Sergey Pedko is a webmaster of a popular, very tastefully done, Russian site Tavlei.
Sergey has a great eye for color - it was him who designed those vibrant colors on the Dambo SP, Tdam SP, Dam22 SP, Vog SP, etc. - you probably guessed that SP stands for Sergey Pedko!

 

Jake Kacher
October 25, 2007