How to manually shuffle tiles January 3, 2013

There seems to be some confusion when it comes to manually shuffling tiles in your rack. If you're wondering how to move tiles around, it's easy! Just click and drag them into place. Want an example of manual shuffling in action? Here you go!

Wabble in French and 15 letter words! August 15th, 2012

I'm happy to introduce Wabble's 8th(!) language and 7th translation: French! Thanks to the work of Nalini Suntah, you can now play Wabble in French. That finishes one of the two remaining languages for which I already have a wordlist, so if you know Czech and would like to translate let me know!

I've also made a few other adjustments, including changing the buttons for ejecting and banning and adding a timestamp for when the leaderboard was last run.

Finally, I'd like to point out some of the awesome collaborative Wabble being played by MLWKgran1 and oggy (among others). Working together, they've put up some awesome 9x multiplier bingoes for 15 letter words like "SUBSPECIALIZING" and "INDIVIDUALIZING". Really cool, especially considering that they're done on a 3 minute turn time limit!

Improved game management tools (ejects and bans) May 13th, 2012

As Wabble continues to grow, it becomes more important for players to be able to manage their games. This has previously been difficult since only players could be ejected and were free to rejoin. Now, when you eject a player, you'll be given the option to ban them from rejoining.

Also, if you enable chatting for observers, any observers that chat can now be ejected and banned from the game. Just click on the observer's name and you'll be able to eject and ban that observer from the game.

Finally, once a player or observer has been ejected and banned, any chat messages from them will be removed from the chat window.

A few notes about ejecting and banning players and observers:

• Once a player or observer is banned, they will not be able to rejoin, either as a player or as an observer
• Observers cannot be ejected and banned until they chat
• Observers can only be both ejected and banned - they can not be ejected without being banned

Introducing the Rematch button! April 18th, 2012

It was the most often requested feature and it's finally here! Now, once your game finishes, you'll see either a "Create Rematch" button (if you're the game creator) or a "Join Rematch" button (if you aren't the game creator). If the creator clicks the "Create Rematch" button, a new game will be created that is identical to the original one, with all of the same options and settings.

Once the creator clicks the "Create Rematch" button, everyone else's "Join Rematch" buttons will be enabled, making it easy for all of the existing players to join the rematch game.

A few notes about creating a rematch game:

• All of the rematch game options and settings will be the same as the original game, including the game name
• The game chat history of the original game will NOT be carried over to the rematch game
• The creator of the original game will also be the creator of the rematch game
• Your player name and password will be kept the same when you click the "Join Rematch" button
• The rematch game will appear in the same lobby as the original game

What's new in the last 8 months March 3rd, 2012

It's been 8 months since Wabble 2.0 launched and though I've been rather lax about updating this page, don't take that to mean I haven't been fixing bugs and adding new features. Here's just a sample of the new changes and fixes that I've worked on over the last 8 months:

• Better game layout and updated challenge word list selection
• Added the "New Public Game" game creation shortcut in the game list
• Highlight words on the board when you hover over them in the history
• Fixed several Internet Explorer issues
• Improved game expiration behavior in the main lobby
• And a whole load of bugfixes!

The other update is that I believe Wabble is at a point where I need some additional input from the community. I'll be writing a more detailed explanation and setting up a survey soon, so keep an eye out for that.

That's all for now! As always, thanks for playing :)
Ryan

Welcome to Wabble 2.0! July 31th, 2011

It's been almost 5 years since Wabble first launched. From humble beginnings as a personal project, Wabble has grown far beyond my expectations. I certainly never expected to see it on sites from Lifehacker to the Catalan Department of Education. So first, thanks to each and every one of the Wabblers out there: it's your support and feedback that motivates me to continue the project well beyond its original intended lifetime.

There were plenty of reasons for me to start work on Wabble 2.0, but the most prominent had to be the number of players that reported playing on their iPhones and other mobile devices. Old Wabble on an iPhone was a sub-optimal experience, but the fact that players toughed it out anyway was what finally started the Wabble 2.0 wheels turning. Originally intended to be just an interface redesign, Wabble 2.0 now represents an entire ground-up rebuild of the codebase.

So the codebase is brand new, much cleaner and more maintainable. Big deal. What else is new?

• Draggable tiles
  The old click-and-place method works too, but it's so 2006. Draggable is the way of the future!
• Manual rack sorting
  Many players have requested (and complained) that rack tiles could only be shuffled, not manually sorted. You can now manually sort tiles on your rack.
• Score preview
  A Wabble exclusive! Ok, maybe not, but I don't see it very often. See how many points you'll get before submitting your tiles. Math = old and busted. Score preview = new hotness!
• Clickable blank title selection
  Almost played FL_XSEED but broke your A key? A problem of the past! When you place a blank tile, you can now click on the letter you want. Pro tip: you can still use your keyboard, just press the letter you want when the blank tile selector is active.
• Better lobby interface
  Old Wabble alotted a miniscule amount of space to the main purpose of the homepage: creating and joining games. Wabble 2.0 makes finding and starting games much easier. There's even a nice turn timeout indicator right next to the title, since many games have names like "1MinWab". I now expect much more creative game titles.
• Built-in mobile support
  Wabble automatically works on all sorts of mobile and tablet devices. Go to Wabble.org on your iPhone, iPad or Android device to try it out.
• Wabble Leaderboard
  What fun is Wabble if you can't share your awesome scores? The Leaderboard tracks the highest scoring games and words of the week (for all English, public, main lobby, dictionary-enabled, observer-enabled games).
• Game quick links
  Explaining how to join a game in Old Wabble was painful. Now, just send one of the Twitter-sized quick links (there are two per game: one for joining and one for observing) and Wabble will automatically join lobbies, enter game passwords, pop up boxes and redirect to make sharing easy.
• Sharing tools
  In addition to the quick links, Wabble also has Facebook and Twitter sharing tools built in. It's easier than ever to invite your friends to join.
• Game history and tile info
  Game history now shows all game actions, including swaps and passes. You can also check out how many tiles for each letter have been played.
• Better notifications
  Remember those annoying game winner popups? You can now forget about them. All status and error messages now display unobtrusively above the board.
• Technical mumbo-jumbo
  Wabble now has its own virtual server (translation: faster/more reliable). It also has an improved data model (translation: better move history, game analytics). And uses some top notch libraries like jQuery (translation: more maintainable, easier to release new features).

So what's next for Wabble? Keep an eye on this space as it will be my ongoing area where I report changes, updates and other Wabble-related goodness. Finally, as always, thanks for playing :)