Installing ChessViewer

ChessViewer written by Andrew Gove
Copyright (C) 1997-2005 Internet Chess Club

[Table of Contents]

While we do not recommend this, it is possible to install ChessViewer on your own web server. One possible reason is because your typical users have slow connections to chessclub.com, and you wish to reduce their download time.

Note that installing a local copy of ChessViewer will allow you to publish games without requiring a connection to chessclub.com. It will not allow you to view games published by others while offline.

1. Create a directory in a web-accessible place on your web server.

2. Download the archive of applet class files. Place this ZIP file in the directory. Use whatever utility is appropriate to unzip these files into the same directory. Do NOT delete the ZIP file -- sophisticated browsers will download only the ZIP file, older browsers will download the individual class files.

3. Create a subdirectory called images. (The applet can reference different image sets in different subdirectories by using the imageBase parameter, which defaults to "images".)

4. Fill the images directory with image sets. Our images are located here. Note that these images are NOT public domain, and you are authorized to use them only with ChessViewer. You may create your own GIF images as long as you follow the same naming conventions, where the number indicates the height and width in pixels of the image. Remember to have a set of small GIFs for the figurine notation in the movelist-box. If you create an interesting set of GIFs and release them to the public domain, please contact me for possible inclusion as the default GIFs.

5. In the <applet> section of your HTML files, remove the CODEBASE=/chessviewer attribute so the applet code loads locally. You also need to provide a <param> statement that looks like this:
<param name=availableGIFSizes value="46,32,12">
where the list of numbers reflects what sizes of pieces are available in the images directory.

6. Now that you have a local copy of ChessViewer, you will not automatically receive code updates. Please visit the about page frequently to see if there have been any developments.