Board Game Arena

I’ve gotten the impression that playing BGA games on an iPad/touch screen is a frustrating experience.

For example, for games that involve cards and text and images on cards, if you want to see the zoomed-in or tooltip view of the card, it’s not always easy.

Another example: when two objects are small and near each other and you need to select one and not the other.

So I’m considering getting a mouse for my iPad. Is that a good idea? I get time impression that some BGA games recognize that you are on an iPad and the UI mechanics/behavior might not work well with the iPad+ mouse combo. In other words: BGA recognizes that you are on an iPad and therefore mouse hover/click/whatever events aren’t recognized or behave strangely and therefore the mouse is a waste.

All this is speculation, I haven’t tried it.

Are any of my concerns justified? Has anyone tried this?

I play most of my BGA games on the IPad and can only echo what you said.

- Card games in general are quite miserable on the iPad, you can’t zoom easily.
- Chat function on the iPad is awful. The chat box auto does strange things with the the way the ipad typing works
- Luckily my favorite game Terra Mystica is perfect on the ipad and works flawless

Would be great if there could be more support for the IPad in the future to make games easier playable.
A lot of the frustration comes with the interaction of playing BGA in full screen mode and trying to zoom certain areas.

Thanks for the feedback.

I think I’m gonna get a Bluetooth mouse and see how it goes.

BTW, have you installed BGA as a progressive web app? If you navigate to BGA using Safari on iPad you can do that. It creates a sort of faux app that is really just a webpage being displayed by safari but without the browser navigation buttons and address field and whatnot. It is full screen by default.

Hi all, in general, Safari is unfortunately lagging behind other browsers on web standards and proper documentation. Also on iOS, Apple doesn't allow other browsers (even if it looks like they do, behind it's the same engine as Safari so it's a Potemkin village). Working with Safari is a frustrating experience for web developers.

flower2886 wrote: ↑30 July 2021, 04:32 Luckily my favorite game Terra Mystica is perfect on the ipad and works flawless

Happy to hear that.

paulyham wrote: ↑30 July 2021, 07:04 BTW, have you installed BGA as a progressive web app? If you navigate to BGA using Safari on iPad you can do that. It creates a sort of faux app that is really just a webpage being displayed by safari but without the browser navigation buttons and address field and whatnot. It is full screen by default.

Thanks for sharing this, it's interesting to know that at least this works

Also on iOS, Apple doesn't allow other browsers (even if it looks like they do, behind it's the same engine as Safari so it's a Potemkin village).

So you are saying that when I run Chrome on iOS it's actually the Safari browser kernel/engine running? Chrome for iOS is built on the Safari framework?

paulyham wrote: ↑30 July 2021, 18:54

Also on iOS, Apple doesn't allow other browsers (even if it looks like they do, behind it's the same engine as Safari so it's a Potemkin village).

So you are saying that when I run Chrome on iOS it's actually the Safari browser kernel/engine running? Chrome for iOS is built on the Safari framework?

Just the engine behind use iOS webkit engine.

paulyham wrote: ↑30 July 2021, 18:54

Also on iOS, Apple doesn't allow other browsers (even if it looks like they do, behind it's the same engine as Safari so it's a Potemkin village).

So you are saying that when I run Chrome on iOS it's actually the Safari browser kernel/engine running? Chrome for iOS is built on the Safari framework?

Exactly. Apple makes that mandatory on iOS (not on macOS) to use WebKit.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/r ... quirements
"2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."