JSolitaire Buttons and Common Options

JSolitaire home page: http://www.idiotsdelight.net/

New Game

Clicking New Game will bring up a dialog window. Right clicking the new game button will start a new game immediately. The top of this window has a choice where a different solitaire game can be selected. There are three possibilities for the starting state of the new game:

New Game using random seed Begin a new game with a random starting state. This is the only allowed option if the selected game is different from the current game. A game must start with a random seed for it to count in the statistics/streak information.
New Game using chosen seed Setting the seed value enables starting the game in a predefined state. Games which use the same seed should begin with the same layout of cards (I cannot guarantee this for all platforms).
Restart game The current seed is listed in this row to enable replaying this game in another session.

Clicking OK will start the desired type of game. Cancel will return to the current game.

Common Options

Options Affecting Gameplay

Starting Rank

This option sets the rank of the cards at the tops of the suit stacks at the start of the game. A new game must be started for this option to take effect. Increasing this value will result in an easier game.

Empty Spaces Accept

This option determines what ranks are accepted by empty building stacks

Number of Redeals:

In games with a deck, this option sets the number of times the deck can be cycled through. (In La Belle Lucie, this option determines the number of times the stacks can be reshuffled.)

Number of Cards Drawn:

In Klondike and Canfield, this option determines the number of cards drawn from the deck at a time. Using a higher number will result in a more difficult game.

Miscellaneous Options

Card Size

The default setting for this option, Auto-size, will select the largest card size that will fit in the browser window. Other options will use a specific card size. The pixel widths and heights of the card sizes are listed next to the name of the card size.

There are two choices for the Micro card size. The second choice will display one suit symbol for all ranks, which might be easier to read.

Diamond and club cards have a yellow-gray color instead of the usual white when the smallest card size, nano, is used. (I am not sure what the techincal name for this color is, but whatever it is it's the color of the New Jersy license plate.) This makes it possible to distinguish between hearts and diamonds, and clubs and spades, in a vertical stack lacking suit symbols for partially covered cards.

Automatic Card Moving

If this option is set, cards will be automatically removed from the building stacks (and moved to the suit or discard stack) if there are no other cards that can be placed on them.

Display Timer

If this checkbox is set, the timer will be displayed in the status line at the bottom of the browser window.

Display Deck Contents

In Klondike and Canfield, setting this option will display a window listing the contents of the deck. This makes it easier to see how moving a card from the deck will affect the order of the cards drawn in the next pass through the deck.

Automatic Card From Deck

If this option is set (in Klondike and Canfield only), cards will be automatically removed from the deck (and moved to its suit) if there are no other cards that can be placed on them. (There is a separate option for card moving from the deck because automatic card moving will alter the sequence of cards that appear in the next pass through the deck.)

Background

There are four possible choices for the game background (click the corresponding radio button on the left side to select the desired type of background.):

Predefined Solid Color The first choice, Desktop, will use the system's desktop color.
User-defined Color Any possible color can be used as a background by setting the red, green and blue values to a number between 0 and 255.
Image from idiotsdelight.net The size of the image is listed next to its name. Most tile images come from the GIMP Project (GNU Image Manipulation Program). A few come from GNOME for RedHat Linux. Photographic images are by Andrew Pipkin. Click the thumbnails button to view all background images at once.
Image from Local Drive or Web Default security settings for Java do not allow an applet to load an image from an arbitrary location on the web or a local drive. Displaying an image from these locations requires that the applet have a security signature. If the applet does not have a security signature, a button is present which will load a dialog requesting if a version of the applet containing a security signature should be loaded. After loading this version, another dialog will appear asking if the signature should be accepted.
An applet with an accepted security signature will have a field where an image URL can be entered as well as a Browse button which will bring up a file dialog for using a local image file.

There are also four possibilities for displaying an image:

Tile will repeat the image (at its original size) until the entire window is filled. If the image to be tiled is larger than the window, it will be cropped.
Stretch will expand or compress the image so that its size matches the window size.
Center will display a single instance of the image at the center of the window, cropping the image if necessary.
Fill will fill the window with at most one instance of the image. If the image is larger than the window, it will be cropped, otherwise it will be expanded to fill the window. If the image is expanded, its original aspect ratio will be preserved.

If the image does not fill the game window, or has transparent areas, the most recently selected solid color will fill those areas.

Card Back

(For games which have face down cards only)

The card back can be altered in the same way the game background can be changed (See above). If an image is used, the Border Width option changes the number of pixels between the image and the card boundaries. The border color will be the color of the last selected solid color.

Statistics

The number of games played and victories for this session are displayed in this panel along with the current and longest streak. Clicking the Reset Statistics button will clear these values. Setting the Display Statistics in Status Bar will display this information when a game is started.

Only games which are started with random seed will count in the statistics.

Undo and Redo

Clicking undo will return the game to the condition it was in before the most recent move was made. If the move recent move was an undo, clicking redo will undo the undo. Right clicking undo will restart the current game.

Help

Clicking help will bring up a dialog showing a help screen. There are three topics for the help screen: Card Stacks, Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts. Clicking Show Instructions will display more detailed information for the game. Right clicking the help button will also display this information.

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