Plus, I gather that the text doesn't scale properly, so it can be quite difficult to use, particularly given that it doesn't make effective use of all the screen space on wide screen.
If you find you need to create/adjust a character several times a day then go for it. If you just need to adjust a character before/after each game then you probably don't need a netbook (just for CB anyway).
My recommendation, spend a couple hundred extra dollars and get an actual laptop. They're cheap enough now-a-days and you will have so much extra functionality.
Good luck!
I use a netbook and the CBC worked fine as it was smaller, but you could cram it all in.
I can't user the OCB at present as it doesn't scale to the smaller resolution and thus doesn't fit.
A workaround is to zoom out in say Firefox but the text is so small I can barely read it.
At present, I would not recommend the online character builder for use on a netbook.
On a netbook the new CB works if you play around with full screening your browser, otherwise the buttons cannot be seen.
The old CB was nearly as bad and often would resize itself half way off the screen.
WotC has never really grasped the concept of a resize command, in anything they have ever done. Their web pages don't resize properly, their applications don't and now their online apps don't either.
I think resize is something their "programmers" missed when they were studying. (Yes, i am taking a huge leap here assuming they learnt to program at all)
Oh the new CB doesn't size print output correctly either, so it currently cuts off the edge of the character sheet when printing to most PDF printers.
And they never really got the "cards" to size correctly for card sleeves - despite "cards" being their main business.
On a netbook the new CB works if you play around with full screening your browser, otherwise the buttons cannot be seen.The old CB was nearly as bad and often would resize itself half way off the screen.
True enough.
WotC has never really grasped the concept of a resize command, in anything they have ever done. Their web pages don't resize properly, their applications don't and now their online apps don't either.
I think resize is something their "programmers" missed when they were studying. (Yes, i am taking a huge leap here assuming they learnt to program at all)
As a developer, I can commiserate with the WotC team's troubles trying to get everything working on low-res displays. It's a lot more work than it might seem like from a users's perspective. I did that sort of thing through the era of 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 (when screen resolution finally stopped being a significant factor in UI layout). Unfortunately, 1024x768 is pretty widely considered a *low* screen resolution any more. Even more unfortunately, it had been that way for several years before the advent of netbooks with their low-resolution screens.
It's entirely possible that crunching UIs into small screens simply *is* a skill the WotC team never had to develop. (It's not something I've ever seen or even heard of being explicitly taught in any programming curriculum, either.)
That said, there's no need to get snide or insulting.
Oh the new CB doesn't size print output correctly either, so it currently cuts off the edge of the character sheet when printing to most PDF printers.
And they never really got the "cards" to size correctly for card sleeves - despite "cards" being their main business.
I've had the same problem (parts of pages getting chopped off) with the CBC as well. Of course, printing is yet another task that's notoriously more difficult that in really should be. It's probably improved since the last time I had to directly generate what got sent to the printer (back in VB 5), but imagine having to deal with measurements that are defined in 1/15ths of a pixel. (That's one bit of math that never made much sense to me, as I've never seen an output device capable of *displaying* a partial pixel of anything.)
Often "programming" tasks get handed to people under qualified in many organisations.
Someone might have 10 years experience in developing web pages and a degree in Multimedia design and development that doesn't make them a .NET programmer. They might have qualifications in network administration and that doesn't make them a programmer either.
Far too often I have heard of development tasks being handed to whomever is available and has some knowledge and skills. I believe I read that the current "team" is not the original authors / developers (?) which means they were second choice and probably drawn from in-house staff who might not be qualified in the area.
On saying that some of the most talented programmers I have ever met never had formal training in programming - but they are rare.
Form my perspective the whole DnD online project has been given to people who simply don't have the resources to do the job properly otherwise it would have been done in the first six months.
Not snide at all - my sympathy is with the development crew who obviously don't have the resources they need to complete the job.
Also, making characters is big fun for me. I've read and heard from friends with insider accounts that there is a limit to the number of charaters you're allowed to make. Seriously? Do you dare presume that 20 is enough to satisfy my nerdy appetite?
Major Sad-Face here Devs! I'm ready to spend money and your product at this point is not worth the price of membership. Please allocate some serious resources to fixing this. I guarantee I'm not the only one feeling this way and not investing.
Honestly, Pathfinder, d20, and Fantasy Grounds are looking very interesting these days...
With the online builder my style of use is no longer supported. Wizard has told me that the builder had never supported gaming, only printing. I don't know what I have been doing then...
So for now I still use the last version of the offline builder untill someday hopefully the online version will have evolved to the same stage of usebility. Seems more and more unlikely though, since wizard will proberbly be promoting the Virtual Table for gaming. But that off cause will be of no use, since that would mean the rest of my group should use it too. And they use paper. In fact, I was in the process of changing their hearts from paper to digital, but at this point, having seen my online builder troubles, they just laugh at the idea.
Being able to play with a digital charactersheet, be it on a netbook, an iPad or a comming android tablet, is just such a nobrainer that it is unbeliveable to me that the devs have set their eyes on a pure printing tool. But I still have hope...
I have been playing without a printed character sheet for more than a year on my acer netbook. Worked great(ish). The ability to costomize the character sheet meant I could make a landscape version that could be shown on the smaller screen. I put all background stuff on one page and all combat relevant on another. This meant I could fit all in one screen and edit HP and Surges on screen. The combat cards proved more of a challange since they wasn't costimizable to the same extend. But still, they were faster to scroll around in than looking it up in a book.
With the online builder my style of use is no longer supported. Wizard has told me that the builder had never supported gaming, only printing. I don't know what I have been doing then...
So for now I still use the last version of the offline builder untill someday hopefully the online version will have evolved to the same stage of usebility. Seems more and more unlikely though, since wizard will proberbly be promoting the Virtual Table for gaming. But that off cause will be of no use, since that would mean the rest of my group should use it too. And they use paper. In fact, I was in the process of changing their hearts from paper to digital, but at this point, having seen my online builder troubles, they just laugh at the idea.
Being able to play with a digital charactersheet, be it on a netbook, an iPad or a comming android tablet, is just such a nobrainer that it is unbeliveable to me that the devs have set their eyes on a pure printing tool. But I still have hope...
I see what you mean. For me, I've been printing off the demo and cutting out the cards and turning them over as I use them. What I meant was that with the online CB I can't see the whole screen in the builder pages themselves. Some of the buttons are off-screen. Without the ability to scroll or scale this site/app is broken for me.
I have been playing without a printed character sheet for more than a year on my acer netbook. Worked great(ish). The ability to costomize the character sheet meant I could make a landscape version that could be shown on the smaller screen. I put all background stuff on one page and all combat relevant on another. This meant I could fit all in one screen and edit HP and Surges on screen. The combat cards proved more of a challange since they wasn't costimizable to the same extend. But still, they were faster to scroll around in than looking it up in a book.
With the online builder my style of use is no longer supported. Wizard has told me that the builder had never supported gaming, only printing. I don't know what I have been doing then...
So for now I still use the last version of the offline builder untill someday hopefully the online version will have evolved to the same stage of usebility. Seems more and more unlikely though, since wizard will proberbly be promoting the Virtual Table for gaming. But that off cause will be of no use, since that would mean the rest of my group should use it too. And they use paper. In fact, I was in the process of changing their hearts from paper to digital, but at this point, having seen my online builder troubles, they just laugh at the idea.
Being able to play with a digital charactersheet, be it on a netbook, an iPad or a comming android tablet, is just such a nobrainer that it is unbeliveable to me that the devs have set their eyes on a pure printing tool. But I still have hope...
I see what you mean. For me, I've been printing off the demo and cutting out the cards and turning them over as I use them. What I meant was that with the online CB I can't see the whole screen in the builder pages themselves. Some of the buttons are off-screen. Without the ability to scroll or scale this site/app is broken for me.
I agree. I used to use the older version with my netbook on landscape mode and was happy as a clam untill they intentionally hosed the functionaliy of the older version. I don't mind them wanting to move to an online applet but they've hamstrung the playibility for me. Even moving my character to the new system has had problems and i'm still trying for the life of me to figure how to rebuild my half-orc rouge form scratch and not make him an essentials character.
If a future version adds a new tab for playing with laptop, keeping track of powers, health and modifiers on one screen I would be a happy camper. But seeing as the dev's don't even seem to have the power to add a blank character square for users to save ink on printing sheets, I'm not expecting much any time soon.
This being said having an online searchible database of all the books on hand is great. And keeping a txt file of your character notes, loot and basic modifiers is still a thing I enjoy about my netbook and D&D. It's just defeating knowing the powers that be aren't milking thier cash cow propperly and bullying many users that have tried to make thier own useful solutions.
I have been playing without a printed character sheet for more than a year on my acer netbook. Worked great(ish). The ability to costomize the character sheet meant I could make a landscape version that could be shown on the smaller screen. I put all background stuff on one page and all combat relevant on another. This meant I could fit all in one screen and edit HP and Surges on screen. The combat cards proved more of a challange since they wasn't costimizable to the same extend. But still, they were faster to scroll around in than looking it up in a book.
With the online builder my style of use is no longer supported. Wizard has told me that the builder had never supported gaming, only printing. I don't know what I have been doing then...
So for now I still use the last version of the offline builder untill someday hopefully the online version will have evolved to the same stage of usebility. Seems more and more unlikely though, since wizard will proberbly be promoting the Virtual Table for gaming. But that off cause will be of no use, since that would mean the rest of my group should use it too. And they use paper. In fact, I was in the process of changing their hearts from paper to digital, but at this point, having seen my online builder troubles, they just laugh at the idea.
Being able to play with a digital charactersheet, be it on a netbook, an iPad or a comming android tablet, is just such a nobrainer that it is unbeliveable to me that the devs have set their eyes on a pure printing tool. But I still have hope...
I see what you mean. For me, I've been printing off the demo and cutting out the cards and turning them over as I use them. What I meant was that with the online CB I can't see the whole screen in the builder pages themselves. Some of the buttons are off-screen. Without the ability to scroll or scale this site/app is broken for me.
I agree. I used to use the older version with my netbook on landscape mode and was happy as a clam untill they intentionally hosed the functionaliy of the older version. I don't mind them wanting to move to an online applet but they've hamstrung the playibility for me. Even moving my character to the new system has had problems and i'm still trying for the life of me to figure how to rebuild my half-orc rouge form scratch and not make him an essentials character.
If a future version adds a new tab for playing with laptop, keeping track of powers, health and modifiers on one screen I would be a happy camper. But seeing as the dev's don't even seem to have the power to add a blank character square for users to save ink on printing sheets, I'm not expecting much any time soon.
This being said having an online searchible database of all the books on hand is great. And keeping a txt file of your character notes, loot and basic modifiers is still a thing I enjoy about my netbook and D&D. It's just defeating knowing the powers that be aren't milking thier cash cow propperly and bullying many users that have tried to make thier own useful solutions.
I agree... Mistake after mistake after mistake... When will it end?
Even if the new CB was able to succesfully display on a netbook screen (which, all signs point to "No"), the sad fact is that the new CB isn't functional enough yet to justify getting a new machine for it, let alone offering it on a subscription based plan. Ignoring all of the major problems with crashing, slow load times, missing or incorrect content, and problems printing, the new CB can't be used for much else other than using creating a character. Unlike the old CB, which had playability options and could be used at the gaming table, the new CB doesn't let you do anything more than build a character. (I could go into an entire rant about how it doesn't even really let you do that properly, but it would make this post significantly longer than it already is, and quite honestly, at this point I kind of just feel like I'm repeating myself here.)
All that said though, you might want to still consider getting a netbook anyways. Assuming you don't intend to use it for anything too intensive (gaming, streaming media, etc.) they're actually very convenient little buggers that make web browsing and working on the go so much easier.
I'm an acer notebook user and I'm very interested in buying an insider membership.
For the record, there's actually a significant difference between a regular notebook and a netbook, especially in terms of screen size and resolution, which seems to be the key point of this inquiry. If you're using the former, then you probably shouldn't have to worry about the problems that the others are pointing out.