chesscomutils is a javascript bookmarklet that adds opening classification, keyboard shortcuts and PGN save functionality to the live chess interface.
chesscomutils is not affiliated with Chess.com. I'm just a player who enjoys watching games (too much!) and wanted some additional features.
Deprecation Notice - Feb 2016 chesscomutils has been made redundant with Chess.com's new v3 (mostly), so it's time to put it to sleep. leaving it here for nostalgia 10 years later.
I love the live chess on chess.com, and I thought some additions would make it even better. Specifically, showing the opening name like ChessCube does, and saving games to my local disk in PGN format, like ICC's client. Then I thought I might as well add in some keyboard shortcuts for good measure, and here we are.
Since javascript cannot access your local files, to get the PGN save functionality you need to have a local webserver with PHP enabled. More info on that can be found on the project's README.md
This is the light version, easy to set up, updates automatically, but does not include PGN save.
This is the full version. You need a local webserver (such as apache) and PHP to use it.
Drag the button above to your bookmarks bar (or save it as a bookmark). Afterwards, you can activate chesscomutils by clicking on the bookmark while you're in live chess. You will see the green bar appear below the menu.
Refer to README.md for setup details.
chesscomutils uses SCID's opening database to classify the current game. It will display ECO Code, Opening Name and the moves. It will also get the opening by position (by looking at FEN). This is more helpful when the game transposes to a common opening from a more unorthodox opening. Note: The classification will only be shown for the game which has its notation window visible on the screen. Currently multiple windows (when you pop-out a game window) are not supported :(
The opening checker runs every 5 seconds by default, but you can force it to run by clicking on the green bar.
Keyboard shortcuts start with Shift+C, followed by the combination. (So you would press Shift+C followed by S to create a seek). Make sure you're not typing in a chat input etc. when pressing these keys.
If you're using the full version, chesscomutils will make an AJAX request to writer.php, which will save games (and keep appending games to the same file) defined in its config. See the notes on project README.md for more information.
By clicking on the 'Capture PGN' button you can toggle capturing the games as PGN format. Any game that finishes while PGN Capture is on will be saved to your defined location on disk. It will provide all the standards headers (except Time Control, which is bit tricky to get), ECO and Opening headers, as well as a non-standard Position header with the FEN classification. Note: ccutils will capture all games that finish while its active. This means having multiple games open (popped-out or not) will save all of them once they finish. Games are only saved on disk when they're ended.
I've had the pleasure of using these brilliant libraries:
scid.eco - Contains an immense number of openings, incredibly comprehensive (and easy to parse as json :P). The software itself is a great free alternative to many other chess database GUIs.