Igowalker

Igowalker is a platform developed by Kiseido Digital for publishing and viewing go content such as game commentaries and teaching materials. Its key feature is animated go diagrams synchronized with textual narrative. Being browser-based, it runs on all platforms with no plug-ins or downloads.

Igowalker is designed to offer an immersive go experience more compelling that the static board images or SGF players found on some websites, and it is hoped that it can dramatically increase the effectiveness of conveying go content.

Features

Igowalker features include:

• Clicking on move numbers and ranges in the commentary to highlight and play moves on the board
• Tabbing through the commentary to visit each commented move and sequence
• Clicking on moves and labels on the board to see the commentary related to that move
• Viewing variations directly on the main board or on separate variation diagrams
• Scrolling off-screen diagrams into view when referred to
• Highlighting alternative moves
• Video player-like controls to play through diagrams

Authoring

Igowalker claims to have been designed for ease of authoring. Content is prepared as a combination of SGF and HTML with simple markup identifying the diagrams and sequences being discussed. Existing materials are said to be able to be ported to Igowalker with little effort. Igowalker supports specifying variations and displaying go boards within a site's comments, potentially opening up a new type of collaborative commentary among go players.

Current status

As of May 2012, Igowalker is at version 4.0 and in a beta stage. Igowalker content can be viewed on the Kiseido Digital Books site, with sample content from the six games of the 10th Kisei Title Match between Cho Chikun and Kobayashi Koichi.

Browser support

Igowalker supports all modern browsers (Google Chrome, Apple Safari including on iPad and iPhone, Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/7/8/9/10, Opera).

License

Igowalker is closed-source software owned by Kiseido Digital.

Discussion

• There is quite a bit discussion on Igowalker at the fate of go magazines.