What Is YaZZle?

YaZZle is a simple game of Solitaire variations for MS Windows 98 or newer. It differs from other games of this type in that it allows you to make and/or use skins for most of the visual aspects of the game. So things such as the playing cards, playing area, command buttons, and dialog boxes, may be customized to suit your personal preferences.

If you're new to skinnable applications, there is a section below which will hopefully explain this term to your satisfaction. Most of the immediately following sections, however, have to do with beginning to use YaZZle to play Solitaire.

YaZZle originated as a way for me to learn mainstream PC programming back in 1996. It has very slowly grown since then to include a sizable set of features. Many of those features have been turned off in an attempt to minimize the problems associated with the new skinning capabilities, which are the main reason for this release. So, although this release is being labeled as an alpha release due to the newness of the skinning system, you will hopefully find that most game playing aspects of YaZZle are quite mature and bug-free.

Playing YaZZle - General Info

You may have some problems getting started in playing a game of Solitaire in YaZZle if you've never used a skinnable application before. The best thing I can recommend is that you keep just a few things in mind:

All functions are available via a right-click context menu. Just rightclick in an "empty" (no playing card is there) spot within the playing area to activate it. So if you can't find a button on the skin which will perform the function you're interested in, such as the "Open Game Type Selection Dialog" command, then you can always use the right-click context menu to accomplish what you want.

All game playing functions such as "New Game," "Undo Last Move," and "Pause Game," are available via hotkeys. And many of the non-game playing functions also have hotkeys associated with them. So if you can't find a button on the skin which will perform the function you're interested in, such as the "Play Game #" command, then you can always use the "#" hotkey to accomplish this task. A complete list of the hotkeys is given in the 'Gameplay' section.