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I've just moved in two games: one of Xiàngqí and one of Shogi. In each case my goal was to make a move and to change from the default background image to a new background image, hoping that this new background setting would be stored in the log so that the new image would be displayed the next time I view the game. I did some experimenting before submitting the moves, trying to get as much information as I could. I tried performing the actions of selecting a background image and entering a move in four different orders (described below, where, not knowing what might be useful, I've tried to err on the side of too much detail rather than too little). Each trial began in a new browser tab. The various trials did not exhibit all the same intermediate behavior, but as far as I can tell the end results are the same. Of course I could only submit each move once; after trying all four orders with each of the two games, I then repeated one of the trials before submitting each move.

• Trial 1: I enter my move in the 'Moves' text box, select the desired image from the 'Background' dropdown menu, and click the 'Verify' button, without having clicked the 'Modify' button. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank. At this point I submit the Xiàngqí move.
• Trial 2: I select the desired image from the 'Background' menu and click 'Modify', without having entered a move. The page reloads; the board is still shown with the original background image, but the new image is now selected in the 'Background' menu. I then enter a move in the 'Moves' text box and click 'Verify'. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank.
• Trials 3 and 4 begin in the same way: I enter a move in the 'Moves' text box, select the desired image from the 'Background' menu, and click 'Modify'. The page reloads. The new background image is displayed and remains selected in the 'Background' menu. My move is now shown in the dropdown movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The 'Moves' text box is now empty. I then continue in two different ways.
  • Trial 3: Without entering anything, I click 'Verify'. A page loads, with the heading 'Verify Your Move', but otherwise identical to the usual page where one enters a move. The new background image is still displayed and remains selected in the 'Background' menu. But the move which I just entered seems to have disappeared: it is no longer shown in the movelist, and the position displayed is the one prior to this move. I enter the move again in the 'Moves' text box, and click 'Verify' again. The usual verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background image is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank.
  • Trial 4: I immediately reenter my move and click 'Verify'. The verification page loads. My move is shown in the movelist, and the resulting position is displayed. The new background image is displayed, but the 'Background' field is blank. At this point I submit the Shogi move.

I wasn't able to duplicate the blank background field result. In a Shogi
game of my own and in your Chinese Chess game with Antoine, I changed the
background, clicked 'Verify', and the background field was not blank.

Your third trial reveals a bug. When you click on the Modify button, it
should not update the moveslist. This is now fixed. It will now also
retain any value entered in the Moves field without doing anything with
it.

The reason the board was reverting was that I incorrectly based the
variable name for the user board on the player's id instead of the
user's. This would not affect what you saw when it was your turn again,
which is why I didn't notice anything myself. But it would affect which
board you see when it is not your turn. This has now been fixed. Thanks
for your help.

I had a look at the source for the verification page in question, and I think the problem is due to a missing angle bracket in the < SELECT > tag corresponding to the background field. Also the < /SELECT > tag appears to be missing altogether, but this doesn't seem to cause problems for either of the browsers I've tried. When I edited a local copy of the source, inserting the missing angle bracket was enough to make Opera place the appropriate value in the background field.

Thanks for looking into this. I use Firefox and so missed the problem
Opera
was having. I have now inserted the missing < /SELECT > tag

That is, for one of my games the source has

< SELECT NAME='crazytom_bgimage'

< SELECT NAME='crazytom_bgimage' >

Thanks for adding these new features and taking the time to work out the kinks. As far as my efforts are concerned, I figure the opportunity to change to something other than shogi-simple.png is easily worth looking at a little HTML.

I had thought it was only the colors in shogi-simple.png that bothered me, but I think you're right about the thick borders. I'm currently using shogi-blue.png in one of my games; it's equally simple, but the more sedate colors and the thin borders are a vast improvement in my opinion.

I like there are new (automatic and alternative) boards and sets available,
but I have an observation: I think it is much better a (perhaps very thin)
border for some of the boards, like the CSS tiled background images and
the PNG's. I feel that some squares, more those at the corners, vanishes
to my eyes sometimes, producing me a bad sempsation. Well, my case is
somewhat particular, I have some known moderate troubles with my vision, I
don´t expect it affects other players in any way, but if it is the case,
can anybody add a thin border (simple lines can be enough) to those boards
and observe the effect?.

Roberto, 

There are now 410x410 pixil boards for Chess, and these may be used with
any game that is normally played on the usual chessboard with 50x50 pixil
squares. The extra 10 pixils are for a 5 pixil wide border around the
whole board. If you would like to use a board of your own design, you can
make one to the same dimensions using the chess-greenbeige.png board as a
template. Additionally, I have now allowed switching between the css and
table rendering methods. This will allow you to use a bordered table board
in games that originally used a background image. Needless to say, this
will not work for every game, but it will work for the standard chessboard
and some other boards.

In the game 
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=Chess+with+Different+Armies&log=olbog-cvgameroom-2006-69-489

I think I checkmated the oponent. But the preset is only showing a check.

I just created the preset for Advanced Chess:
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game%3DAdvanced+Chess%26settings%3DAdvanced+Chess

Anyone interested in playing a game?