To summarize the philosophy and workings of this game, let's do it in a number of words all beginning with "co...":
We believe a game of solitaire should basically be about you, a deck of cards and the rules of the game — regardless of whether you play on a computer or in real life. That's why we've tried to recreate the relaxing, contemplative and soothing atmosphere of real-life Solitaire in the SoliLuxe user interface. Just a few big, easy-to-hit buttons on the main screen — there are no menu bars, ornamental window borders or unnecessarily animated or flashy graphics to distract you. Just cards that behave, look and sound like cards.
We even toyed with the idea of changing the name of SoliLuxe to "Advanced Solitaire Simulator" as a homage to several 80's computer "advanced *something-or-other* simulator" games, but eventually desisted. (For one thing, the acronym would have become "ASS"...)
So maybe the interface should get out of your face, but that does NOT mean you want only the most basic of card movement controls: Ergonomics are crucially important. Playing computer solitaire is a very repetitive task, and if it involves a lot of click-and-drag movements you can do your hands and wrists serious harm. This is why SoliLuxe employs every trick in the book to eliminate unnecessary mouse movements. In fact, most Soliluxe games can be played without ever dragging a card anywhere — combinations of left and right mouse button clicks usually does what you want. Also, learn the keyboard shortcuts for dealing from the stock, redealing, undoing and autoplaying — SoliLuxe is best played with one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse!
SoliLuxe is written entirely in Java, which makes it fairly future- and platform-proof.
Although SoliLuxe is primarily aimed at the Windows market, you can run SoliLuxe on any operating system or platform that provides a fully featured Java SE 6 runtime environment (JRE). Put SoliLuxe on a USB stick or similar and you can move it between computers and operating systems, carrying your personal settings and statistics with you.
SoliLuxe comes with several card sets as well as many backdrop textures and images which can be easily selected in the Options window. Registered users get built-in tools to make new backdrops and card sets of any images they like.
There is an infinite number of Solitaire versions, so no solitaire game collection can ever be considered "complete". However, SoliLuxe covers a lot of ground with a wide variety of factory-preset games and an XML-based patience definition language that makes it possible to modify existing games or create completely new ones using just a text editor. (The graphics tools needed to produce screenshots and icons are already included in the registered version of the game.)