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CHUI Beta Viewer released


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We’re pleased to announce that the Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) Viewer is going into beta. We received tremendously helpful feedback from users during the Project Viewer cycle. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to test, file bug reports, and offer suggestions for improvement.

We had a number of high-level goals for CHUI:

  • Bring all communication functions and conversation text into a single window
  • Provide a single notification system, with more detailed user controls
  • Stop losing IMs -- keep a log of all conversations, including attempted conversations and IMs received while not logged in
  • View chat transcripts inside the Viewer, and control them more easily
  • Replace Busy mode with Do Not Disturb mode, a richer and more consistent feature


These features are packaged in a more flexible UI that lets you customize it for the way you like to communicate in Second Life.  You can even turn it all off when you want to build, make movies, or simply be left alone for a while. We have also provided more ways to find and use key features. For example, whether you’re a “menu person” or a “right-click person,” you’ll be able to use the features as you prefer.

We created a nice introductory video to get you up to speed quickly.

In more detail, the CHUI Viewer lets you:

  • Add participants to a conversation already in progress
  • See all of your conversations, and everyone in those conversations, using an inventory-like UI
  • Quickly move your voice connection between conversations and effortlessly adjust individual volume or overall volume in a single click
  • View all of your recent communications in one window (Conversation Log)
  • See what was said in any conversation (Conversation Transcripts)
  • Set yourself DND to focus on other things and get all the communications (and inventory offers!) you missed, after you come back
  • Choose from four levels of notification for each of five different kinds of incoming communication. You can set IMs from friends and IMs from non-friends to different levels of notification.
  • Turn sound on and off for four different events, such as inventory offers and teleport offers
  • Access voice morphs more easily
  • Open chat preferences and privacy preferences directly from the Conversations window.
  • Type your chats into a larger, multiple-line box
  • Select multiple users across different conversations and start a new conference with them
  • Choose which conversations are in their own windows, and which should be in a tabbed window. Now you can have both.
  • See users and objects you have blocked under a new tab in the People window.


There’s a lot to discover as you use the CHUI Viewer.  Please continue to give us your feedback in jira.  We hope you like CHUI as much as we do.

 

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Don't see anywhere in the JIRA for general comments.

We, me and my 'partner' liked viewer 2 and 3, still do, had to suffer through complainers who still complain to this day, and yet have problems with their 3rd party viewers while complaining, so I'm going to complain this time.

 

It sucks.  it's like version 1.  It's a giant box in the way, with every tab that used to keep the conversation separate in the giant box, that is in the way.  The last version was a nice streamlined chat box with transparant background for my virtual world.  Now we're supposed to have a giant integrated box block the view.  What's the point of this?

 

The option to turn this thing off  should be clearly given so we can see the virtual world we log into without having to delete all our groups that used to be confined to the upper corner.  I can follow all the chats just fine without mashing them together into a giant box.

Now it's my turn to complain after enduring nonsense for about 2 years on what was a perfectly functioning and good viewer.

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I don't use "voice" so that feature is lost on me, but I love the "Do Not Disturb" and being able to suppress the pop-ups.  Also, often happens that I get IMs as I'm logging out, and if I get system failures, it's nice to be able to retrieve previous conversations much easier, in one box.

I liked Viewer 1. I like that this feels a bit like old viewer 1 in some ways, and thank you, thank you, thank you, for listening to us and adding features some of us like. I've been trying to get on with certain other viewers and frankly it's not getting any easier, and I've been feeling like a leftie in a right-handed world. 

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I have to agree with Israel. I don't see how a regression resulting in covering up the world for the sake of consolidating all communication into one box is an improvement. I'm sure the oldbies will jump for joy (no they won't they're never happy) but this is a step back from what had been an advanced system for communicating. Especially since you still haven't fixed group chat (fails miserably more often than not) or done anything about chat lag. This begs the question ... what other 2007 antiquated feature will LL roll out next?

 

And trust me ... this setup will result in lots of wrong window messages and drama will ensue.

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

I think I broke it. I am homeless so my home is a welcome station. As soon as I rezed I x'ed out of all the open windows so I could see to move. Then I clicked on the Chat button nothing happens. So if its not the Chat button, how do you communicate?

It can take a ltitle fliping the first time you switch from the old to new interface. Play with Ctrl+T, Ctrl+H, and peek under the Communicate menu. If should settle down once you get it going.

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I went to a show, lots of people there, I have no conversations on my screen. I click the Chat button but that does nothing. The Ctrl-T opens a window showing me what is being said and after a little work I got it to look... acceptable. But the Chat button does nothing, I wandered around giving it some time to “settle down”, but click as I may, the Chat button is DOA.

The problem here is if someone attempts to say something to me, I don't get the conversation, nothing on my screen at all, I ignore them, or it looks that way. It looks like I would need to keep the conversation window open all the time, and that is not going to happen.

Is there a way to have what is being said around you show up and fade away like the old Chat. I liked that fact that I could set it to stay on the screen for x number of seconds. I see it and its gone, no windows in my way, I know what was said but am not beat over the head by it.

Why do I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall.

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I've tried the beta on and off. Generally, I like the idea. What I don't like is this: The user interface for it is enormously huge. Near-blind people could probably see it from a mile away. It's simply too big and convoluted. Then there's no option anymore to open new conversations in separate windows. While I like mine tabbed I know a few people (who neither read nor post on the forum) to have them open separately.

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Besides the broken Chat button I already reported...

When I enter a store the greeting does not show up on my screen.

In Preferences the option in General, View Display Names, is grayed out and can not be checked.

In one of the stores I go to, I do not get the Info when I click on an item for sale. I get the option asking me what I would like to see, Buy – Info – Redeliver – Etc.., but I no longer see the information asked for.

When Lucky Chairs announces that a letter has changed, I no longer see that information.

In fact the biggest problem I see with CHUI is the lack of communication, isn’t that like, backwards from what it is advertised to be. Hopefully its just broken and can be fixed, it is in Beta.

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You're not supposed to see the pop-ups and the lucky chair changes.  You have to use the clunky giant box, find the proper tab, block the virtual world, and read it.  Then close the giant box.  It';s just a few half dozen short simple steps.

LL felt it important to listen to a bunch of negative nancies who would stick with their 3rd party knock-offs anyway, so now we all much suffer with a regressive interface.

I don't know the purpose of increasing the amount of groups we can have.  now that I'm going to have to deactivate their notifications as I'm not going to go around in a 4 step process to find a highlighted window when it used to be no more than ONE step.  Actually gfor me zero steps, it would flash up, i would see the group button, and do nothing.  Now if i miss the message, I have to go through multiple steps to find what group that was.

If you like Windows 95, and mIRC instead of a modern virtual world interface, this is for you.   But with many steps, and not one click buttons.

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

I think I broke it. I am homeless so my home is a welcome station. As soon as I rezed I x'ed out of all the open windows so I could see to move. Then I clicked on the Chat button nothing happens. So if its not the Chat button, how do you communicate?

I'm not seeing this Teagan, if I x out I do get the window back when I click chat, I wonder if it's a preference settings issue.

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That could be, it would be nice to know all the preferences that effect chat. I removed the chat button and took it out of the toolbox again and that did not help.

I did install the Starlight Skin, maybe I will uninstall it all and install just the viewer and see if that makes a difference. But thank you, at least I know it works for someone, and I should be able to get it to work for me too.

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OK, I uninstalled the viewer and the Starlight Skin and reinstalled just the viewer, this is what happened.

 

Option in General, View Display Names, is grayed out and can not be checked. IS WORKING.

When I click on an item for sale. I get the option asking me what I would like to see, Buy – Info – Redeliver – Etc.., but I no longer see the information asked for. IS WORKING.

When Lucky Chairs announces that a letter has changed, I no longer see that information. IS WORKING.

Chat now opens when I click on the Chat button.

 

So, don't use Starlight is what I have found out from this. Will now take a closer look at the viewer without Starlight. I don't remember exactly why I started using Starlight, I know Starlight solved several problems for me in the past and I have just always installed it.

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Mostly I like it, but in BUG-1820, Tali Rosca uncovered a most unfortunate design decision. (g+)

From that jira, try this:

  • Undock "Nearby chat" from CHUI dock
  • IM other avatar or group to have an active IM window in the CHUI dock.
  • Click in the "Nearby chat" window to type there.

Notice what happens to the IM window. It gets blanked. So the whole CHUI window becomes wasted real estate at this point, when the whole point of being able to undock the individual chat windows would be to see those and the CHUI at the same time.

Alexa closed the jira as intended behavior, but I wonder if the designers really think so. I mean, this way, the CHUI window becomes quite utterly useless as soon as one uses a window undocked from it.

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I see the problem you mentioned, Qie, and agree. The way it is working almost makes multi-window chat pointless. While it's unintuitive, there's a workaround: Detach all chats you intend to use. If local and the IM/Group are detached, it's working as intended. I'll call it a good start, but the chat window definitely needs more improvement and some additional settings.

Btw, I think it got flagged as "working as intended" as the dock seems to automatically return focus to whatever chat you're using. It's somewhat logical from an initial design perspective, but in the case of detached windows... very unintuitive and illogical.

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Hi

I love the new CHUI on the beta viewer, but is there a way of resizing the main window width? I can change the chats that are undocked to any size i want, but the main window doesn't get any smaller.  Is there a way to resize the width of the main window with all chats docked?

I can resize the height but the width is almost half my screen. Any help would be grateful.

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Teagan Tobias wrote:

That could be, it would be nice to know all the preferences that effect chat. I removed the chat button and took it out of the toolbox again and that did not help.

I did install the Starlight Skin, maybe I will uninstall it all and install just the viewer and see if that makes a difference. But thank you, at least I know it works for someone, and I should be able to get it to work for me too.

Teagan - it could be that you are not using the correct version of Starlight for Viewer 3.5.0 - you should have StarLight 3.5.0966, which doesn't appear to have that problem.  You can download it here.

 

If you are still having a problem after that please drop me an IM or raise a bug here.  Thanks. :cathappy:

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Ciaran Laval wrote:

You don't seem to be able to change the width of where group and avatar names are, but the section with conversations in can have a reduced width.

Probably would be nice if you could reduce the width of that too.

You have to hover your mouse pointer between the name/group and conversation frames.  Then you get an 'arrow thingy' that you can slide to resize it. 

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Pfffff.... 1 word.... YUK !!

I've turned away from official V2/3's ever since 2.8 came out and i am glad i never looked back... 

Linden Lab totally doesn't get it do they. Somehow they have the 'art' to make their viewer a total unwanted crap...

Terribly sorry... this is horrid more than ever... what the .... what are they doing... pardon...

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After struggling with CHUI for 2 days ... I've had enough. I'll just use whichever TPV does NOT adopt the CHUI. It's just too interusive and covers too much screen. In 2 days I've wrong window posted several times and I haven't done that in a couple years. Sorry LL, CHUI is a messy fail for me.

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Hitomi, yes I had the wrong Starlight file. Must have caught you in between posting it because I am very careful to get the matched set when I down load. But sad to say I am not even going to try any more, this up date is just poor, really poor. I had high hopes for V3 but they keep shooting themselves in the foot, and this time it was an elephant gun. I hold out little hope for V3 after CHUI goes out of Beta. I love change, I use Nirans viewer and you half to love change to use that viewer. Change is a challenge but this CHUI is just so poorly done its just sad. I hope its just me but it does not sound like it. And I do hope that some day they get it right, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Thanks Teagan - at least that is a relief for me.:cathappy:   I don't think you were the only one either as LL have been in touch saying they are getting more crashes with the StarLight skins that I am so far unable to reproduce.

 

Looking at other comments here and elsewhere there seems to be quite a mix between love and loathing for the CHUI.  I can see what LL are trying to do with it and in many ways they have succeeded.  There are some design decisions that I wouldn't have taken, but generally I don't object to most of what they've done (though BUG-1820 does seem an odd and confusing 'expected behaviour').  The CHUI team are very open to suggestions for improvements, though I doubt that 'scrap it' will be well received :catwink:.  Viewer 2 was a mess when it was released but through gradual work by LL and a lot of help from their customers it has been improved significantly.  I am hoping that with just a few tweaks it will become acceptable to most users. And I'm sure the TPV makers will be quick to provide alternatives as always.

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