Why has Linden Labs not put out a better viewer, so we don't have to resort to using other viewers?

[RosieThorne]

It is obvious that viewer 2 is not a hit. Hardly anyone I know uses it. No one likes it.

[Peewee Musytari]

Probably cos they spent so much money on it that its easier to just keep telling us how great it is and how much everybody loves it. :smileyvery-happy:

[Rolig Loon]

Many people do like v2, but clearly it is not everyone's favorite. It may never be, but that's OK.  A little over a year ago, LL made the wise decision to make their viewer codes open source.  This opened a market for Third Party viewers.  There will probably always be discussions about which viewer is best, and the answer will always be "It depends."   IMO, two things are almost certian, though: (1) SL residents will continue to benefit from having a choice of viewers rather than a single one-size-fits-all version and (2) competiton among the TPVs and LL's own viewer will help make all of them stronger.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

All these people you know that don't like it -

• Have they actually tried v2 at all?
• How long were they using other viewers before they tried v2?
• Did they READ the instructions and information about what had changed or just shout 'who moved my cheese' when something was different? (It was Suella, by the way)
• How long did they give themselves to learn about and get used to v2?

The thing is that if someone's been using a different viewer for a couple of years, looks at v2, sees it's different and goes back to the old one after a couple of hours that's hardly a fair evaluation, is it?

Personally, I thought the only major thing wrong with the first iteration of v2 was the way it shifted the world-view whenever you opened or closed the sidebar.  Since LL fixed that (in the very next release) I have no problem with it.  There are certainly some features in TPVs that I'd like but I stick with the official viewer because I'm often helping newbies and I want to know what they're seeing.

[Irene Muni]

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:smileytongue:

[Niav Ansome]

Phoenix is far superior and better options in my oppinion, nevertherless SL viewer is nice and been improved alot but I think with time will be better.

[Claireschen Hesten]

you can't properly hate V2 with out spending time using it and finding all the keyboard shortcuts you used to use almost with out thinking do nothing things like upload and build aren't where you'd expect them to be the side bar is too obtrusive etc. when LL finally blocks V1 code from connecting to the grid there'll be two options use V2/V2 based tpv (phoenix's firestorm viewer looks promising) or quit SL. if SL were to have a sharp drop in log ins when V1 get's blocked i think that would be a very strong hint to LL at how disliked V2 is 

[Roblem Hogarth]

What you have to remember about the official 2.x viewer is that it is designed more to make it easy on new and or casual residents with average computers. However if you rent, build, run events, have a store etc. you now have new hoops to jump through to get anything done. Not to mention of course the overall interface is so different from the classic one that most older players just hate it.  Now everyones idea of a "better viewer" is going to be different, so I would hate to see LL waste their time doing a dozen variations.

Of course the cool thing is that we do have different 3rd party options that all meet different needs. (something I have never seen for any other virtual world)

[TriloByte Zanzibar]

Consider meeting more people, perhaps.  Adoption has increased pretty steadily since last summer (when the way the viewer is developed was changed, and has had a lot more community involvement).  I know plenty of folks using and enjoying 2x, as well as a lot of 1x holdouts and bashers, the majority of which either haven't used 2.x since the early days of 2.0 or 2.0.1, or are just ignorant on where the 2x viewers (from LL or third parties) are today.

Give yourself a little time to figure it out, you'll get the hang of it.  Anybody clever enough to have figured out nested pie menus can figure out a sidebar.  The current 2x viewer is faster, has more features/functions (multi-wearables alone is a must-have feature), and lets you customize a lot of stuff.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

---

RosieThorne wrote:

It is obvious that viewer 2 is not a hit. Hardly anyone I know uses it. No one likes it.

---

It's not obvious at all and wide sweeping statements such as 'no-one likes it' are at odds with actual usage. Perhaps hardly anyone you know uses viewer 2 but over a fifth of all Residents do use it, the percentage exceeding those using Phoenix, Snowglobe and older SL viewers (if the stats gleaned from a certain site are anyway reliable).

I've been using viewer 2 and more often Kirstens (a more advanced version of Viewer 2) since it came out and am very comfortable with it. It took me a while to get to know the viewer but what I really like is how fast textures rez compared to older viewers and third party viewer 1 based clients. 

It's not all rosy. Search isn't as good and I don't like the web profiles but soon everyone will be using web profiles and at least I'll be used to it by then. I tend to look at viewer 2 as a work in progress. It's continually getting better and better. Linden Lab's main viewer 2 is at version 2.5 now, Kirsten's basecode is at 2.7 and working beautifully for me.

What's good is that there are choices out there to suit everyone. If LL would tackle improving Search on viewer 2, I'd be really happy.

[Painted Melody]

Both Kirsten and Phoenix have put out Viewer 2 derived viewers that greatly improve many of the annoyances people have for viewer 2. I think it is but a matter of time until a major LL sourced viewer 2 improvement comes out.

However, the question presented here is self-serving and ignores reality. Some peope do like Viewer 2, especially those without autonomic predilection to the user interface of old 1.23 viewers. If you haven't already gotten in a routine of the old user interface, Viewer 2 clearly has some advantages to ease of use.  True, it has some quirks that make an old hand groan, but they are usually something that a reference to the instructions or the Help menu can cure.

Bottom line, the tendency of long time SL users to whine incessantly about things they don't like is far more annoying than the flaws in Viewer 2. Remember how peopel complain whnever Microsoft came out with new interfaces for WIndows or Office, old pros always whined about the lack of ease of use for the new User Interface. I still cannot find the right paragraph controls in Word, but things change, Learn the new interface and please, stop whining.

[Peewee Musytari]

"Learn the new interface and please, stop whining."

 

That`s a bit harsh, you are implying that people are either stupid or lazy when the fact is that it has nothing to do with "learning" it. The new interface is very user unfriendly for some users that have specific requirements from a viewer & there are alternate viewers available that cater better for their needs.

 

They are not "whining" about it, they are just not using it. According to a previous post "over a 5th of people are using it" which means nearly 80% are not, hardly a good statistic to backup your arguement. Different strokes for different folks!!.