"Locker" inventory so people don't have to clean up their inventory to reduce login lag

[Ceka Cianci]

I've got 10 days off coming up at the end of this week..I'm taking one of those days and cleaning out everything I don't use anymore..

It's just an unorganized mess compared to how I used to keep it when I was so active..

I'm putting everything that I use in one area and just gonna start deleting until the cows come home..

I've been holding onto too many things because of memories,but heck a lot of my old friends aren't even in sl anymore.. so I'm unpack ratting it all..

hehehehe

I know I'll probably get weak on some things,but for the most part I hope to clean house pretty good..

Can't take it with me..

[Penny Patton]

On 6/27/2018 at 6:27 AM, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Premium account perk maybe?

I know we all want LL to succeed far into the future, but this is one feature idea I don't think should be a "premium perk" if implemented. At it's core, the issue of how difficult and annoying it can be to manage inventory is a problem LL created, providing a work around for a problem they could have avoided as a paid perk rubs me the wrong way.

[Coffee Pancake]

I'm not sure how you figure this to be LL's fault. Assets come in many flavors and some sort of file-system is the simplest method of organisation. As your avatar references parts of this file-system it needs to be fetched. The fact the end user chose to purchase tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of items and then neglect to delete any of them is entirely out of LL's control.

A lesser, easier on the eye, game-esque approach would have fallen flat on its face at the volume of items procured over time and ended up unfit for purpose as users migrated from system layer clothing and hair to attachments.

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I'm not sure how you figure this to be LL's fault.

The interface is not good for managing large inventories, especially when you're a content creator with lots of WIP content. I'm not asking for a prettier interface, I'm asking for a more practical interface.

[Coffee Pancake]

That is certainly in the realm of what TPV's can provide, can you be specific ?

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

On 6/27/2018 at 12:55 AM, MegaRose said:

I've considered doing the prim packing thing but I've always wondered where those items go.  Like they're obviously still in the SL database but when they're packed away do they just...not technically belong to anyone?  Or are they all just in the prim and you can have one really laggy prim full of a ton of items?

It's all pointers to the database, just arranged differently.

When the item is "in" your inventory, the line pointing to the database is right there and the inventory system does its thing with it.

When the item is "in" another object, then its database pointer is only accessed when the object it's in is worn or rezzed. If it's left in its object/stuffed prim in inventory, then the inventory system does it thing to the object/stuffed prim not the item. The item information is still in the database and you still own it, it's just hidden from the inventory system.

If there are a lot of items in a rezzed or worn object, then it takes awhile to list them all when you Open or Edit it and it seems to get exponentially laggier the more there are. Say it takes 1 seconds to show 10 items, 2 seconds to show 20, but 5 to show 30. Something like that.

An old rumour is that a rezzed object containing a lot of items is a source of lag. I have no idea if this is true.

Does that help?

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

An old rumour is that a rezzed object containing a lot of items is a source of lag. I have no idea if this is true.

No. The contents of an object are not sent to the viewer unless it specifically requests them. On the server side it's just a list of asset links

[Penny Patton]

3 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

That is certainly in the realm of what TPV's can provide, can you be specific ?

Off the top of my head even just making it more like windows explorer would make things easier. I'm a designer so I end up with lots of files on my computer. I'll do housecleaning to get rid of redundant or obsolete WIP files and to do that I'll sometimes have a whole bunch of explorer windows open all at once, doing lots of searches by type, size, date. ctrl+dragging batches of files and folders all at once to better organize them. A lot of this the SL inventory window can do, but the file tree format isn't ideal for it and you can only have two inventory windows open at once. Sometimes just being able to move folders around to visually organize them can help speed things up.

On top of that, being able to search by creator and last owner would be handy. Being able to include perms in search parameters rather than part of the search term would be great, too. Being able to mass delete broken outfit links, too. Being able to delete identical items while only keeping one would be a godsend.

Being able to assign colours to folders could be a huge organizational help, too.

I'm sure I could sit down and put more thought into it sometime, but I hope that gives some idea of the kinds of things that would be useful to help keep inventories more under control.

[Coffee Pancake]

 

[Klytyna]

7 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

 

We keep telling people "Catznip, it rocks and doesn't have those awful pie menus..." but they never listen, hehehe...
 

[Fionalein]

9 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

We keep telling people "Catznip, it rocks and doesn't have those awful pie menus..." but they never listen, hehehe...
 

It is hard to listen to muted people 

[Klytyna]

6 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

It is hard to listen to muted people 

People screaming "argh u disagreed with my BS, I R mutin yous" tells me I am annoying the right class of web moron...  
 

[LittleMe Jewell]

I can open that many inventory windows in Firestorm.  

[Solar Legion]

41 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I can open that many inventory windows in Firestorm.  

Heck at one point one could open new Inventory windows in the older versions of the Official Client.

It's not anything new nor is is a crowning feature of any singular Second Life client.

[ellestones]

On 6/29/2018 at 6:12 AM, Penny Patton said:

 making it more like windows explorer

i vote for this

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, ellestones said:

i vote for this

Lets break it down some. (SL viewer inventory examples given are based on Catznip .. we spend a lot of time shopping, so making inventory better is high priority for us)

First up, Windows Explorer has a 2 pane approach to file management, the tree on one side the contents of a selected folder on the other. This part isn't so difficult however it would eat up at least double the screen area. The contents of the file view pane is where the problems start.

• A list of assets from the selected parent folder would be fine, but wouldn't offer any real advantages over the system we have now. It would be more practical to have 2 existing inventory floaters open side by side in the same style as some other file managers (explorer isn't the only game in town).
• A detailed list of assets showing properties for each item, dates, creator and perms .. would show more information, but from a file management perspective ... none of it would be really useful over existing tools. You can already see perms in the file name. dates are rarely useful. creator .. even less so, generally you only need to see the creator of an odd item, not everything you own.
• Previews, a big part of explorer .. are problematic. A files contents need to be fetched in order for the preview images to be generated. All Images would all have to be downloaded, notecards rendered (as is seen in some linux file managers) many items have no possible preview as they must be rezzed in world or placed on an avatar*. It would turn the debate about objects over using textures and eating VRAM into a bit of a joke. Where is all your texture memory being used? Inventory.

Also, keep in mind the typical use case for windows explorer is to have more than one window open at a time!

A few minutes furiously opening folders and rendering previews would beg the question; Do you have a Second Life client, or a Second Life inventory management game?

So while a Explorer type interface would have one huge advantage (user familiarity), it would royally suck in just about every other way we care to measure. It would be a painful experience on a good day and at its very best, would just eat up more screen space and over little advantage over just opening two inventory floaters.

* Catznip did do some work making tooltip style previews of worn clothing items and skins (etc) however as they are never used in isolation we found it to be less than useful. It was always quicker to just wear the item and then decide what to do with it (no really, it takes exactly the same amount of time to make a tool tip preview as it does to wear it and let SL render it, only now you see the item with added contextual information; your skin and other clothing).

We did make all images show a tooltip in inventory and notecards. Sounds great ... except it can take a full second (or longer) to fetch and render the image. Would you want to patiently wait 30 seconds for a page of previews to load? What happens in a Windows Explorer model when a user scrolls up and down impatiently trying to get a folder full of images to load .. it would feel like landing on a new region, lag the viewer, eat up a ton of VRAM and we're back to "Slow File Management Simulator 2018".

 

Inara did a really good write up on the inventory features we added in R12 to improve searching, auto sorting your shopping, unpacking items into the same folder as the box, making any folder appear above the trash as a system folder and a quick inventory, and the ability to take an object and auto replace all broken links (handy if you have to rez and edit an attachment you frequently wear, like a collar or head)

https://modemworld.me/2018/01/01/catznip-r12-inventory-shopping-and-more/

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2018 by CoffeeDujour

[Drayke Newall]

I think a lot of the inventory management becomes a nightmare due to just the ui of it all. While yes a windows explorer system would be nice (if screen space is an issue have the tree part of the window collapsible, leaving the folder area), even simple things can make management easier if the ui is changed somewhat. For example:

• A long object name in your inventory means expanding the inv window just to read (no copy), (no modify), (no transfer). Why can't these be expressed as simple icons with green C M T icons or red C M T icons for no copy etc. It would certainly help for quick glancing through things.
• Not sure if this is possible but the ability to right click an object and change its icon from the default cube to something more relevant. For example a furniture object - rather than a box you can right click the object and select from a list of icons and pick for example a chair icon. This will eliminate a lot of the mess, at least I have, in the objects folder and enable a quick glance approach to the inv. rather than having to read everything.
• Point 2 could also be applied to folders where if a new folder is created you can right click and select a variety of folder icons (or as Penny mentioned colors) not just the old yellow folder.
• have an icon WIP or V1,V2 etc. icons for version numbers.

The inv. window as it is now has no quick glance function to find things quicker which icons could help with. Also this may not be possible but have search by icon making search even easier.

[Coffee Pancake]

Icons for perms is certainly possible. Not a bad idea.

Changing an objects icon would require storing some data about what icon is associated with what inventory. That information would have to be stored on the local machine (inventory is not a suitable place to dependably store additional information), Really this would require server side code from LL and a library of icons shipped with the client. I suggest you file a feature request on https://jira.secondlife.com/ 

[ellestones]

@CoffeeDujour - thanks for the explanation of how your team sees it

what I like about dual pane displays is that there is a folder tree on the left and a content list on the right. I like the separation. If the right pane could be collapsed then the left pane would act as it does now - folders and content in the same view

if the right pane continued to just be a list I would happy with that. Texture previews I could live without. What I would like to see in the list is: Icon : C|M|T : Date : Name  

what I particularly like about Windows Explorer is Quick Access - Frequent Folders and Recent Files. I really would like Recent to persist between logins if that was at all possible

 

add edit: never saw what Drakye said about perms before I posted. If not graphics then I be happy with text: C|M|T

Edited June 30, 2018 by ellestones

[Coffee Pancake]

I get what you're saying about liking the separation, the problem is if we add that ... we will be instantly asked why we didn't add everything else expected from that layout, and no one will care about any of the solid technical reasons why we couldn't add those features or make them work as expected  .. or if we did work out a solution, why the viewer was suddenly eating an extra 500mb or running slower. Remember, the UI in SL is drawn with the same render engine and graphics resources as the world.

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

the problem is if we add that ... we will be instantly asked why we didn't add everything else expected from that layout,

It seems to me that no features would ever be implemented if this were a concern.

[Coffee Pancake]

well .. if it doesn't meet our own quality or usability expectations then we're not adding it, even if weeks we're spent developing and testing it.

You really don't want to know quite how much "cool stuff" never made (and probably wont ever make) public release.

This image is a tip of a very deep iceberg ...

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 hours ago, ellestones said:

I really would like Recent to persist between logins if that was at all possible

In Firestorm at least, you can modify the filters for the Recent tab to be a certain number of hours and/or days - and that setting will persist.  I usually keep mine around 18 hours, which will cover a super long day, even with multiple relogs throughout the day.