If you could redesign the viewer...

[ItHadToComeToThis]

What would you do/improve. Yes, it’s another one of those “what would you do...” threads. Haven’t had one in a while.

So, how would you improve/redesign it?. There’s isn’t too much deviation in any of the viewers from either the V3/V1 design. But let’s suppose you thought “ya know, if we did this, moved that, changed this” what would you do?. How would you revolutionise it?

One thing I would probably do combine all of the lower buttons and features into a single “start menu” style pop up on the lower right to free up a small amount of screen real estate

Edited February 17, 2020 by ItHadToComeToThis

[Lindal Kidd]

I'd make it possible to change the position where all the junk appears in the upper right corner to some other location.

[Adeon Writer]

My biggest problem with the modern viewers is that they all just have way too much chrome. I want to see the world, not the viewer. Everything from the title bars to the toolbar buttons are just always in the way, they take up so much space, ever since the original 2.0 update and it was never addressed. Unless you use an older 1.x third party viewer you just never got your real-estate back.

[Alwin Alcott]

15 minutes ago, Adeon Writer said:

My biggest problem with the modern viewers is that they all just have way too much chrome. I want to see the world, not the viewer. Everything from the title bars to the toolbar buttons are just always in the way, they take up so much space, ever since the original 2.0 update and it was never addressed. Unless you use an older 1.x third party viewer you just never got your real-estate back.

perhaps ad a pic? .. as i remember the old viewers were not showing a lot more

[Skell Dagger]

It's been a while since I last used the LL stock viewer (the weekend of the Bakes on Mesh release, as I recall, since I needed to familiarise myself with as much of it as possible in case we got questions in the Catwa support chat, and the LL viewer was the only one with it implemented at that point) but from memory of that experience I would:

• redesign the GUI to remove much of the extra padding around each window and element, as there's far too much of it that takes up unnecessary screen real estate
• add a 'close all folders' button to the inventory, because it drives me crazy if - after an inventory deep-dive - I have to scroll back up/down and click to close each folder manually
• add the ability to move toasts and popups (as Lindal suggested) to another location (top-right is where I keep minimap etc, so I never see them up there as they spawn in front of something already in place; lower-right is more in my peripheral vision and I spot them instantly in that location)
• add Firestorm's "favourite wearables" toolbar button (which I think I remember reading might actually be coming to the LL viewer anyway?) because that thing is an absolute godsend for quickly finding frequently-used HUDs and suchlike
• redesign CHUI (the chat interface) and make it more customisable (and yes, again I'd like it to take up less space!)
• add a few more Windlights, at least one of which is good for skin-matching on mesh heads and bodies

Edited February 17, 2020 by Skell Dagger

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Get rid of Chui and I go back to the SL viewer.  

 

Make as simplistic as I have it now and it's very useable.

 

[Mollymews]

docking windows

customisable menus and button toolbars

build list properties editor rather than dialog properties editor

object HUD window. Right-click on object/garment, menuitem HUD. Shows a XHTML page. Click a XHTML link/button, apply selection to object/garment. The XHTML/CSS code is a property of the object/garment

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Also I have 3 screens,  I want to be able to drag those to the other monitors,  firestorm once show cased a viewer that worked like that but no one ever picked it up. 

 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Adeon Writer said:

My biggest problem with the modern viewers is that they all just have way too much chrome. I want to see the world, not the viewer.

That gives me an excuse to post again a classic picture from Daniel Voyager's blog

I wouldn't have changed anything in the viewer's interface. It was poorly designed right from the start and all the hacks to add new features wherever there was a bit of space to spare hasn't made it any better.

So I would have scrapped it an started all over again from scratch. I suppose that's a bit too big a project to present in a forum post.

[KT Kingsley]

Adeon, try

SL viewer: Me/Hide all controls Alt+Shift+U; Firestorm: Avatar/Show User Interface Alt+Shift+U
SL viewer: Me/Show HUD Attachments Ctrl+Shift+H; Firestorm: Avatar/Show HUD Attachments Alt+Shift+H

Both are toggles. And even with the UI hidden you can summon up various windows using the keyboard shortcuts,

Skell, from the gear icon at the bottom left of the SL viewer inventory window "Close all folders". In Firestorm, it's also a button, "Collapse", at the top left of the inventory window. (There's also an "Expand" button there. I haven't been able to figure out why I'd want to open every single folder and sub-folder in my inventory, though.) Also, don't forget that EEP settings will likely make Windlight redundant sometime this year.

Edited February 17, 2020 by KT Kingsley

[Pussycat Catnap]

• Let me change the keybinds to everything.
• Make movement like in EVERY OTHER 3D environment. A & D move, not turn. Left-Clicking anywhere just activates 'turn+move with mouse with camera following' like some MMOs
  • Optionally can set it so camera auto pans with mouse, like in FPS games, and click+hold lets you rotate camera around avatar without moving or turning.
• Right-click to interact. A key like 'middle mouse' to do what current SL left-click does (an interact key, re-bindable to any key of choice - this is often bound to 'F').
• Spacebar jumps by default. Shift+Space toggles flight.
• Shift+WASD activates run mode. Option to flip this so run is default and Shift+WASD activates walk.
• Everything currently acted upon with a button on the screen now instead by default works with a keybind only. A system to add buttons if desired. Including camera panning - by default set to 'alt + WASD' or 'alt + arrow key'. So by default, there is no UI save for a top bar with the menu options - and an option to turn this bar off. Every UI element then needs to be added and your 'state' of what you've added can be saved. Ability to 'lock' UI elements so once locked they can't be moved unless you go into unlock mode. Ability to set a UI element as 'clickthrough' so that clicks in that area behave as if that UI element was not there.
• escape key by default closes things, one at a time, in a stack - most recent open to last. Shift-escape closes all. Again can keybind this otherwise.
• Ability to toss all messages /popups to chat tabs. Including notices, objects coming in from box opening, and so on. Ability to NOT auto-preview items opened from boxes.
• Ability to queue things moved from inventory to object and vice-versa so it won't move item #2 until it is told #1 has been successful (so... no more moving 103 items and having some of them random fail... on a fail it would stop and let you know where it was if 3 try-agains failed).
• Ability to resize ALL UI elements... especially things like the box for objects inside of something...
• By default setting anything to 100% transparency would replace the texture (if owned by the user or in the system library) with the default transparency texture and alpha-mask mode at 255. Option to not do this.
• Ability to pass windlight settings around to others inworld with a notecard like system.
• Ability to set land access by whether or not a prospective visitor has a profile image and description of more than X characters in length.

 

 

[Conifer Dada]

I use the standard LL viewer and I've come to like the understated neutral look, which minimises distraction from the in-world view. It would be nice to make it to more customisable though, so that those who want something different from the neutral dark grey can have it.  So if , for example, you want your viewer to be bright orange with lime green lettering, you could have it like that.

As others say, it would also be nice to be able to use 2 screens, with the in-world view on one and all the pop-ups and controls are on the other. It would also be good if we could have the option of having the in-world view in a square window with the pop-ups displayed on grey panels on either side, or on one side.  I wouldn't want to have it like that all the time, but sometimes it would be good.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Conifer Dada

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

add a 'close all folders' button to the inventory, because it drives me crazy if - after an inventory deep-dive - I have to scroll back up/down and click to close each folder manually

There's a button called "Collapse/Expand" at least in Firestorm, should be in LL viewer too.

20 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

• escape key by default closes things, one at a time, in a stack - most recent open to last. Shift-escape closes all. Again can keybind this otherwise.
• Ability to NOT auto-preview items opened from boxes.

You can close windows exactly like that with Ctrl-W, Ctrl-Shift-W might close all but I'm not sure. There's a setting to not preview opened items.

20 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Ability to pass windlight settings around to others inworld with a notecard like system.

Isn't this possible with EEP?

[Ajay McDowwll]

5 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

• add Firestorm's "favourite wearables" toolbar button (which I think I remember reading might actually be coming to the LL viewer anyway?) because that thing is an absolute godsend for quickly finding frequently-used HUDs and suchlike

Wait, Firestorm has a favorite wearables button?  I'm going to look that up when I get home -- it will make my life MUCH simpler

[Odaks]

3 hours ago, KT Kingsley said:

Skell, from the gear icon at the bottom left of the SL viewer inventory window "Close all folders". In Firestorm, it's also a button, "Collapse", at the top left of the inventory window. (There's also an "Expand" button there. I haven't been able to figure out why I'd want to open every single folder and sub-folder in my inventory, though.) Also, don't forget that EEP settings will likely make Windlight redundant sometime this year.

I find the Collapse button a Godsend! But, before closing the Inventory, I click on the primary "Inventory" folder so that the topic folders list themselves again, ready for the next time you access the Inventory.

[Odaks]

Is there a way to stop the edit menu always opening on top of the item you're trying to edit?

If not, its on my wishlist!

Edited February 17, 2020 by Odaks

[Sommerland Starostin]

Make inventory a hud in place of a long suitcase of items with folders. That's what they should've done. Really my only complaint. Inventory is very time-consuming and difficult to keep organized. The absolute worst thing about SL.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

If you click on an avatar name in dialog, their profile pops up instead of some weird and superfluous menu that disappears after 1.5 seconds.

[Dean Haystack]

46 minutes ago, Sommerland Starostin said:

Make inventory a hud in place of a long suitcase of items with folders. That's what they should've done. Really my only complaint. Inventory is very time-consuming and difficult to keep organized. The absolute worst thing about SL.

What do you mean make it a HUD?
How would that improve anything when as is the inventory is more responsive and versatile than any HUD could ever hope to be.
Are you perhaps wishing it would be like something you see in a video game and would just sort out things automatically? If that is is it, you can't have that unfortunately.
You cannot think of SL as a video game, think of it as the folders in your computer, it is up to you to organize your files even if the OS has default folders.
If it's something else, please elaborate.

7 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

add the ability to move toasts and popups (as Lindal suggested) to another location (top-right is where I keep minimap etc, so I never see them up there as they spawn in front of something already in place; lower-right is more in my peripheral vision and I spot them instantly in that location)

I feel your pain, I keep my chat window there.

----

Now since we are wishing, I wish the minimized elements would sit lower on the bottom left. As is they default to a high position forcing me to place my radar window higher than it otherwise could be.

Even that high they still manage to get behind it sometimes, no about of training changes that as new opened then minimized elements will default to that place.

[Parhelion Palou]

5 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

5 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Ability to pass windlight settings around to others inworld with a notecard like system.

Isn't this possible with EEP?

Yes, that's one of EEP's features -- the ability to pass EEP settings to others and also sell them.

[Bree Giffen]

I suggested this before but it hasn't been implemented by LL; Add a right click option to detach all and delete folder. There are too many mouse clicks needed to do things. Maybe a macro creator where I could create the function I need and add it to my right click menu or a keyboard shortcut.

[LittleMe Jewell]

7 hours ago, KT Kingsley said:

There's also an "Expand" button there. I haven't been able to figure out why I'd want to open every single folder and sub-folder in my inventory, though.

I would very much like to right click a specific folder and then select an Expand All option that would only expand on the sub-folders within the folder that I right-clicked on.  While probably not super useful to everyone, there have been a few times where that would have been helpful to me.  

 

9 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I'd make it possible to change the position where all the junk appears in the upper right corner to some other location.

This would probably be my highest priority current wish - though for Firestorm, because I don't use the SL viewer.

 

Even if the SL viewer had many of the extras that I get with Firestorm, until they changed things enough to decrease how much screen space things take up, I won't go back to it on any kind of regular basis.

[Pussycat Catnap]

8 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

You can close windows exactly like that with Ctrl-W, Ctrl-Shift-W might close all but I'm not sure. There's a setting to not preview opened items.

But it should be on the standard escape key like other 3D environments and even applications use.

This is one reason why my top demand is the ability to keybind and change the keybind of everything. So people who only use SL can keep it's weird non-standard keybinds and UI controls / layout, and people who use a range of applications can make it more standard.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

3 hours ago, Parhelion Palou said:

Yes, that's one of EEP's features -- the ability to pass EEP settings to others and also sell them.

I'd want them to be something that could not be sold... only traded around.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

15 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

But it should be on the standard escape key like other 3D environments and even applications use.

This is one reason why my top demand is the ability to keybind and change the keybind of everything. So people who only use SL can keep it's weird non-standard keybinds and UI controls / layout, and people who use a range of applications can make it more standard.

That's totally fair and I don't disagree with the want.

But I would point out that Ctrl-W is also fairly standard. It works universally in Windows and Ubuntu (unless the app overrides it), I think Mac too, and for example browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) tabs.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator