What happened to the viewer

[Casandra Kumsung]

I use Phoenix and SL viewer 2 is crazy. I cannot find my inventory, how to tp to home. Destinations is just a list, my avatar is a bunch of pictures.  Where is everything?  Why do they make it so difficult?  

 

No wonder few are using it.

Linden put it back so we can find stuff. It seems to be set up for neebees, just point and click.

[Luc Starsider]

When you log in using viewer 2, it sounds like you are in Basic mode. Shut down the viewer and start it up again. On the login screen, select Advanced from the drop down menu next to the Login button and follow the instructions on screen. That should make the things you are used to available.

- Luc -

[Shockwave Yareach]

The idea behind V2 is that everything is in a drawer on the right side of your window.  Want inventory?  click the tab that looks like a suitcase.  Friends list?  The little peoples tab.  Landmarks?  The globe.  etc, etc.  And in inventory, clicking the little + button on the bottom lets up upload a texture or sound.  Much improvement has gone into the back end and getting rid of some of the things which made up the UI of V1 is what made those reliability and speed improvements possible. 

While not ideal, and it is different than V1 I admit, it's not the abomination it was when it first came out.  The very first one had major flaws and the buttons were black on a black background so you couldn't use them unless you already knew they were there.  The current version is what I use because of things like HTML on a prim (which I use to make weather radars that work inworld) and the finally-reliable music and video capabilities. 

A version I would prefer to have would put the entire sidebar on a second daughter window.  And then the user can have it on a totally seperate 2nd monitor (home use) or place it just below the world with only the friends list showing (laptop use).  This is my idea of ideal.  Even making it so you can tear off the sidebar into a daughterwindow would make me happy.  But that's not going to happen for me, and the UI isn't going to go back to V1 for you, either.  And eventually all the V1 viewers will be kicked out of the world so that improvements like Mesh and Dynamic Shadows or whatever else is next can be implemented.  But there's no way to implement the new tools with the old toolbox, so eventually V1 is going to be history.  So it is wise that we get used to V2 and it's more logical (if sometimes not where we expect it to be) layout.

And hey, I hated V2 with a rage that came >< this close to seeing me leave SL and never returning.  If I accept V2 as it is today, then the lab has truly accomplished something.  You should have been here when it first came out and I was, shall we say, vivid in my terminology for how incompetent a programmer had to be to create black buttons on a black background.  The worst problems are fixed and I can work just as easily in V2 now than I could in V1.  So keep an open mind and try it for a week when you aren't going to be busy and give it an honest run instead of running back to old and familiar.  Steam boats are old and familiar, but I wouldn't want to make business trips on them.  Progress is change and change isn't simple for us sometimes.  But please, give it a try.  You may grow to like it if you give it an honest shot -- I did, and I got banned for my sometimes colorful language here over a year prior.

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Casandra. I will agree with Luc. Seems that you are in Basic Mode in Viewer 2. Relog in Advanced Mode. You will find the option in your login screen.

[Kolby Nissondorf]

Advanced mode gets rid of all that stuff  (seems it was already explained D: )

[Casandra Kumsung]

Great now where is advanced login for viewer 3?