Discussion: Use Cases for llOpenFloater()

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

LL(after seeing the push back): "I mean.......auto-allowing experiences only will use it! Yeah! Did we not specify that already? Silly us!"

BTW, there are plenty of resident owned, land scope, auto-allowing experiences out there and some of them have been hijacked in the past and/or have been abused in the wrong hands.

There are SECs and ARs filed over this already.

Do we know of resident-owned auto-allowing Experiences that are not in Community Gateways?

I sorta wonder how content in these browser floaters will get developed. Is that a Linden web team thing? Moles? Who develops this stuff for resident Gateways? Kind of an interesting skill set needed, sorta UX+Web+MoaP+patience with half-baked tech. (Linden Realms must have been a little like this, content developed at the same time as the proto-Experience tech that delivered it.)

… and where do they get ideas about what llOpenFloater-based content to develop? (Is that what this thread was for?)

[Coffee Pancake]

9 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I sorta wonder how content in these browser floaters will get developed.

I'm expecting new users to ender a sandbox area and a browser to open with the relevant KB article. Etc etc.

If they get an animated paperclip or big sign with " I See you're about to rez a prim! CLICK HERE FOR HELP !" I'm going to be honestly impressed.

[Kathrine Jansma]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I'm expecting new users to ender a sandbox area and a browser to open with the relevant KB article. Etc etc.

If they get an animated paperclip or big sign with " I See you're about to rez a prim! CLICK HERE FOR HELP !" I'm going to be honestly impressed.

Would have helped me back in the day, when i tried for around 2 hours to unpack my first bought outfit. So a modern help system would be okay.

Its kind of adding a little of what makes Electron Apps attractive to people. Use web stuff for boring UI tasks and have it look pretty. And lock it down to just a few allow listed origins.

[Lucia Nightfire]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I'm expecting new users to ender a sandbox area and a browser to open with the relevant KB article. Etc etc.

If they get an animated paperclip or big sign with " I See you're about to rez a prim! CLICK HERE FOR HELP !" I'm going to be honestly impressed.

When I originally proposed the feature that became Animesh, one of the use cases was "personal assistant mascots".

Clippy comes to mind, even though I'd prefer the cat.

To bad we can't attach animesh to HUD slots.

A whole market was passed over.

[Coffee Pancake]

32 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

A whole market was passed over.

Not to mention some very slick hud UI.

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Not to mention some very slick hud UI.

Yeah, animated HUD floaters would have been neat.

Too bad we can't get userform support at the minimum.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Lucia Nightfire

[Gabriele Graves]

I would like to see a published list on the LL Wiki of all the organisations/individuals who have been granted use of auto-allowing experiences.  If some accounts are given extra-ordinary privileges over us ordinary accounts it is only fair to know who they all are and where we would need to avoid.  I would also like LL to publish on the wiki the list of LL owned regions that are Experience enabled with which ones are auto-allowing enabled or are planned to be for the same reasons.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Gabriele Graves

[Rider Linden]

12 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

When I originally proposed the feature that became Animesh, one of the use cases was "personal assistant mascots".

Clippy comes to mind, even though I'd prefer the cat.

To bad we can't attach animesh to HUD slots.

A whole market was passed over.

After an exhaustive search of the marketplace, the closest I was able to find was a paper clip typer... 

[Extrude Ragu]

When you say a floater, do you mean like the help dialogs? ie a browser with a title bar etc

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

When you say a floater, do you mean like the help dialogs? ie a browser with a title bar etc

CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+Z

That floater with a custom URL defined by script.

[Extrude Ragu]

So this thing

 

A use-case I could see at my Experience, Kokoro Academy would be users clicking their Kokoro HUD for the Forum menu item and also clicking help links for various things around my sim. I could even get advanced and automatically log the user in using a one-use token or similar.

There seems to be a lot of panic about scope for abuse. The easy way to prevent abuse here would be to simply only allow llOpenFloater to open a floater if called as a result of the user clicking the object ie called within a touch_start / touch_end event.

With that said, since it's Experience limited anyway I can't imagine there is much incentive to abuse it, if someone is paying for a region and premium for an experience key, they have an investment to lose they're not going to be the sort of people who are going around trolling like there are no consequences.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by Extrude Ragu

[Mazidox Linden]

I've added an update to the initial post, but the very short version is we're not going to allow access to this function for Resident run experiences based on the concerns you all have raised.

[Extrude Ragu]

RIP

[Qie Niangao]

8 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

RIP

But we can search for a silver lining. We might encourage the Lab to look at more advanced script UI features that do not require full browser functionality (and the risks that come with it), perhaps with some more coherent integration with the viewer, instead of needing to (temp-)attach slow-loading texture HUDs or beg users to accept a MoaP surface in their face.

I also noticed that @Keira Linden was asking about Place Pages at the most recent Web User Group meeting, (hat tip Inara Pey) and it occurs to me that there's some overlap between what can be done with those and the top level of what you suggest for the Kokoro Academy Experience. (I'm not entirely sure, though, whether the Lab is genuinely looking for ways to enhance the utility of Place Pages or exploring the downside of pulling the plug on them altogether.)

[Extrude Ragu]

Stupid question - What's a place page?

[Ardy Lay]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Stupid question - What's a place page?

https://places.secondlife.com/

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 5/11/2021 at 12:16 AM, Mazidox Linden said:

Given the legitimate concerns the community has raised, we don’t foresee opening up the usage of this LSL function to all Experience owners in the future.

llTargetedEmail 2.0.

[Whirly Fizzle]

On 5/12/2021 at 1:30 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

If they get an animated paperclip or big sign with " I See you're about to rez a prim! CLICK HERE FOR HELP !" I'm going to be honestly impressed.

 

23 hours ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Clippy comes to mind, even though I'd prefer the cat.

[Mollymews]

5 hours ago, Mazidox Linden said:

I've added an update to the initial post, but the very short version is we're not going to allow access to this function for Resident run experiences based on the concerns you all have raised.

i think that the raised concerns for a llOpenFloater web browser are valid only insofar as an ability to link to external websites. External meaning beyond the secondlife domain

i think tho that an ability to surface a HTML asset within the floater would be great. The HTML allowing navigation within the page, and links to destinations within the Second Life domain - landmarks and marketplace being the main ones.  And images that are already within the domain, - named images in object contents or uuid.

(Video is problematic as Linden don't have the capacity to host resident-generated video at this time, so best to set this aside for now)

and callback capability. So that a HTML control can raise a listen event in the LSL script similar to llDialog. The string returned being: "NameOfControl, application data" [add: the call back event doesn't close the floater like llDialog does. It remains open till explictly closed by the user or from within the script ]

the other thing I would like to see is an ability to provide JSON as the datasource for the HTML. Preferably as separate parameters

i would envisage: llOpenFloater(integer channel, string html, string json, integer open)

'open' allows the floater open on the channel to be closed.   llOpenFloater(-99, html, json, TRUE).   llOpenFloater(-99, "", "", FALSE). 

 

add also:

i would like it to be named llHud because this is what most people want. The ability to create rich interactive HUDs for their experiences and products in a whole lot easier way

i don't mean to be critical but sometimes when Linden think about making these kinds of things then sometimes the thought process is driven by how they and the LDPW will use it. And when Linden ask for resident feedback then that feedback can be overly-alarmist sometimes when it doesn't need to be, when look at it more from a every day resident users pov 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2021 by Mollymews

[Lucia Nightfire]

2 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i don't mean to be critical but sometimes when Linden think about making these kinds of things then sometimes the thought process is driven by how they and the LDPW will use it. And when Linden ask for resident feedback then that feedback can be overly-alarmist sometimes when it doesn't need to be, when look at it more from a every day resident users pov

This happens when LL doesn't engage with the community at storyboard phase, but instead, does so at rough draft phase.

It's called "Linden Knows Best" syndrome and it's been the ruin of most major features in the last 8 years.

It's resulted in Vir Linden saying each time, "We'll do it in a follow-up." only for years to go by with nothing happening, but talk of the next major feature that will also be half-implemented.

[Mollymews]

50 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

storyboard phase

yes.  I get why Linden need this proposed function llOpenFloater for their own/LDPW purposes. New resident onboarding, Linden grid-wide experiences, Bellissaria, etc. And if I was a Linden/LDPW person then I would also want some javascript capability with this. Which would be perfectly fine to have as a Linden/LDPW person as Linden have an internal quality control process for this

i think that is still not to late for llHud to be storyboarded. As the intended audience for this are residents, and being a rich version of llDialog then there is no need to limit its use to any type of Experience Key. As when not then it can be used grid-wide and will soon supplant the current (often tedious) ways that HUDs and Dialog systems are built

 

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Mollymews said:

yes.  I get why Linden need this proposed function llOpenFloater for their own/LDPW purposes. New resident onboarding, Linden grid-wide experiences, Bellissaria, etc. And if I was a Linden/LDPW person then I would also want some javascript capability with this. Which would be perfectly fine to have as a Linden/LDPW person as Linden have an internal quality control process for this

i think that is still not to late for llHud to be storyboarded. As the intended audience for this are residents, and being a rich version of llDialog then there is no need to limit its use to any type of Experience Key. As when not then it can be used grid-wide and will soon supplant the current (often tedious) ways that HUDs and Dialog systems are built

 

 

Right, there is definitely a need for buildable CSS/userforms/HTML by script as well as a scriptable UI.

Either would be a huge project, though, one LL won't invest in for the sake of the new user experience at this time.

Opening a floater and loading a webpage is the easiest/soonest way to get results.

[Coffee Pancake]

25 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Opening a floater and loading a webpage is the easiest/soonest way to get results.

It's a misunderstood problem.

New user retention isn't terrible because people can't figure SL basics out (or aren't willing to try), it's terrible because the entire premise is flawed. Onboarding isn't about teaching people how to follow a path and talk to a parrot, it's about creating and managing expectations. 

Pick up any video game and give it 30 minutes. The user will have no idea how complex or detailed the mechanics are, how deep the rabbit hole goes, but will have decided if they're going to enjoy playing it (and at no point will they have been presented with a webpage).

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It's a misunderstood problem.

New user retention isn't terrible because people can't figure SL basics out (or aren't willing to try), it's terrible because the entire premise is flawed. Onboarding isn't about teaching people how to follow a path and talk to a parrot, it's about creating and managing expectations. 

Pick up any video game and give it 30 minutes. The user will have no idea how complex or detailed the mechanics are, how deep the rabbit hole goes, but will have decided if they're going to enjoy playing it (and at no point will they have been presented with a webpage).

 

Indeed. My use of "results" certainly didn't mean on the user's end, but on the provider's end, heh.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

5 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i think tho that an ability to surface a HTML asset within the floater would be great. The HTML allowing navigation within the page, and links to destinations within the Second Life domain - landmarks and marketplace being the main ones.  And images that are already within the domain, - named images in object contents or uuid.

(Video is problematic as Linden don't have the capacity to host resident-generated video at this time, so best to set this aside for now)

and callback capability. So that a HTML control can raise a listen event in the LSL script similar to llDialog. The string returned being: "NameOfControl, application data" [add: the call back event doesn't close the floater like llDialog does. It remains open till explictly closed by the user or from within the script ]

Agreed, I can think of several good uses for this, interactive fiction for a start. The only complication I see is that if you want to implement fully interactive huds with it, the HTML is going to have to handle image-maps, otherwise there's going to be some messy to-and-fro between the floater and a texture with llDetectedTouchUV

5 hours ago, Mollymews said:

i don't mean to be critical but sometimes when Linden think about making these kinds of things then sometimes the thought process is driven by how they and the LDPW will use it. And when Linden ask for resident feedback then that feedback can be overly-alarmist sometimes when it doesn't need to be, when look at it more from a every day resident users pov 

If only they'd asked us way back in 2010 if Viewer2 was a good idea  I actually feel quite soryy for LL right now, we've banned them from playing with their own toys.