Where is 'Highlight Transparent'

[Prokofy Neva]

In the latest version of the viewer with PBR.

Second Life Release 7.1.2.7215179142 (64bit)

It's not where it used to be under "Advanced" and "Highlight and Visibility"

If it "doesn't work that way any more" because "something something", how do you turn a clear prim or mesh red so you can see it?

[Love Zhaoying]

Ctrl+Alt+T

This is the same shortcut as always. I've used that for many years so didn't know the menu changed.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Istelathis]

I also see it under the build options

Edited December 24, 2023 by Istelathis

[Prokofy Neva]

I don't  want to use keyboard short-cuts, they are annoying and often are more steps.

I want a drop-down menu.

It used to be under Advanced/Highlight and Visibility, where, you know, it belonged, logically.

Then someone who is a specialist in UI no doubt moved it because somethingsomething.

I get all that.

So where is it? Yeah, I tried under Build and kept looking under Build and not finding it.

But that's because you had to "just know" that it is now under Build/Options.

I read the liner notes for every patch. Why don't they inform you there "We moved highlight/transparent from Advanced to Build" or "it's only under Build now, where you didn't know it was," etc.

They don't really plan for people who build INWORLD instead of in Blender.

That's what this is about.

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

With PBR, Build / Options is more important than before, for the two Reflection Probe options if nothing else.

It's debatable what belongs out in the open, under Build which is showing in everybody's viewer, and what instead belongs under the Advanced and Develop menus that have to be enabled in Preferences.

My hunch is that most people who have Advanced and Develop menus showing access Highlight Transparent with Ctrl-Alt-T because it's always been somewhat of-a-piece with Shift-Ctrl-Alt-T.*

____________
* This doesn't work for me in Firestorm, but maybe that's just me(?). It's no loss in my case because the whole Firestorm UI is utterly beyond my patience; every option and readout makes me grip my mouse and curse "why? why is this here? why is this anywhere?" The fact it's everybody's favorite tells me that this Second Life thing is no place for me after all.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Qie Niangao

[Ardy Lay]

Handy dandy "Search Menus" tool.  

[NiranV Dean]

On 12/24/2023 at 8:19 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

I don't  want to use keyboard short-cuts, they are annoying and often are more steps.

Excuse me what?

How are shortcuts annoying? You don't have to use them, they are completely optional.

How are shortcuts more steps? The whole point of a shortcut is that you can directly access a function at any time, there is only a single step.

Also CTRL + Alt + T is THE common Second Life basic shortcut anyone should know. It's like the global Copy (CTRL + C) and Paste (CTRL + V) and Search (CTRL + F) functions. These are things absolutely everyone must know. They are like knowing how to put one foot in front of the other to walk.

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

Excuse me what?

How are shortcuts annoying? You don't have to use them, they are completely optional.

How are shortcuts more steps? The whole point of a shortcut is that you can directly access a function at any time, there is only a single step.

Also CTRL + Alt + T is THE common Second Life basic shortcut anyone should know. It's like the global Copy (CTRL + C) and Paste (CTRL + V) and Search (CTRL + F) functions. These are things absolutely everyone must know. They are like knowing how to put one foot in front of the other to walk.

^^^ 100%. Plus, the same shortcut is used both to "show" and then to "hide" transparent objects.

It's not like there are two shortcuts to learn for this.

It's not like it has ever changed.

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Love Zhaoying]

13 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

Handy dandy "Search Menus" tool.  

TIL! Did not know the viewer had that (search gives shortcut results).

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

Excuse me what?

How are shortcuts annoying? You don't have to use them, they are completely optional.

How are shortcuts more steps? The whole point of a shortcut is that you can directly access a function at any time, there is only a single step.

Also CTRL + Alt + T is THE common Second Life basic shortcut anyone should know. It's like the global Copy (CTRL + C) and Paste (CTRL + V) and Search (CTRL + F) functions. These are things absolutely everyone must know. They are like knowing how to put one foot in front of the other to walk.

Excuse me? I'm not you.

They're annoying because they aren't a button with a label on it in human-readable language that you can click to get a result that matches that human term.

That you find something that says alt - F8 "useful" means nothing to me. I'm not a tech person; I don't care. I don't wish to develop an entire glossary or lexicon of terms that "mean a thing". I'd rather study literature and the terms *there* like Jouissance.

I never use ctr-alt-t. I pull down "highlight transparent" so I can see and understand what I'm doing. And that's my right. It doesn't mean I'm stupid; it just means I'm not you.

Ctr-c is ok as far as it goes and we've all been forced to use it. I will never, ever use ctr-f when I want to go to search AND pick the OTHER thing like "places" or "people" in one swoop.

They aren't things "everyone must know" because GUESS WHAT, the Linden techs, silly creatures that they are, still put human-readable normal words on their buttons. Good!

 

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

^^^ 100%. Plus, the same shortcut is used both to "show" and then to "hide" transparent objects.

It's not like there are two shortcuts to learn for this.

It's not like it has ever changed.

 

This is stupid, because it is contingent on people using shortcuts; agreeing to that system; finding that system useful and intuitive.

I DO NOT

AND THAT'S OK

That's why the UI still has REAL WORDS on it that do the thing DIRECTLY without surprises, or most of the time.

This is a good example of how techs make the world more brutal and stupid, even as they claim that we are stupid lol.

We're not. The Lindens changed the pull-down human-readable menu, used by many people. That YOU don't use it as a tech and like short-cuts means nothing.

 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/24/2023 at 6:13 AM, Qie Niangao said:

With PBR, Build / Options is more important than before, for the two Reflection Probe options if nothing else.

It's debatable what belongs out in the open, under Build which is showing in everybody's viewer, and what instead belongs under the Advanced and Develop menus that have to be enabled in Preferences.

My hunch is that most people who have Advanced and Develop menus showing access Highlight Transparent with Ctrl-Alt-T because it's always been somewhat of-a-piece with Shift-Ctrl-Alt-T.*

____________
* This doesn't work for me in Firestorm, but maybe that's just me(?). It's no loss in my case because the whole Firestorm UI is utterly beyond my patience; every option and readout makes me grip my mouse and curse "why? why is this here? why is this anywhere?" The fact it's everybody's favorite tells me that this Second Life thing is no place for me after all.

Yes, they monkeyed with this to put in PBR, and didn't think it through from the perspective of the normie, let alone the dummy.

I've accepted that things have to be in Advanced and Developed -- imagine that! -- and now they make those menus appear with one click, so it really is pretty simple.

Even people like me use Advanced and Developed because often that's where the Lindens stick things they are tired of, don't like, don't want to explain, when they front their new shinies. I get all that.

The shortcuts are not useable be me; I don't like them; I won't use them; I won't memorize them; if they are forced on me I may, but since this was once a drop-down menu with readable human words and not a code stand-in for real worlds, I object.

If you, as a more or less literature techie person, are infuriated by Firestorm, well, understand that at least one of the reasons I don't use FS is THAT.

 

[Qie Niangao]

Interacting with Reflection Probes is a thing that many folks will need to do when "building", just installing content and manipulating lighting in their locations; I fitted a reflection probe in part of my Belli houseboat just today in fact. So I think that Build menu is a sensible place to populate with object visibility controls like showing those probes, and highlighting transparent objects really behaves quite similarly.

That doesn't mean they should move controls around stealthily, without even a mention in the release notes. I can't guess the status of UI documentation but it should have been updated, and notifying users about those updates should be part of the software release process. Both Development and Documentation are stretched thin, and recent progress in feature roll-out is valuable, but… well, there's more than one way to incur "technical debt", and attention to process is an important technical investment.

No dispute: seeing a menu option uses recognition memory, with vastly better performance than recall memory, especially for less repeated information and less practiced behaviors.

Keyboard shortcuts may start out as recall, but they eventually become motor memory. I don't even think about Ctrl-L / Shift-Ctrl-L, not even to the point of associating "L" with "link". Same with Ctrl-Alt-T: in fact, I wouldn't have known the "T" stands for "transparent" (nor known to search for it with "highlight transparent"), rather thinking of it as a variant of showing "texture" information (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T).

But motor memory has its disadvantages. Overlearn shortcuts in MS Office applications, Emacs/ksh, Blender, etc, and they'll occasionally intrude as inopportune SL keystrokes too.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

This is stupid, because it is contingent on people using shortcuts; agreeing to that system; finding that system useful and intuitive.

I DO NOT

AND THAT'S OK

That's why the UI still has REAL WORDS on it that do the thing DIRECTLY without surprises, or most of the time.

This is a good example of how techs make the world more brutal and stupid, even as they claim that we are stupid lol.

We're not. The Lindens changed the pull-down human-readable menu, used by many people. That YOU don't use it as a tech and like short-cuts means nothing.

 

 

I don't disagree...since this was the only shortcut I committed to "muscle memory". I didn't even remember the "build" shortcut recently. But If I - like you - don't use or remember shortcuts, I can and do remember THIS one shortcut!

 

[Love Zhaoying]

15 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Keyboard shortcuts may start out as recall, but they eventually become motor memory.

Yep, my hands remembered this one but I had to look it up earlier.

[Love Zhaoying]

BTW, good news - the Mobile version doesn't seem to have any shortcuts so far.

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I don't disagree...since this was the only shortcut I committed to "muscle memory". I didn't even remember the "build" shortcut recently. But If I - like you - don't use or remember shortcuts, I can and do remember THIS one shortcut!

 

I fail to understand why I need to commit to "muscle memory" a series of unrelated symbols instead of READING a coherent WORD.

I'm not a monkey.

It's ok to have HIGHLIGHT TRANSPARENT to drop down. I see no objective reason why it was moved.

To say, "oh, but you're in build mode already" -- that's not the only use case for HIGHLIGHT. Sometimes you're trying to find a lost prim that is lost BECAUSE it is transparent.

Sometimes you are trying to PUT something on transparent and move it around or remove it from sight but you can't SEE it.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I fail to understand why I need to commit to "muscle memory" a series of unrelated symbols instead of READING a coherent WORD.

I'm not a monkey.

It's ok to have HIGHLIGHT TRANSPARENT to drop down. I see no objective reason why it was moved.

To say, "oh, but you're in build mode already" -- that's not the only use case for HIGHLIGHT. Sometimes you're trying to find a lost prim that is lost BECAUSE it is transparent.

Sometimes you are trying to PUT something on transparent and move it around or remove it from sight but you can't SEE it.

 

It's not a "need or should". It just happens naturally for most of us.

ETA: Forget I ever responded to your OP question. I get it, you don't use shortcut keys. No judgement is intended or implied.

Edited December 26, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[NiranV Dean]

On 12/25/2023 at 10:27 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

If you, as a more or less literature techie person, are infuriated by Firestorm, well, understand that at least one of the reasons I don't use FS is THAT.

Im very much infuriated by Firestorm because its made to dumb down people who still have mental capacities above or around average and handholds those that do not instead of teaching them to get better. The way FS spells out every obvious option as a sentence explaining what it does is so much worse than what LL does with their obvious "idiot proof" labels that assume you are a mental retard. This is what tooltips are for, when the option label explains the option in greater detail than the tooltip which at that point could just be "^this" or "what the label says", then something is wrong

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/27/2023 at 11:58 AM, NiranV Dean said:

Im very much infuriated by Firestorm because its made to dumb down people who still have mental capacities above or around average and handholds those that do not instead of teaching them to get better. The way FS spells out every obvious option as a sentence explaining what it does is so much worse than what LL does with their obvious "idiot proof" labels that assume you are a mental retard. This is what tooltips are for, when the option label explains the option in greater detail than the tooltip which at that point could just be "^this" or "what the label says", then something is wrong

Well, from what I gather, FS is "open source" and you could just code your own version of FS without the things that annoy you.

No?

"Tool tips" require you to hover "just saw" and it's just annoying.

I think you're just looking for things to pick a fight about, especially when you could just make your own home brew here. I can't and won't. So I want the SL Viewer to be workable and intuitive. I don't care what third-parties do. I'm not paying them. I want LL to make workable and intuitive viewers. There's a reason why LL hasn't just bought out "the most popular and most used viewer in SL." 

[Theresa Tennyson]

32 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Well, from what I gather, FS is "open source" and you could just code your own version of FS without the things that annoy you.

No?

HE. LITERALLY. DID. ALREADY.

It's called "Black Dragon."

[Love Zhaoying]

The viewer needs Clippy!