Adam Spark

August 24, 2011

Another reason to log out of the grid! (to work on meshes in Blender.) Good strategy LL!

NOT.

When will in-world tools be innovated?

When will LL realize that making V1 viewers useless will lose customers rather than push them to V2 viewers (this is coming from a V2 user too)?

Mesh will either struggle to be a part of SL's fabric like sculpts (they are there but far outweighed by regular prim builds) because of the requirement of other software, or they will make half the grid look like junk to older viewer users and send those users elsewhere.

And by elsewhere I mean away from SL. Not to V2.

Mesh = a non-story at best until we can create it in-world. Bringing creation outside of SL is killing the community further than has been done already.

Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived · February 13, 2011

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-24573

When can we expect the favorites on login feature to actually work?

Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived · February 11, 2011

https://my.secondlife.com/adam.spark

Anyone else see absolutely nothing on this page but groups and picks?

No profile pic. No details about me. Just the above and my SL birthdate. Unreal.

Edit: favorites are not shown on login, either. Still.

Typical.

Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived · February 11, 2011

You cant drag inventory, but you can use the profile to share inventory. In the actions drop down, choosing share will open up an IM window in-world to drag inventory to.

And in response to another post by somebody else, you can view more than 3 groups, but you do have to click "more" next to the groups header. Same goes for picks.

Just as many functions.. but noticebly less intuitive.

Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived · February 11, 2011

1) Default setting is Javascript and Cookies enabled, leaving users wide open to the Facebook and Twitter snoopware on the web based profiles.

2) Media, Music and Voice default to on, leaving you wide open to having your IP address snagged by the IP snoopers out there.

3) I hoped to use this long enough to change my profile privacy settings, but am getting some sort of Web Kit fail error and my Profile won't open. How do I change those settings outside this viewer, please?

I'm getting really tired of having to fight so hard to maintain a shred of privacy and am losing interest. If that's the desired effect, I guess you win.

If you changed the default setting of cookies from enabled to disabled, profiles won't work. Lovely, huh? Go to your profile in your browser to update it there. http://my.secondlife.com/casey.pelous

February 9, 2011

It’s also important to note that we are going to remove the “voting”  feature in JIRA in one month. Today, we do not use voting to triage or  to make product decisions and the last thing that we want to do is set  false expectations. So, when you are interested in what action we will  take on a particular JIRA, use the JIRA “Watch” feature so that you will  be  immediately updated in email when there are new comments on that  particular JIRA issue. We will continue to use the number of Watchers as  an indication of the level of interest.

You're going to use "watch" instead of "vote" as an indication of interest? So, if I want to indicate to you my wish that a fix or feature on the jira gets implemented, I must accept the fact that all activity on the jira in question will be sent to my email?

I appreciate that LL is FINALLY admitting that voting for an issue was never useful because you don't use it (we'd probably have 500 group slots by now if you did, so the truth was pretty obvious). But come on. You're getting rid of the wrong gauge. Vote is more widely used for a reason. And as mentioned, you will undoubtedly see a huge increase in watchers, meaning many more emails sent by your servers. Smarten up.

You will CONTINUE to use the number of watchers as an indication of interest? CONTINUE? I thought you didn't use these things? Or did you only not use the vote system, the one more widely used by us?

Finally - if even one of these user groups is Twitter-only, you are slapping the Second Life platform and all of its non-tweeting residents in the face. Just sayin.

January 29, 2011

I would love if at least the Lindens could tell us the meaning of abbreviations used.

HBO has no meaning to me at all I know I could look it up but I would rather be able to read the blog posts right away

HBO is the name of a TV channel. It is short for Home Box Office, but HBO is the name used, much like NBC.

January 20, 2011

Anyone else seeing no change when checking off show favorites on login? Not getting them in the drop-down.

January 20, 2011

Wow. Nice to see some REAL improvements for a change.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon.

I have both boxes checked and I am NOT seeing my favorites list as login options.

January 20, 2011

Ugg. WHY O WHY do we have to click MORE constantly to see our information??? Extremely frustrating.

Just because a group starts with an A it is always visible by default but our important groups are after several MORE button clicks? GRRR.

And the layout is ugly too.

Samantha

January 14, 2011

If you ran an SL business and were ever away from your computer you would understand why mobile group invites are important. The group invitation UI is broken and hopeless. Providing it on the web would be better for everyone and may be easier and more cost effective than fixing the client.

@Aquarius: I ran a business for two years in here, up until almost exactly two years ago.

Mobile SL wasn't even heard of back then. Being able to do group updates via your mobile device will definately be a big boost, and it belongs on the drawing board, but I would think that it would be more logical to get the desktop client working first. Thats all I'm saying.

January 14, 2011

The improvements in sim crossings are welcome (even with the deceptive graph axis), but we are still sticking to the same outdated notion of group membership and virtually unusable UI for inviting people to groups.

Once again, here is my proposal:

a group owner defines people as having PERMISSION to be in the group
if the group owner revokes the permission, the person is ejected and can no longer rejoin
with permission to be a member, the person can join and leave and rejoin whenever they want...
...and decide whether they want to be in group chat for a given group
...the limit on the number of group chats you can have active at a given time can be varied by Linden Lab without affecting the number of groups you are allowed to be a member of
the group owner can give and revoke group membership permission and change roles from a website as well as inworld. In fact I'd take website instead of inworld.
fix the UI to work with the minimum number of steps and in the same way irrespective of the person's online / offline status and membership of your friends list.

Here once again are the issues with the current group invite UI:

Expected: If I click on an avatar name not in my friends list and click through to invite to group, I should be able to invite the avatar to the group WITHOUT RETYPING THEIR NAME
Actual: I have to retype their name every time

Expected: I can copy and paste their name into the group inviter UI
Actual: When the group inviter UI opens YOU CLOSE THE IM WINDOW
Actual: If you reopen the window or try to copy the name before inviting, its much harder than it used to be (i.e. in V1.23) to select the name from the IM window and you may get the timestamp as well

Expected: the person succeeds in joining the group
Actual: nearly every time the person fails to join the group and I have to go through the whole rigmarole again.

Expected: I can see who has an outstanding non-accepted invitation to my group
Actual: I can't.

Expected: If I accidentally mistype a name on a group invite and send it, I can rescind the group invite before the person accepts
Actual: I can't.

Expected: I can send a group invite using a mobile client
Actual: FAIL. It takes too long for the group info to load over wireless - for example, tried for 20 minutes, did not succeed.

Invite me to a group FJ!!! Invite me to a group Amanda!!! Using your iPhone from an airport!

Please fix this.

So you want groups to be invite-only? No open memberships? That won't go over well, trust me.

As for LL setting an arbitrary limit on open group chats.. COME ON. You want LL to start telling us how much chatting we can do?

Not sure why you have to type a name twice to invite. Are you trying to find them in search first or something? Go into group profile, click invite to open up the people chooser, select the search tab, and look them up once.

Using a mobile client to access SL is fairly new and limited. With all the issues that SL on a desktop has, you expect SL on a mobile to be a priority?

December 26, 2010

You seem to have a lot of faith in a company that hasn't fixed even a rough majority of the serverside problems they've had for the past 7+ years, and who most graciously said f*ck the community, eat some viewer 2 and don't bother us for support even if you can prove it's our fault and it's costing you money. Besides, now that we've got someone from EA involved in this, all we need is an SOE employee to truly show where support and the future of SL is heading.

How do I seem to be having faith? By saying shrink-wrapping SL is something that I don't think will work? By saying that maybe downloadable plug-ins for viewer (an idea I got from other residents suggesting it) MIGHT work (but I doubt it)?

You mentioned third-party viewers. Thats something entirely different from what I'm talking about. I pointed that out and suddenly you can assume I have a lot of faith in the lab.

HUH?

I have no expectations as to what the lab will do, good or bad. They've done a lot of both in the 4 years I've been here.

December 26, 2010

They already do that... they're called third party viewers =P

Those are full viewers and not supplied by LL.

I'm talking about downloading a basic viewer and downloading plug-ins to add preferences as you need them.

December 26, 2010

Perhaps we'll finally see LL implement shrink-wrapped starter kits and expansion packs for SL!

I won't say it won't work because I'm not one to sound like I know stuff I don't... but I'll be nothing short of shocked if there is even remote success in shrink-wrapping any portion of SL.

Plug-ins for the viewer might work (although I still have my doubts), giving users preferences that they don't get with the main viewer download, but I don't see them as being something people would like to go out and buy. A better idea would be to make those downloadable.

December 23, 2010

Great, so he's a new guy. We're probably screwed, since I doubt he has had a chance to try out the second life viewer when it was half decent (1.x). Same goes for xstreetsl.

Nothing indicates he is only just discovering SL, and 1.x viewers are still available and widely used (including the lab's own viewer 1.23.5).

December 23, 2010

Game experience will do good. SL isn't a game, but you're only going to have experience in what SL is all about if you are already in SL. Experience in online gaming such as the sims is the closest thing available right now. There are other true virtual worlds out there, but very few, and most are in infancy stages. They would not look nearly as impressive on a resume as being an exec at EA does.

If I were to offer some advice to Rod... and I sincerly hope he reads this...

Let the community drive growth. Have the lab and the SL community advertise what SL is to people. Don't try to put all your focus into altering the system so that more people will be accustomed to it within minutes of logging in. The learning curve is a little too large, but there are better approaches to that problem than dropping a revamped "new user experience" on everyone.

There will always be a crucial need for a qualified individual to drive the ship, but I really miss the days when the lab truly engaged its residents into being a part of the platform's growth.

Help us help you.

BRING BACK THE MENTOR PROGRAM!!!!!!!!

December 7, 2010

Thanks for another great video!

Definately an improvement.. although after 4 years in SL it still boggles my mind why the advanced menu isn't always on. Hiding it doesn't give you any more room for viewing or placing anything. You could place menus all along that bar and it wouldn't make an ounce of viewing difference. It just seems like an annoyance having to turn on something that turning off carries no benefit (unless im missing something?)

Nice to see multiple viewers go from an operating system tweak to a viewer preference!

December 6, 2010

I could never go back to that old-fashioned pre-V2 interface now. If you made me, I would seriously have to consider leaving SL. I think you're right, the rate and extent of the V2 improvements are going to accelerate, and I'll be swapping between Kirsten's and V2 for the latest goodies.

I never could go back either, Chapeau. The one-click access that the favorites bar gives me, the ability to minimize notices and not have to go through group archives to retrieve them, the inventory links that make outfits so much easier, the ability to right-click on an inventory item and select share to share it via a resident chooser, the TP history, the nearby people tab in the sidebar... I could go on and on about the bits of V2 that I would despise losing. I don't consider the UI to be ideal, but I recognize that going back to the old one would kill more than a couple very good features.

I've been using Viewer 2 nearly exclusively since it first dropped in February. Yeah, there were several mistakes made initially. It was very difficult to attach inventory to a notice. That has since been rectified and I even like the fix slightly better than the 1.X setup. Search was horrid, and while it still is, its much better now that the live events calendar has been restored. I am quite comfortable with the sidebar (I only have it open when I need something. Otherwise its closed), but being able to detach the panels is an improvement they've made. One other stupid thing in the early days of V2 is you couldn't build on top of prims. That has long since been fixed.

Viewer 2 is a series of viewers, and viewer 2.4 is quite a different viewer from viewer 2.0. The series has come a long way and I think it will continue to do so. I kinda view 2.0 now as wiping the slate clean and building off of a completely new foundation. Its a work in progress and getting better all the time.

December 6, 2010

Adam Spark, time matters because as this goes on longer, LL puts more effort into viewer 2, and therefore make them less willing to discard all the effort they wasted on 2.x. They will be even less likely to admit that it was a mistake because of all the time, and money, invested into it.

"trying to undo many of the mistakes" would have been alot easier to do by simply tossing out viewer 2 at an early stage, rather than spending all this time trying to iron it out and still having something less useful than any 1.x based viewer.

I honestly do have hope that it might still happen, they might still go back to 1.x. I had hopes that a new leader would open their eyes.

It won't, and out of V2 will come something far greater than either one, in my opinion.

Of course, in my opinion, V2 is already greater than V1.

December 6, 2010

LL is STILL trying to develop viewer 2? The longer this goes on, the harder it's going to be for them to trash it and go back to 1.x where their users are, and start making a usable viewer.

Surely they're not just going to keep working on 2.x, right? If they eventually lock out 1.x viewers, LL would be kicking a pretty large amount of people out of Second Life. I don't see a profit in that.

They are trying to undo many of the mistakes they made in the original development. "2" is just a number. Viewer 2.4 is a far better viewer than Viewer 2.0 was. And I'm sure 2.5 will be even better.

As for it becoming difficult to go back... you really thought there was, at any time, a snowball's chance in hell that that was going to happen? It was never going to happen, so how difficult they've made it is irrelevant. And besides that, how does time make it more difficult? As long as the code is written, the company can put it out at any time.

Locking out 1.x will be no reason to leave. Linden Lab is not the only group creating viewers for Second Life. Even LL provides links to viewers that are nothing like Viewer 2.

December 6, 2010

Software development process is actually quite transparent right now, if one wants to look at it.

Oh, also it's Linden Lab - not Linden Labs. Funny how people can't even write it correctly.

It was pretty transparent when the development of 2.0 was outsourced too. Whats your point?

Never made a typo, Mr. Perfect?

December 4, 2010

I can't believe this was not highlighted in the blog post!

One of the biggest design flaws, dating back to the original Viewer 2.0 beta in February, has finally been fixed in V2.4 beta 1. No more jumping around and flying into avatars when trying to type because you needed to put focus on the chat bar manually every time you clicked off of it. This was so bad it became laughable.

FINALLY. Thank you Linden Labs. Now stop outsourcing software development (or at least put it through a rigorous "SL usability" filter, like it seems you've been doing the last several months, BEFORE putting it in the hands of users).

And thank you Winter for beating me to the punch and highlighting this overdue fix!

November 18, 2010

PG and General are one in the same. You'll see General in Viewer 2.

November 18, 2010

Thank GOD there is a checkbox for showing display names (as opposed to simply being able to see usernames in tags, we can now finally eradicate seeing display names in IM's, chat and friends lists). Unchecked within the first minute.

Speaks volumes about how sad an implementation this is though. Now people who want to use a display name can do so, but it will only be seen by those who don't disable them. So get used to continuing to be referred to by your username in possibly many cases.

Would it be so hard to reinstate (if it is closed) and promote the vanity name program that was already in place? Maybe even slash prices to make it affordable (you guys might make more money through many more purchase orders with a price slash and some advertising)? For those unaware, and sadly that is probably many of you, Linden Labs already had a program in place where you could order a vanity name for $50 USD. A new username for your existing account. It was simple. It was already in place. Now we get this. I don't get it.

Bring back the vanity name program. Slash prices significantly and advertise the heck out of it. Let people pick a last name with no restrictions. There. Done. No changing the landscape by altering the name format. No confusion from having three name formats. No having to take a second peek to ensure we are dealing with who we think we are. No getting an online notification and going "whos that?". No extra screen clutter by adding usernames to display names in tags. No new name users getting shut out of everyone seeing their new name because people like me disabled the feature.

Am I making way too much sense, LL?

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