[Flickr Pic of the Day]

Mh, the fact that these comments show up in "Recent Blog activity" is, if not an outright bug, certainly a negative side effect of this otherwise AWESOME change. Nice to see comments enabled again

[Recent Improvements to SL Search]

Yes, this is imho an even greater problem. As much as I'm opposed to hardcoding stuff into the viewer, the "search as a website" just doesn't work. There's no reason to fire up the whole browser framework (mozlib?) every time search is opened. In the end, looks aren't as important as speed and functionality. 

PS: Why is everybody so shocked and whiny about LL giving some people benefits? It's their platform, they are a company, not an elected government (not even a charity or nongovernmental organisation) so they can of course give whoever they feel like whatever benefit they feel like. I don't think it's good for long term economic viability of the platform but, hey, that's LL's Problem

[Check here if you want more options]

The attitude shown in the post is simply arrogant.

If you (LL) had proven to be capable of creating a good Viewer, I wouldn't be saying this
BUT as long as you still cannot manage to compete against your own old 1.x Viewer and far less against the TPVs, you should probably not assume to know anything about what your users want.

To be able to get rid of options means to spend a lot of time and a lot of money on reserach and good UI Design. Something that Apple tends to get right most of the time and something that you have proven to be horrible at.

Deliver a UI and Viewer Layout that is superior to 1.x for the vast majority of people and I think the need for options will go down substantially.
Continue with this chaotic way of managing the UI and you'll continue to see TPVs with lots and lots of options to remain popular.

Edit: On an unrelated note, I personally use 2.x and think it has introduced some amazing changes "under the hood" - it's just the UI that's "less than perfect"