Windows as sidebars?

[Noel Loordes]

Currently I am continously having the chat-window open. At convenient sizes of the window this sadly means that my avatar will effectively be on the left side of the visible screen area.

Is there some viewer or a possibility for it in the default viewer that allows docking the chat as a sidebar? Think e.g. of GIMP in traditional multi-window vs the newer single-window mode.

 

+----------------+    +----+-----------+
|+---+   _       |    |    |     _     |
||Ch |  ( )      |    |Chat|    ( )    |
|| at|  /|\      |    |    |    /|\    |
|+---+  / \      |    |    |    / \    |
+----------------+    +----+-----------+-
     NOW                     WANTED

 

[Nova Convair]

We had that in LL's viewer 2.
The people liked it so much - LL didn't dare to put that in the next viewer.
Windows Vista had a sidebar too. You don't see that in all the following windows versions.

So if you are one of the few that likes sidebars - the cruel reality is: most people hate them! I don't expect to see a sidebar again in the next time.

[Perrie Juran]

 

What I do is tear off my active chats and dock them on the top of my screen.

Or move them as needed.

You can increase their transparency also over what I have.

[Noel Loordes]

Bottom line, there is not really a solution :-( 

@Perry: Your method is sadly hardly viable for the chat activity I typically see (too view lines), especially local chat. At least at font sizes that I can comfortably read. 

@Nova: I don't like sidebars either -- if they are non-optional. For the inventory for instance I'd never want a sidebar. For chat on the other hand... I'd sort of like the ability to dock selected windows. Programs which allow such typically allow making floaters into sidebars by drag-and-drop to the side. 

For now I guess transparency will suffice though. 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Noel Loordes wrote:

Bottom line, there is not really a solution :-( 

@Perry: Your method is sadly hardly viable for the chat activity I typically see (too view lines), especially local chat. At least at font sizes that I can comfortably read. 

@Nova: I don't like sidebars either -- if they are non-optional. For the inventory for instance I'd never want a sidebar. For chat on the other hand... I'd sort of like the ability to dock selected windows. Programs which allow such typically allow making floaters into sidebars by drag-and-drop to the side. 

For now I guess transparency will suffice though. 

---

I'm terrible about not book marking things so can't provide a link.

Someone (I think a Firestorm Dev) was working on a system where if you ran dual moniters you could drag things off to the other monitor.   A system like that could work on one screen.  Resize the Viewer window to your liking and then drag what you want to the side.  There may be a test viewer around you could play with.

You could open a feature request in the JIRA.  Though it's probably been requested before.  Linden Lab seems to have little interest in UI functionality.  They've left that to the TPV's to address.

[Ohjiro Watanabe]

You are thinking of DUI. http://www.firestormviewer.org/page/5/

No word on it since April.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ohjiro Watanabe wrote:

You are thinking of DUI. 

http://www.firestormviewer.org/page/5/

No word on it since April.

---

Thank you.

Noel could try contacting Nicky to find out the current state of this project.

Interesting how they refer to it as a 'holy grail.'

 

[irihapeti]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

---

 'holy grail.'

---

it is from a windowing pov. It have to do with how a OS windowing system works. Foreground and background windows/tasks

simplist example is when running SL. and then open another window say like your browser partially over the top. The SL program window moves to the back. That effects the SL window FPS bc now background task

if used OS windows for SL dialogs and windows (to drag on the desktop) then same thing will happen. The view will move to the background and go slower

is possible to code round this but... bc every OS has its own windowing system then is a major work

+

the dialogs and windows in SL arent actual OS windows. They are drawn by the SL program and not by the OS. Is why they cant be moved outside the draw rectangle. Bc they are drawn in the same code loop then the view FPS stays high

is pretty standard this approach to most every 3D animated interactive game/program

the holy grail is to work out how to get max FPS in a background task on multiple OS without having to basically rewrite each of the OS windowing systems yourself

[Ardy Lay]

tail -f C:\Users\Ardy\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\ardy_lay\*.txt

:matte-motes-big-grin: