Team Firestorm Holds Public Meeting

By Bixyl Shuftan

On Saturday August 10 at Noon SL time, Jessica Lyon and others of Team Firestorm held a public meeting concerning developments with their viewer. Staff included, the meeting was attended by close to 80 residents. Jessica talked about the CHat User Interface or CHUI, and that putting it into the Firestorm Viewer was taking some work, "Linden Lab put a lot of stuff in" with code that conflicts some with Firestorm's own programing. Fixing it was proving to be something of a "nightmare" with "broken" codes.

Of Linden Lab's Project Sunshine, Jessica thought it was going smoother than she believed it would. She had earlier predicted that it would take three rollouts before the first part of it could get going, and the Lab had gotten it right on the first try. She told the audience Project Sunshine and it's server-side baking currently covered about 20% of the Grid.

Jessica and others in the staff, such as Tonya Souther, talked about other issues, such as the "chiclets," or mini pictures on the Linden and Firestorm viewers, Jessica commenting, "We've been trying to kill chiclets for ages." Whirly Fizzle stated in chat, "we have chiclets as optional for the next release." Of the next Firestorm update, Jessica promised it would be a major one.

For those who were more than a little critical of Team Firestorm's work, and it's discontinuing work on the old Phoenix Viewer, Jessica reminded that they were a group of volunteers working for free, and telling them what to do was a bit like "herding cats." This got some chuckles as Jessica'a avatar is a neck catgirl with ears and a tail, and teammate Tonya Souther a furry tigergirl. There were also reminders about filing JIRAs, "seriously, file a JIRA issue and explain as concisely as you can what the problem is and what you want to see changed and if we need more clarification, you'll be asked."

Someone also brought up the old Emerald Viewer, and there was a short explanation to newcomers that Jessica and others on Team Firestorm were once part of the team behind that old popular 3rd party viewer before some "drama" with Linden Lab, and they left to form Team Phoenix.

The Firestorm Viewer is the most popular among supported third party viewers. Except possibly for the old Phoenix Viewer which it developed but no longer supports, no other Second Life viewer is as popular.

The Phoenix blog is on http://www.firestormviewer.org/. Tonya Souther, who leads the Mac development team, has her own blog at: http://secondden.blogspot.com/.


Bixyl Shuftan

Eye On The Blog: "Clear Pricing" For Land Services And The New Communications Hub

In the Linden blog, there are two recent entries for April. The first deals with services for private regions.

If you have a private region in Second Life, there are several special services you might occasionally need, like region moves and name changes. The charges for these services depends on the number of private regions you have, and to make it easier for all of our customers to understand the fee structure, we now have laid it out in this chart in the Knowledge Base:

The second blog update deals with the new Communications Hub, or Communications Hub User Interface aka CHUI as the Lab calls it. In an update, it was made part of the main viewer. It rearranges some features, as well as adding a few new ones. Among the changes, "Busy" becomes "Do Not Disturb," and the user is notifed of all IMs made once it's turned off. Local chat could be put on the same window of one's list of IMs.



DrFran Babcock reviewed the CHUI while it was being tested on a beta viewer last month (article March 4). While she liked it, she noted the majority of other testers didn't like it as well as the old interface. Checking the official forums, there were several threads on the subject, the longest one Here. Once again, the complaints outnumber those who like it, one person saying they were switching to the Firestorm viewer because of it. Complaints that yours truly has heard of the most are of bugs that interfere with one's Second Life experience, including crashing just after starting, freezes and crashes when IMing someone,  or just more frequent freezes and crashes altogether. Fortunetly, I have the Cool VL viewer to use, which has been starting up faster than the official one.

Bixyl Shuftan

EOTB: Linden Labs "Update on Recent Improvements"

At the close of February, Linden Labs posted on their blog a list of improvements they felt they made on the Grid recently, "We have recently released fixes that improve the user experience and performance. Here's a quick progress update on some of the projects we've been working on."

First on their list was the CHUI Beta Viewer, or Communications Hub User Interface. This project had several goals, such as bringing "all communication functions and conversation text into a single window," keeping IMs from being lost, and being able to view chat transcripts.

For more  information, DrFran Babcock reviewed the CHUI Viewer, and her article can be read here. There's also a thread available in the official forums.

Also on the list was Region Crossing, "We have made several improvements to region crossing that allow a smoother transition between regions, instead of the jerky transition some users experienced in the past." The Lab stated this feature was installed on the Grid on Jan 25, and claims "the number of reported teleport failures has dropped by 91%."

An announcement by RacerX Gullwing about this month's upcoming Cross-Sim Giant Snail Race mentioned the region crossing improvements. RacerX stated when an avatar is on a sim, information comes in not just about the region it's on but also the four adjacent ones. So when one enters a new sim, the information's already partially downloaded. RacerX felt this feature would save quite a few headaches for the cross-sim races.

Also, there was "a new version of Marketplace" released on Feb 5, "which adds new emails and provides the ability to opt out of each type of email. This will allow Merchants and Shoppers to be better informed about Marketplace activity," in addition to improving the reliability of email deliveries. Finally, an improvement aimed at Macintosh users: the Cocoa Project Viewer. It now has updates "to streamline development and improve viewer performance." It is available for download in the SL Wiki "Alternate Viewers" page. This viewer is not available for PCs.

The Lab promised further improvements soon, including a viewer made for content creators in mind.

The New CHUI – Chat Hub User Interface

By DrFran Babcock

Oh boy! I just happened to be in world when the notification for Maestro Linden’s Office Hours was announced in one of my group chats. Luckily, I remembered that they take place on the Beta Grid, so I logged in there, and ran to the meeting place. I hopped on a treadmill that was left there conveniently and settled in to see what was new in the Second Life Server. In all honesty, I rarely understand half of what the brainy folks there are talking about, but it is the place to be if you want to learn about new features that are being rolled out in the upcoming viewers.

 I had heard the term CHUI on some Second Life blogs, but didn’t know what it was, beyond thinking maybe it was something to eat (bad joke). However, Maestro, and in turn, Monty Linden explained that the Chat Hube User Interface was being unveiled in the Beta Viewer, and would become Prime Time if it checked out without too many bugs. I was excited to hear this news. The communications has always been a bit wonky on the viewer, and I was hoping that it would fix things up. Gone are the little “chiclets” on the top right that I was just getting used to. Instead, there is an all-in-one-place center for communication tasks and needs. Three areas have been affected by this change: The chat (Conversation Window), Friends List, and your Preferences.

Everything related to interacting in Second Life is now found in this window. It is so much easier to see when a group or individual chat is going on because the name flashes in a bright orange. (see the picture) What’s really nice is that everything is logged, and you can easily see what you have missed. All member of each group appear on a drop down underneath each group. You can resize the window, and hide or show the members, and conversations. Even cooler, you can look at complete chat transcripts within the viewer without going to your desktop.
I can’t tell you how many IMs and Group Messages I have lost since the viewer changed from Viewer 1. I think it’s nice that Linden Lab is listening to feedback from users.

In addition, local chat is docked in this window, and those of you who prefer local chat in a different spot on your screen can quickly detach it and move it away, or pop it back in there by clicking on Bring it Back in the window!

PREFERENCES

Perhaps the biggest change here is that instead of busy, there is now a Do Not Disturb option. You will not lose anything, because once you leave Do Not Busy you will receive all IMs, notices, and inventory that was held while you were busy.
You can determine the level of importance of IMs and messages in the Chat Section of Preferences, too.

FRIENDS LIST

The buttons are now moved to the top for easier access. A block button is conveniently located for those pesky griefers. You can also access the chat logs of people on your friends list from the list itself. Quite a handy feature when you want to remember the name of a store or find a landmark given to you by a friend.

If you want to try the new features, go to the Second Life Webpage and download the Beta Viewer. When I was at the Office Hours most folks were saying that they didn’t like the new CHUI. I do like it so far, and I am of the opinion that some people just don’t like change. Change for the better is always good change. Each person has their own beliefs about what’s good and bad, but I have to try for myself to know. I hope you will try it as well, and let me know what you think.

See Torley’s Video on the new tools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8IUxCMyElU&feature=player_embedded

 

 

 

DrFran Babcock