Warning re Beta Viewer

[Rose Springvale]

Many of us depend on chat logs to keep our notes of conversations we have in open chat in SL. If you have logged into the Beta Viewer for even a moment, your setting for Chat logs will have been changed to no logging. This has happened to at least three people I know who depend on them for interviews, research notes, etc, so if you do also, go recheck the box in your preferences!

[Delia Lake]

I did note that. A few other strange things in Beta Viewer. When I log in I'm wearing not the outfit in which I logged out, but a previous outfit. And more disturbing, I couldn't log in for a couple of days so my IM's got capped which is always annoying, but the bad thing is that the objects that I'd paid for and were given to me and should have appeared in my inventory were lost with no trace. They were not in regular, not in Lost & Found, not in Trash.

[Sonja Strom]

I also was wearing clothes from two outfits ago. I haven't bought anything while in the new viewer, but other friends have told me about these same inventory issues.

I have had the experience that when I returned to the old viewer I was a white cloud.

[Sylvia]

I think the new viewer is horrible, so I don't use it but as a further warning ...

Two different friends of mine lost absolutely huge amounts of their inventory (and all their client settings), when they uninstalled the 2.0 viewer.

Unless you have to, I recommend not uninstalling it if you have in fact installed it on your computer. They were both on windows so I'm not sure it applies to the Mac version, but be warned!

[Patroklus Murakami]

Guess I must be one of the few people who likes the new viewer then

It *is* a beta so it is a 'use at your own risk' affair. I like the ability to rez webpages inworld, I think this will transform SL and be very helpful for the CDS (we can put the Portal inworld; we can make finding businesses easy; we can set up inworld newspapers; we can make buying land easier....)

I find the fact that all sorts of things are in different places a tad annoying but I'm sure I'll get used to it!

[Sudane Erato]

Yeah, I like it too, and I was one of the Beta testers when it was MUCH worse!

I cannot live without Outfits! And the Favorites bar replaces several scripts that I had running. And I think handling of multiple IMs is much improved.

I have not lost anything in Inventory. But maybe I have... just don't know. A continuing bug, which I had reported to them, was that the Inventory sort order which you set up does not persist between sessions, which is very annoying. But I can say with certainty that they've escalated that one, and I expect it to be fixed soon.

Also, don't try to compose notecards in this one. Trying to do so is an exercise in frustration. But they'll get it...

The really serious issues are overall design, layout, opaque blocking of the screen, etc. Much of this concept that they've imposed on us I'm afraid we'll have to live with, if we use the standard viewer. But I also think that, increasingly, we'll be offered more options by the 3rd party developers. Emerald is incredibly popular, and when the 3rd party people start putting out viewers based on v.2, we'll have a lot more choices.

Sudane.............................

[Sylvia]

Well everyone is different and about 40% of SL users like it apparently, so to each their own I suppose.

My biggest personal peves with it are that you cannot play full-screen (I almost *always* play full-screen because I like the immersion), the addition of Flash (which brings my super computer to a complete halt), and the splitting of the community it will almost certainly engender. For instance, if we put out a portal on a prim, only those that use the 2.0 client can see it. If you use the new clothing layers, only those with the 2.0 client will see you correctly.

I could list other things like the limited profiles (another thing I use every day all day), the deprecated movement and camera controls (my number one way of getting around and seeing stuff), the inclusion of things on the task bar that I don't use and can't remove etc., but I will try to be positive and say that it is definitely easier to use for anyone who isn't a builder.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Sylvia, at the end of the day, all those questions will be moot anyway. When LL launches SL 2.1 (due in summer), support for the 1.X series of viewers will be dropped anyway. So the "split" you mention will last some 4 months, or 6 at most. The quicker people realise that, the more they'll be using 2.0, and the closer the gap between the two groups will be.

And sure, it's a Beta version, there are plenty of bugs to be fixed, and hopefully some performance issues to improve as well. Liking the UI or disliking it... it's irrelevant. I never liked the UI from 1.X. 2.X is at least different enough to dislike it in different ways

[Sylvia]

Hi Gwyn

I realise that Emerald and others will be basng their new versions off of the 2.0 viewer, so the "split" in regards capabilities to see web pays and so on will dissapear. You are certainly right about that problem gong away.

I disagree that the UI is irrelevant though. I wish when people were talking about the viewer and whether they like it or not that they would separate issues of features from issues about the UI. having made the same mistake myself I can see how confusing it is to the whole argument.

Personally what i'm hoping for is that the folks behind emerald see this and leave the UI alone while simply adding the same capabilities. The 2.0 UI is simply impossible for me. It makes building so difficult that it's almost not worth trying and gives me motion sickness after only a short time using it

Several of us had a fun time testing out the media capabilities in the plats over the weekend when Pat put the eurovision contest on a prim, but if that UI is all that's available (I don't think it will be), then I'd have to seriously reconsider playing SL at all in anything other than a casual way.

Almost every single thing in the old UI that I use regularly has been removed
or deprecated in the new UI. It's hard to overstate how bad that is and how annoying to the players that need the features the removal was.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Hehe Sylvia... I cannot argue with that. I'm sure that it is impossible to design a single UI that pleases everybody, and SL 2.0 is definitely not something made to please all...

As a matter of fact, I had high hopes that Imprudence went ahead and implemented their vision of what an UI should look like — this was one of the pillars of that project, make a radically different UI (and fix inventory!!). Sadly, the team behind that is very small, and they are barely managing to keep up with keeping the features up to date... but my point was, if we had a lot of completely different UIs to choose from, people would be just using the one they liked best. The problem is that we're stuck with an UI designed in 2002 which has become "familiar" over the years. It's hard to imagine anything different. And that's also a reason why all third-party viewers are mostly stuck with it.

For instance, I don't use Windows, but I rather liked the simplicity of Windows XP. Vista and Win 7 are way too confusing for someone who just uses that very occasionally. I'm used to Mac OS X, which in a decade, has not changed UIs at all. The last time it changed, with Mac OS X 10.0, it was a huge mess, and for years Mac old-timers grumbled and complained and refused to use the "new" UI, because they preferred the old one, which had things that even after a decade haven't been implemented yet (and very likely will never be). It's very hard to argue about the "best" UI. Something designed in 2002, even if outdated and full of bugs and inconsistencies, might be "best" if it's something that everybody is so familiar with that it becomes second nature; specially if the "redesign" just introduced new bugs, new inconsistencies, and possibly some lack of functionality...

So, no, I won't argue

[Claude Desmoulins]

I read that the 2.x viewer is now the default. Have they ironed out the bugs yet? I'm reluctant to migrate until I can be reasonably sure I won't lose inventory.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

No, there are still bugs And I'm sure there will continue to be many bugs still, although I would say they now fall in the category of "bothering" and not "crippling" any longer...

[Timo Gufler]

Maybe many consider me as a heretic, but I find the new viewer very nice. The user interface of the 1.x branch had so much feeling of 90's with all those popping dialogs and dialog micro-management. Sure, there have been a lot of rearrangement of things, but isn't that just challenging? Still I miss some nice features from the Emerald Viewer, like spell-checker and easily changeable drawing distance. As a Linux user mostly I am also very pleased to notice, that 2.0 viewer is the first one, which has finally a working voice input with PulseAudio subsystem...

Did you already notice, that 2.0 seem to expect SL profile photos to have 1:1 (square) ratio instead of 4:3?

p.s. Something like the Favorites bar is really something many have missed for a long time. Now it's finally there!

[Tor Karlsvalt]

I agree Timo. I generally like 2.0. I don't think there is any danger in loosing inventory if you stick to 2.0 as your only viewer. I understand that that the problems occur when an AV is switching between viewers. Most likely this is between Emerald and 2.0. So if you switch, don't switch back and forth.

[Delia Lake]

I lost inventory the very first time I used 2.0. I had the winning bid on some artwork--for MoCA--at the Dreams auction. I know that the artwork was sent to me because it showed up in my email, but it never showed up anywhere in my inventory. I looked everywhere, even in lost and found and trash. not there.