Dear Lindens: Stop Being Assh*les.

If you haven’t heard by now, the Emerald Viewer has been defeated. Perhaps the greatest team effort to ever come from Second Life, and LL has pushed them out. I’ll try not to focus on how LL no longer listens to their users at all or how they’re shooting themselves in the foot, though. I’ll add a link to the Emerald blog so you can get the story first-hand, just as soon as I can find the link.

For now, I’m downloading Kirsten’s Viewer and will review it soon.

Happy SLing.

Review the View: Part Three (Second Life Viewer 2.0 [Beta])

If you play Second Life, chances are good that you’ve heard of the infamous Viewer 2.0. The Lindens have told us that they are focusing more on new residents and trying to make the transition from browser to viewer easier. Well, I’m not a new resident, but I gave Viewer 2.0 a try. I can sum of the rest of this post in one, nice little sentence for you. I will be sticking with Emerald.

After downloading Viewer 2.0 and logging into SL with it for the first time, my initial reaction was “Holy crap!” It was completely different from any other viewer that I’d used and I did not like it in the least. Before we continue, let me say that I didn’t spend a lot of time looking through every feature. I spent perhaps a total of 30 minutes logged in before I switched back to Emerald. However, here’s what I found in the time that I did use it.

The first thing I saw when I logged in...

My first thought was this looks different from the other viewers, but it probably functions in pretty much the same way. Boy, was I wrong.

Just about everything you do in-world is controlled from that nice little [huge] sidebar you see on the right of the screen. Of course, you can use the >> to minimize it, but you have to open it back up to do anything. And every time you open it, it distorts your view. That’s right, it doesn’t “overlap” SL like most things we’re used to. It just “scooches” right down in there and makes the screen look bunched up. I’ll not go into great detail, but let’s take a little closer look at that sidebar…

Now, if you want to do anything in SL, you’re probably going to have to use this sidebar. The Second Life hand logo shows you what is shown in the image — the basics, if you will.

The second icon, which looks like an ID card, is, well, your ID. (Your profile.) I’ve noticed so far, that the profile pictures are set to a different ratio than in previous viewers, so all of you that spent so much effort on getting the right profile picture — sorry, LL doesn’t seem to care. Not only that, but second life, first life and web tabs have all been smushed into one. In fact our profiles only have two tabs now. The other being picks. I don’t know where the rest of the tabs went (and I’m not saying there isn’t a way to access them, as I didn’t spend enough time looking to know for sure), but I can’t find them anywhere. You’ll be thrilled to know that other users have three tabs, though. The third being Notes & Privacy. Yup, as far as I could tell, you have to go to people’s profiles to set privacy and privileges.

Now let’s move down the line to that little people icon. This one doesn’t seem quite so bad…so far. You open up to “Nearby” which shows you who is around you. Yes, it seems LL has adopted the radar feature. You have three other tabs which are “My Friends” “My Groups” and “Recent”. Most of these should be self-explanatory. The recent tab shows you a list of those you have communicated with recently. I had a chat open, and this tab showed “3m” next to the person’s name. For some odd reason, my brain has linked “m” with meters when talking about SL. (Go figure, right?) Apparently, this tab keeps a record of how long it’s been since you and said people have communicated, and the m meant minutes.

Let’s move on to the tab that shows us a picture of a globe. This is your “Places” tab and it contains LMs and TP history. There is one thing I like about this. We now have a favorites bar. It looks like a LM that you put here will stay at the top of the list for you to access more easily. When you log into SL with Viewer 2.0, it automatically creates this Favorites bar, which will appear as any other folder in other viewers.

Now let’s look at the tab with the suitcase icon. This is your inventory. We have “My Inventory” and “Recent”… The inventory works basically the same as it always has.

Last, but not least, we have the “Appearance” tab which looks like a T-shirt. LL has finally decided to adopt the “Worn” tab feature that other viewers have implemented, but of course, have put it in the wrong place. You’ll find it here, along with another tab that says “My Outfits”. Now, we older users would probably think that the Appearance tab would be like editing our appearance. Nope. I don’t see any use for it, really. It’s just an extra tab to give us a headache and make our inventory choppy. To edit your appearance, you still have to right click your avatar, which IMHO will be more confusing to new residents.

The new and "improved" Search feature.

Now let’s get out of the sidebar and look around a bit, shall we? LL have removed the pie menu upon right click. We now have a standard drop-down menu. It doesn’t seem like much difference, but it’s been more difficult to find what I’m looking for in my experience. I also have noticed Camera Controls and Movements have been relocated to the bottom of the screen. They can be accessed and moved around, though. The build menu has been relocated to the top — a small annoyance. The media options (to play music and video) have been relocated to the top right corner, along with volume controls. The search function has been moved to the top right corner, as well. You enter your keyword(s) and search. Upon searching, you will be greeted by a nice shiny pop-up box with your results and can browse from there.

One good thing I do like about Viewer 2.0, is the “Back” and “Forward” buttons at the top left. These act like back and forward on a browser, and will take you through your previous locations. Sadly, this is the only positive I’ve seen.

If you’d like to give Viewer 2.0 a try, you can get it here.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own SL. Yes, LL has the right to do as they please. No, I don’t think my opinion matters to LL. I write this because I have an opinion. You want me to have an opinion too, I assume, or you wouldn’t be reading this. All in all, I realize that LL has a business to run, but they say they welcome user feedback, so I’m simply providing them with some, and I hope a few of you benefit from it. :-)

How To: Transportation (Getting around in Second Life)

Discover all the ways to move about in the Second Life world.

The first way you will move your avatar in Second Life will, in all probability, be walking. This is done with the arrow keys. You can also do this with the W,A,S and D keys if you do not have the chat bar open. Press E and C to jump or descend. Pressing and holding E will make you fly. You can also use your number pad if you do not have NumLock activated.

And as you can walk, you can also run. The controls for running are the same. Simply press CTRL+R. After this, running should be activated. Use the same keys you use to walk. If you wish to stop running and return to walking, just press CTRL+R again.

Another way to move is to fly. You can activate flying several ways. The first is to press the “Fly” button on the bottom of your screen. When you’re done flying, just press it again to go back to walking. You can also press and hold the page up key. Likewise, page down will make you stop flying. If you do not have the chat bar open, you can also press E to fly and C to stop flying.

Another common mode of transportation in Second Life is teleportation (aka TP-ing). There are several ways to TP in Second Life. Someone can offer you a TP. This will bring up a notice in the top right of your window. Choose accept to teleport to their location. Decline the TP to stay where you are. You can use your map to choose a TP destination. Within the map, serach for a location, click an area on the map, and select “teleport”. You can also use the “search” button to search for a place. This is useful if you only have keywords for a location. Once you’ve found the location within search, a teleport button will be available. You can also use what are called Slurls to teleport. These are links that show up in your chat history. Simply click and choose teleport from the landmark you are given. Speaking of landmarks, that is the last way to teleport that I will tell you about. Just open your inventory, double-click a landmark, and teleport. As you can see, teleporting is a very, very common and necessary mode of transportation with several methods. It may sound confusing, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time. (More about how to teleport someone to you and how to use landmarks in other posts.)

Finally, there are vehicles. Cars, bikes, planes, boats, etc. These are common, but I don’t see many people using them regularly.  Generally, you just rez the vehicle, sit on it and steer it with the same keys you use to control your walking. I’d suggest getting comfortable with other ways to move around before you attempt vehicles as these can be tricky to control at times.

These are the standard buttons you should have on the bottom of your screen.