Yes that's right, on 12-21-2012 (or as my Aussie friends like to put it, 21-12-12), it's supposed to be the last day of the Mayan calendar and the end of the world as we know it. Just like Y2K only worse. I tend to embrace change so I am looking forward to Armageddon. But for some inexplicable reason, I'm scheduled to DJ on the following night so maybe it's not the end of the world? Maybe things will not change all that much?
I've always been a big fan of the old standard SL viewer. At some point, everyone told me Emerald viewer would be better so I tried that. It did have a lot of features that I liked so I stuck with it. Unfortunately, someone at Emerald thought they could make some money (it's all about the greed) by including some privacy-breaching code embedded into it so Linden Labs shut them down in a huge hurry. Fortunately, the Phoenix viewer group was quickly formed which fixed the problems with the Emerald viewer. Linden Lab's standard version 1 viewer, Emerald viewer and Phoenix viewer were all very close in appearance and operation. The Emerald and Phoenix viewers had some features though that were very attractive. There were building/creation enhancements, better graphics control, many many more variables that could be set and controlled by the individual user. There were also other 3rd party viewers such as Singularity and Imprudence to name a couple more. The main thing to realize here is that all viewers were generally the same. Your settings were all in the same place. You could build/create things the same way. Upload, download the same. Advanced menus were the same.... Well, you get the idea.
Then Linden Labs went and did something. They created version 2 viewer. Why? Because they wanted a good laugh I guess? Except for Emerald viewer doing naughty things with our account and inventory information, everything was peachy. But Linden Labs saw fit to create a viewer designed by a committee. I can just hear the board room meeting now. "Let's make a viewer that is totally different than anything we have now or have ever seen". Well, they did. Is it better? I don't think so. I see no improvement really. But it is totally different to operate. Your inventory is split up into different groups yet you can still get at all of it by various means. Building/creating is confusing but can be gotten used to. It's no better so I'm still trying to figure out why they changed it. It's difficult to see how many prims make up an object. Instant messages can now be thoroughly missed. The added lag of voice chat now activates automatically. You can no longer just File>Upload. Now you go to Avatar>Upload. What's with that? You can also upload from another sub-menu called Advanced. Okay, why did they make it more complicated? I have no idea. Why have 4 different ways of getting to your inventory and 2 or more different ways of uploading? Wasn't one method for each enough? Apparently not because they have gone and put out a version 3 viewer. Let's not even get into that just yet.
What I and many others did was drop their viewer and go all out with Imprudence, Singularity or Phoenix viewers. I went with Phoenix and life was good for a year or so. Just about everyone was using Phoenix viewer so we were all able to support each other and share ways of achieving technical tasks through the same viewer. However, new people were discovering SL and of course downloading the now default viewer 2 because that's what the SL web site tells you to do. So all the new people (and you could tell because Linden Labs did away with creating a surname and just put everyone under Resident) were getting used to viewer 2. So when one of them had a problem or wanted to accomplish something in SL via their viewer 2, none of the more experienced users could help them because we were lost when it came time to navigate viewer 2. New User: "How do I check how many prims are on my land?" Experience User: "Go to World > About Land." New User: "whaaa?" If you are like me and like to help out, this became frustrating in short order. I finally had to tell people who needed help, "sorry, I can't help you, my viewer is night and day different than yours."
But in the end, it was inevitable. We were going to have to learn to use the new version 2 viewer because Linden Labs said they will eventually end allowing the version 1 type viewers anymore. So Phoenix, the group that actually seems to care about their users, began the Firestorm viewer project. It is a viewer 2 viewer except for one big thing; it's highly configurable. So someone at Firestorm decided to create a 'skin' for Firestorm that looked very similar to the viewer 1 style Phoenix. It's an instant hit. With only a dozen or so viewer 2/3 stumbling blocks, you can now navigate and enjoy SL just like the old days.
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| Visiting with my lovely daughter Neva. |
Oh sure, change is good! Well, it's only good when there is improvement, not backwards steps. Yeah, I can hear the gasps now but it's true. Linden Labs has put out many youtube videos demonstrating how to make their new viewers work but in the end, they have taken functions that used to be right there in front of you, intuitive to use and find and have buried them in a quagmire of a menu system and doubled or tripled the means to find those functions. Just yesterday I was attempting to make a tattoo layer for an avatar. I tried everything I could think of to create a new tattoo layer and edit it so that I could place the graphic for the tattoo onto my tattoo layer. I finally found the little gear icon that allowed me to do this but not only was it far out of the way of my work space, it was NOT intuitive. I strongly feel that Linden Labs needs to return to the drawing board and start all over again. Hardly a day passes that I don't hear from a user who can't figure out how to accomplish a task in their viewer and I, having been inworld for over 4 years, cannot help them because I too am lost. It's senseless. The tower of Babel all over again.
On a brighter note, my psychic cat just told me that the world will not end tomorrow so that means I get to party on Friday! I sure do love that cat.
