Was I Too Harsh?

Written 26 February, 2010

Was I Too Harsh?

I've settled down a bit about the new Second Life Linden viewer.

I still hate it, but I'm calmer about it.

I don't hate the new features, mind you, they're great. It's just the implementation that sucks.

To help me simmer down last night, Sweetie showed me a series of tutorials by the irrepressible Torley Linden. Torleys vidtuits are always great! I discovered some of the things I thought were missing were still there, albeit in new locations-- and, I hated to admit, made more sense in their new places.

I discovered I could get the top window to show region coordinates and land settings and could turn off friends online/offline notifications and my group tag (thanks, Whatcha!).

And I found I could turn off the screen-munching double-thick chat lines.

And I found I could remove the camera control and movement buttons from the bottom of the screen (unfortunately, I couldn't add useful things like map, build, and the mini-map).

So perhaps there's hope for this monstrosity. So here are my big gripes. Every one is a deal buster; that is, I won't be caught dead using the viewer until they're fixed somehow:

* Readability. The new viewer flat wears out your brain and eyes, and in a very short time.

* Opaqueness of pop-up and tear-off menus. They cover a lot of screen space, and, unlike 1.23, you can't see through them when they're deselected.

* Short chat line. This is horrible for anyone with eyes over 30 years old and anyone who want to type actual English instead of Twittering How R U?

* That horrible behemoth on the left side of the screen. Not only is it big and frigging opaque, it scrunches the world over when it rolls out. This, as one person said on the forums, detracts from the immersiveness. It's jarring.

* Pairing of First and Second life profile windows. This is a clear move to turn by the Lindens to turn Second Life into Facebook, and I resent it. I hate Facebook.

* More on Profiles. When you click a profile, you want to see it, and not just the first two or three lines. This is just bad design.

And there's other stuff, but it's late, so I'm just going to hit the Publish button.