Tinted Backgrounds Around Avatar Names And Group Titles

The 1.6 preview on March 3 showed a continuing and increasing emphasis on useless graphics changes such as rounding of corners, adding functionless outlines, distracting highlights and fakey looking glowing effects when objects are selected in dialogs and lists.

If anyone remembers the extreme disapproval which met the tinted backgrounds for the chat text, and the unhappiness reported in the forums over the greater prominence of the tinted backgrounds for popup help, it appears that that design approach continues to reign.

The Avatar name and Group title text had big tinted windows which could not be made to be completely invisible. These tinted backgrounds looked stupid and ugly, were distracting , bobbed up and down and moved around quite aggravatingly , and increased the degree to which the fixed size at which name and title text is displayed destroys the illusion of being in a 3D space , and of course the tinted backgrounds for these text elements blocks the view of the things behind them.

can i please assume the back ground goes away if you turn off name displaying? on the positive side that's nice how they keep out of each others way and don't overlap.

^ Is it any wonder the translation of the name of that song into English is "Love From the Linden Trees"?

nope they dont go away but you can click on the and open up the same pie menu you would if you clicked on the avatar..

The whole thing's just starting to look a little cartoony for my liking.

Yus. Welcome to Pikachu Life!

That must be why they're too busy to answer my last dozen or more bug reports. All their time being taken up on curvy corners and ugly UI tweaks.

It's just putting me increasingly in mind of There and other teenage-centric social thingies (technical term!). But then I guess with the kid-grid in the back of their minds...

Last night someone showed the Preview Video for There on one of the players. I thought out loud I am glad I found SL first instead of There.

Looking back on it this morning and a few of the comments made here a frightening revalation hit me. OMG SL is becoming the new There. >>>walks off severely dissappointed.

These new UI features are just here to fancy it up for the kid-grid launch. Nothing more and nothing less in my opinion.

Say it with me Lindens:

OPTIONS

For every new graphical feature like this you put in, GIVE US THE OPTION TO TURN IT OFF! Many of us have been here for many months, or even a couple of years. Enforcing unwanted graphical shit like this on us is rude.

You'd of thought they'd learnt that lesson with the backtracking they had to do over the shaded box around the chat box, wouldn't you.

Yup. and 3 revisions later, that little 'feature' stopped crashing my client! Roll on 1.6.3

Oh, good gawd. Rounded corners and tints does not turn SL into a teeny-bop graphical chatroom. Hyperbole much?

Strange. My name boxes were more dark grey, and when I turned off names they went away.

But yeah, options to turn them off but leave the name would be nice.

-Ghoti

No, it turns us into There.

Oh, wait.

That's sorta the same thing.

Look. I don't care if they put them in. I'm sure some people love them.

What pisses me (and others) off is that every time lindens put in some new wiz-bang graphical feature, it seems, we have to damn near riot to get them to make it /optional/. Is optional really that hard of a concept to understand?

we'll be able to turn them off. the lindens are a bit quirky; but they're not pure foolishness personified. we'll be able to turn them off.

if this "feature" is going to go into effect, then i agree.. there should be the option to turn it off.

on the other hand, i would rather see them NOT implement this at all! it's extremely distracting.. as well as detracting, as in from the surrounding environment.

another option would be to adjust the "bubble color" as well as transparency, along with the option to not have them at all.


i do NOT support this feature!

ok, i was just checking out the release notes and it appears our fears are for naught:

I think this is two different features we're talking about here.

"Chat bubbles" as I understand them would mean, for example, when you say "hey d00d, this game suxx0rs now!", those words appear in a shaded bubble over your head. These seem to be all the rage lately. I hate them. :/ There, Evercrack 2... Heck, even World of Warquest is getting them.

But since those are optional, no biggie.

But those color boxes around the names aparently aren't optional, according to the people testing it so far.

Thats not quite the same thing. That's crappy There style cartoon speech bubbles, not the previously relatively innocuous orange labels that are now going to obscure everything with curvy cornered backgrounds. But yeah, I imagine both will be optional. They better be - they look pathetic.

Edit: Bah. you type faster 'un me.

UGH... I believe that sums it up nicely..

All that looks like to me is more Visual Clutter. I GUESS it might help some of the hosts out to locate people... but.. at the same time, it will clutter up the views for the players/etc. Lovely.. just lovely..

I have been holding off on upgrading to a premium account because SL is way too buggy to spend my money on. TP/Sim crossings being the most annoying; Attachments not rezzing, not being transferred to the new sim, etc. There are other bugs, but that will be another rant. With each upgrade I keep hoping the bugs will be fixed, but what I'm seeing is cosmetic changes to the interface and new features with new bugs introduced. In my opinion if LL expects to have several million users in a few years they need to fix the bugs. To get that many users, they will have to go after the non-technical and non-designers, people who expect things to just work and be easy to use. These users will not put up with bugs that require you to relog several times during play.

While new features can be good (A good example is when animations were introduced), they need to fix the existing bugs. At least they made the inventory system a bit better in 1.6. We'll see if the attachment rezzing issue gets resolved. I have my doubts about the other sim crossing issues.

I wonder how all the name shadings will look in a crowded club. I suspect it will look like one huge shaded area. <shudder>

sorry, i read it wrong.. rather, perceived it incorrectly.

maybe i should stick to 3 word/change letter/questions threads when it's early in the morning from now on? lol...

ok, so my original statement stands. thanks for the correction guys.

Mine were black, not white.

And Philip already said they'd do something about it and give options.

Sok Cybin, However, I have to make a comment on the signature.

"We, as developers, are doing the easy part – building the scaffolding for a new world. You, as the engines of creation, must breathe life into it."
- Philip Linden

Meanwhile back at the ranch..the engines of Creation are chugging along coughing cause the air filters are getting clogged up but we got a new Paint JOB.

Engines of Creation=Content Developers..aka every member of SL.

Air Filter Clog=Unfocused on bugs and Bug reports.

Paint Job=Unneeded new features that took time away from focusing on the bugs.

Shadow

they did tend to some bugs as well as introducing some features we've been clamoring to get for awhile now.. such as:


very, very cool!