Integrate SL forums with in-world content.

I declare that we should be able to access SL website forum content from within SL. I'm not proposing an HTML viewer, since although there are a couple good HTML rendering engines out there, they're... well... not what we want here. Just a system to access and post to the current forums, that would be convenient and would tie SL and the web together more effectively.

Along with the implementation of the planned IM-only client, it would help extend the number of systems and places SL can be accessed and (in at least some form) interacted with.

I also suggest that we have an even better groups system:
The current groups are a big improvement over pre-1.1, but they could still stand some improvement. There should be a group-specific filespace, complete with news, group inventory and private forums, to allow for better intra-group communication and cooperation.

Seconded, I always find myself checking the forums while playing sl.... WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO ALT-TAB AND OPEN IE?!

Notecards and help files are already in html form i believe. Actually if you look in the SL folder the popup messages for what trial users can or cant do are there, in HTML files.
It wouldnt surprise me if much of SL was based on XML.

> Integrate SL forums with in-world content.

Bump!

If we're going to make an information rich metaverse, why not include the forums as part of that!!!!

Also, makes suspension of belief soooo much easier. Reading forums in IE kindof brings you back to the realworld big-time.

I agree, I think this would be a fantastic feature to add to sl.

This world isn't a web browser, and I don't want one in there. Hated that about "There" and would be sad to see it infect SL. Until such a time as the VR world is ready to envelop the rest of the internet ala Neuromancer and Show Crash, I'd just assume keep it separate so it can evolve on it's own.

I'd be more interested in making the game systems capable of storing information via script control. If we could write to notecards, I'm sure several people would create forum-like systems in-game.

(Maybe that's why we don't have this feature?)

I wasn't really suggesting SL become a web browser either, Tiger. In fact, you could almost say I was suggesting the opposite. Almost.

By integrating the content of the forums, (not the actual website, or any other website) it'd allow for far greater ease of communication within the world, as well as outside it. It bridges a gap that anyone who's worked with large groups has had to deal with.

Not everyone is active on the forums. Many people don't even know they exist, yet they're an invaluble resource. They're available to all, but only a few of us actually use them. Why? It's a simple matter of convenience.

I have two monitors. When I'm running SL, it goes on the left, Mozilla goes on the right. It may surprise you to hear that this isn't a common setup. For most people, it's very inconvenient to use the forums, and the benefits of doing so simply aren't there for them.

For example:
"Can you make me a _____ script?" is one question I hear almost every day. I always answer it the same way: check out the scripting examples forum, since it's invariably got whatever common scripts someone could want.

By integrating the forum content with SL and giving us an interface to access it, it'd be far more accessible.

The only counterarguments I can honestly think of are:
- SL's UI is slow.
- The Lindens have far more important things to work on.

I have nothing to add to the former, other than to suggest "really, really, really slow" as being more precise.

The latter argument, however, is one that I'm not so sure about. Granted, the immediate gains aren't that great, and it would undoubtedly be a huge undertaking -- perhaps not technically difficult, but certainly time-consuming and annoying. However, coupled with the IM client, given better groups, better events management, SL becomes a much more cohesive product. And that's good for everyone.

I disagree. The thing I hated about the browser in There was that it was base don IE and not completely integrated and with the 3D program taking so much CPU power, it'd take forever to load the browser extensions. Personally, I think a custom Mozilla core would work wonders. You wouldn't need to use those crappy vending machines that take forever of loading textures to cycle through all 30 objects it holds. You'd just click the machine and you'd get a SLExchange (or something similar) window that you could shop from. And the person could even host their store on their own server and reduce the main server load (not to mention not having to pay to upload all those textures). Having the browser be able to actually send commands to in game objects via links would be of remarkable benefit. You could use it to make pop-up control panels that would only have to exist on the user's screen and not in world. And the ability for the game world to send specific messages back to the browser window would be even better (such as replace this graphic with this, or rewrite this text, etc.) Add that with database objects and you could do some majorly cool stuff.

As for the forums thing, I don't see a problem with having it just access the current forums page. It'd be more efficient that way. Or, if nothing else, use the browser but have it access the forums in less "web page" style format. It'd still be easier than trying to design a whole new system.

As a programmer, I look around and often see that the wheel shouldn't be continually reinvented. Why design whole new interface systems when you can use a good, solid, time tested one?

I'm sure these things have been mentioned before but these forums are huge and the forum search sucks big time.