TAB key to face other av(s) in chat....GONE??!!!?

Now, some things I can understand, and some I can't. One of my favorite handy features in SL is (OK, well, WAS) the ability to hit the TAB key to face someone who's walked up behind you, next to you, or is somewhere out of your line of sight, and started chatting. A quick tap on the TAB key will suddenly take you from rude to interested (if that's what you want to be) by turning you to face the person typing/talking. It took me a LONG time to find out about that ability, but once I knew about it, I used it religously, and truly enjoyed having that functionality.

Unfortunately, the last few days I've been rather rude in chat conversations when I am facing away from people, hitting my TAB key in vain, only to find myself jumping up in the air involuntarily. Now, come on LL — this was a very much needed and appreciated keystroke that appears to have been obliterated. I apologize to everyone if this has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere, but I couldn't find the topic when I searched for it.

I checked with Live Help who told me as far as they could see, that feature had been removed. Well a great big PPPBBBFFFFFTTTTT to whoever thought THAT would be a great thing to take away. WHAT were they THINKING? I DON'T understand why this change was made!

Anyway, I want it back. I want the "TAB to face other people chatting at you" keystroke functionality back. And I want it NOW.

Thank you.

*steps down off soapbox, still pouting*

—Soul

Wow, I never even knew this was an option. I never even got to use it, and I'm missing having it too!

Ditto

Don't fret, it's still there. You just have to go to mouselook first.

OR

If you want you can open up the keys.ini and add something like:

THIRD_PERSON	Q		ALT		    look_at_chatter

Replacing Q here with TAB doesn't work, I already tried that. But you can choose your own keys here. ^_^ I think SL Hotkeys override the ones here though.

I think the ability to tab through the GUI overrides the need to have look_at_chatter be bound to TAB specifically.

I don't. Why do we need to be able to tab through the GUI anyway? That's what the mouse is for.

Did they ever *ask* users what they'd prefer before introducing this so-called "improvments"? No, of course not.

My counter-question would be: Why do you need tab to be the key you use to acess the look at chatter function when TAB has always been used to go to the next data entry point.

google "define: TAB Key" and you get

1. a key that, when pressed, moves the insertion point to the next tab marker. In a dialog box, it usually moves the insertion point to the next area to enter information.
   www.aiu.ac.jp/~naganuma/generalvocab.html
   
2. Enters data and then selects the next cell in the row
   cssvc.ecsu.edu/tutorials/excel/excelterm.htm
   
3. the key on a typewriter or a word processor that causes a tabulation
   wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
   
4. When a typist (or typewriter as they were known in the early days) wanted to type a table, there was a lot of time consuming and repetitive use of the space bar and backspace key. To simplify this a bar was placed in the mechanism with a moveable lever for every position across the page. Initially these were set by hand, but later a "tab set" and "tab clear" keys were added. When the tab key was depressed the carriage advanced to the next "tab stop".
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_key
   

Dude, 0.o;

That is practically what the tab key does for in most windows programs. Try it now. See? That is what TAB was born to do. Making it do something else would be counter-intuitive. In the long-run this is better. There's a "language" in modern user interfaces and I'm glad LL is starting to pick up on it. I'm tired of having my friends refuse to get over the "learning curve" that SL has to interface with the environment and application. >.<

Tab had some identity issues it needed to work out. I think its realizing it's full potential now. We should be happy for it. It still goes both ways-- in first person mode it does the look at chatter function, but in third person mode it adhears to traditional keyboard values.

And why do people constantly see LL as some uncaring Behemoth that does things willy-nilly? That is so Eron. -.- Just because they are hands-off about a lot of things doesn't mean they don't care or are not actively seeking user input.

They could be reading this post even now.


0.0


Hi.

Ok I agree that tab in most software is used to change to the next gui item, but why not have another button replace it!

Just press m before hitting tab to go into mouselook. It will still work. And then pess Esc if you need to be in third person. Why not just give it a different hotkey? I'm guessing the Lindens didn't really think people were actually using it all that much. If you *need* a hotkey to activate it in third person mode for now, try the little hack I described with your desired hotkey. The file is an .ini file that can be edited with notepad. So...

1. Open Notepad
   
2. Open C:\Program Files\SecondLife\app_settings\keys.ini
   
3. Add the line
   CODE

   THIRD_PERSON	Q		SHIFT		    look_at_chatter

   1. Replace Q with your desired key. (I suggested Q because it's right next to TAB.)
      
   2. Replace ALT with NONE, SHIFT, ALT, ALT_SHIFT, or CTL_ALT_SHIFT for a modifier. (Don't use CTL if you used Q, that quits SL)
      
   
   
4. Save.
   
5. Reload SL.
   
6. Press Shift+Q (Or what ever hotkey you set) to look at a chatter.
   
7. Hope they add a new hotkey in the next release. ^_^
   

But mouselook is nasty and unpleasant. I use it as little as possible.

I'd love a "first person" view like in Everquest, where yuo can interact normally with the world from a FP perspective... and maybe with "waypoint" movement as well (you kind of have that, with "go here" on land, but you can't use that on a prim surface and it's a right-click option).

Back to tab... yes, making tab go to the next widget is actually an improvement. I don't care for some of the other changes to chat, though. In particular enter should ONLY open the chat bar, not whatever random window you last had open... I understand why they did it but I wish they'd back that one out or else make chat a full "first class" window object (maybe at the bottom of the history window.

Get FireFox.
CTRL+TAB moves between active tabs inside the browser window.
ALT+TAB changes the active window (regardless of what program you're using).
TAB changes the selected link/input area.

TAB SHOULD NOT BE REDEFINED INSIDE SL TO LOOK AT SOMETHING.

"Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design"
1) Strive for consistency.
2) Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
3) Offer informative feedback.
4) Design dialog to yield closure.
5) Offer simple error handling.
6) Permit easy reversal of actions.
7) Support internal locus of control.
8] Reduce short-term memory load.

I didn't read the whole battle, but I support the tab idea to look toward people.

I'm so used to online games, where you can run through <targets> using the tab key, I still do it in SL even if it doesn't work. But anyway, all of these keys should be in an option page of SL Preferences, for those that don't like tabbing, they could easily turn it off or set the tab key for something else.

We are different people, we have different opinions. In things like this, it shouldn't be about people's opinion, it should be about giving the user options.

Ah, so *That* is where it came from. I see. But you're not really targeting them or really doing anything to them. Hrm... but so far That's the best point I see for keeping tab for look at chatter.

Maybe it should be put in preferences under chat options.

Thanks for breaking an important, useful element of the 3D social environment just to put more "shiny" on the gee-whiz 2D interface. Now, we can all focus on the spiffy UI and forget that pesky "world" thing that Philip keeps nattering about.

The tab functionality isn't the only thing that's changed. Now half the time when I hit / or ENTER to start chatting I get nothing or some random window opens up because they force the focus onto the toolbar and it takes my enter to mean I want to open the selected item rather than open the chat to type in something. So now I have to hit ESC a few times to make sure nothing has focus (which also means it resets my camera position to the default when I often have it elsewhere to get a better view of my surroundings) then hit / or ENTER to start chatting. I don't need the toolbar holding focus, I rarely use the buttons on it anyway. Most of the time I either use my mouse to click on one if I need to or I use the keyboard shortcuts to open those windows. While some out there may have found the UI changes handy its increased the amount of mistakes, slowdowns, and random window behavior for me. I've also noticed most of the time the delete key won't work to delete characters in the edit boxes now either, or to delte a selected object int he gameworld. This also appears to be a focus issue.

As for those saying why redifine TAB to be something other than typical Windows behavior: it USED to be defined to turn and face others who talked (and they even had it as MOTD messages a few times recently) and with the recent updates they redefined it. The turn to face bheavior is the same as many MMO's and FPS for target selection (while in SL you're not putting a target marker on them for attack it does turn your AV to face them).

I am currently asking about the aforementioned tab functionality--paulie asked about it in SL Answers.

I'm also keeping a close eye on other focus issues.

I never got it to work - maybe its not a Mac thing?

/Tina