Help Embed Firefox in SL

The main question here is whether the browser experience will really be shared, or instanced a la Quicktime. I have my money on the latter outcome for security reasons, though I hope otherwise.

Who knows? They could surprise me.

It's most certainly the latter. We will no doubt find many public browsing terminals crop up around SL for people to check their Hotmail, browse eBay or whatever. Frankly, that's the part that doesn't really interest me.

What interests me (and others I'm sure) is the potential of instantly incorporating HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc. into the SL experience. Web-on-a-prim will allow far richer text display with hypertext interactivity to boot. Couple that with an XML-RPC link to outside websites and you can begin displaying just about any kind of relevant inworld/outworld information in a far richer manner than has ever been possible.

At the moment, we're limited to Chat, Notecards and XyText.

I suppose that depends entirely on the way the feature ends up working. You do know we can already use Quicktime to instance text onto a prim, yes? It supports XML quite happily.


My concern is thus: how are instances of web prims set to be maintained in the scope of SL, standalone code notwithstanding? A single instance or limit by plot seems a bit useless for "text prims;" a laissez-faire instancing system could lead to potential spam and virus concerns.

Granted, I'd love to see this feature fly, as it's more or less essential. But I don't see it as the magic pill it's being made out to appear.

Also very interesting point about the shared experience when browsing. Though I've found reading text in a group to be quite a terrible experience. I remember many a days reading rpg/adventure game text over my dad's shoulder. I got quite good at reading fast

But the security concern is an important point too. If it is a shared experience, meaning you are all looking at the same web page, and watching the same content, what is to stop random guy x from swooping down while you are checking your email and reading it over your shoulder? Or what is to stop him from clicking some buttons and start typing away before you relise whats happening and fire off some malicious email to your friends?

I think that the browser is going to be put in sl as a single user experience. I imagine there will be some sort of thing that will allow the creator of the prim to set it as html, and to pass it some parameters via post/get using lsl type controls. So while everybody going to this place in SL might see the same start page, and have the same ability to move through it, nobody will be seeing exactly what I see.

I guess I am assuming that you will just think of it as the gecko engine, with sl doing the rendering of the webpages in open GL through your SL browser. Kind of like taking all the stuff that firefox does, and instead of displaying it in a window on your desktop with windows api calls, you are displaying it on a prim in sl through open gl. If that is the case, I imagine there will be no such thing as a shared viewing experience, and then again I ask, what is the point?

I guess perhaps it could be neat to use it as a hud attachment to control things by using a java or flash app as long as it could talk to linden objects.

Well this is all just speculation, and what do I know?

Hamaar

Link please?

I tend to agree, but I think of it as a kind of Konfabulator (Yahoo!Widgets, I guess) for SL. Konfabulaor isn't a full-on Mozilla browser like Firefox but it works for specialized applets. After looking at uBrowser (and a bit before), I think treating in-world browsing more like a widget than a browser is a wise idea.

Your mileage may vary.

That's exactly the point. What we need now is not the ability to browse the web through the SL client, but the ability to display interactive content inworld without using five-hundred prims, twenty-nine scripts and thirty-two-hundred uploaded textures.

Woohoo It means I can look at porn on a prim without someone loading $1000Ls worth of uploads!!

I definately agree with this one. We need the option of doing it both ways. I hadn't actually thought far enough ahead to realise that each user would be seeing there own instance. All the ideas I have to use this would require that everyone sees the same page at the same time, and I'd want to be able to refresh it or change the address via LSL code. In most cases I wouldn't even need links to work, so being able to disable clicking and make it view only would be really handy too.

FUCK YEAH!!!!

It's not a matter of if html/css is easier to lay out an image or not. The difference is we can update a web page dynamically but once a texture is uploaded it's static. Unless LL is planning to give us LSL commands that allow us to modify an image on the fly, but I don't see that happening any time this century.

Yeah. I really wouldn't mind the chance to make dynamic signposts or menus that I can update.

My thoughts exactly.
A lot of people seem to be poo-pooing this idea but, really, it reduces a HUGE amount of overhead in the creation process. It's also a way of bringing in a well-tested data distribution avenue from the outside world to inworld. Some people dislike this idea but I favor it. In my view of the future, the metaverse will remain something of a novelty to most people unless it integrates more real-world applications, and that means incorporating the web.

Persig

Ditto.

I think this is a pretty natural conclusion, as well. SL is about connecting people .. giving them a shared experience that they can gather round and interact in a compelling way.

I can think of many profoundly exciting applications born of a shared browser in a virtual space. I really can't think of any that come from standalone browsing in SL.

As is the option to have single-user sessions - I think it's critical that both be available.

Perhaps. I think the hard time I have appreciating this point of view that I always have a web browser open on the same desktop as SL, but for those who run SL full screen without a web browser, I can see where this might be useful.

Could we include a contest for skinning the mozilla based browser to appeal for SL? Brings up another question. When this is done and released will it be skinnable by the public? Will extensions be disabled?

The page will be rendered in prims. There will be no skins.

For example, let's say you rezzed (created) a sphere in SL and put the HTML-prim textur on the sphere and went to google maps, you'd end up with something like:

(click on link if image doesn't appear)



However, you'd just have the sphere in SL without the web browser border / black background.

The page will be rendered in prims. There will be no skins.

For example, let's say you rezzed (created) a sphere in SL and put the HTML-prim textur on the sphere and went to google maps, you'd end up with something like:

(click on link if image doesn't appear)



However, you'd just have the sphere in SL without the web browser border / black background.

I've seen a lot of speculation about Mozilla integration with Second Life. We *are* moving forward, and now you know what's been keeping us from shipping in the first place!

As the bugs in uBrowser are resolved, we will be able to do more and more. The current plan is a phased rollout, as follows:

* First, the goal is to support Second Life help documents in the viewer. This should happen in the near future, depending on the speed at which fixes for some of the the known issues can be added. While the gain isn't large, getting to the point where every SL resident can use the code in some limited way is a big step forward in other ways.

* After that, we will look at adding support within the client for selected SL specific Web sites such as Lindex and auctions. This will allow us to test more complex HTML and user interactions.

* Next, we will move on to supporting a generic Web browser floater in the viewer. This will be an extension of the functionality in the previous steps, and means that plug-in support will become important very quickly!

* Finally, after more work and more bug fixing, we support interactive HTML on prims. Only after having resolved issues that are bound to arise after the first steps are rolled out can we deliver this feature. There are several very difficult problems to solve here - for instance, coming up with a strategy for truly shared browsing.

Thanks for the update, Karen.

Heh, I saw this the other day. I asked Cory if he has the linux sources available, but no go right now it seems.

So all you windows dev's are at an advantage right now!

I wouldn't mind working with dev's on windows and mac platforms if we wanna split the sim.

Though I wanted to go for the other problems to score the custom last name.

Hopefully this will include being able to click on a word in a script and see the LSL wiki page on in, and being able to cut and paste from the LSL wiki into the script editor.

Reading back through this thread, I personally find myself in the "screw the plugins, just get it out" camp, albeit for a somewhat different reason from what's been mentioned.

In my regular FireFox, I have an extention installed that blocks Flash content unless I specifically choose to run it. Given the occular assaults usually perpetrated via Flash (and to a lesser extent animated GIFs), frankly the idea of not having those kinds of plug-ins available appeals to me a great deal.

I'm not against an in-world browser in general, though... even with the gimpiest of graphics settings, it still takes a couple of seconds to alt-tab into or out of SL for browsing, including an annoying re-sizing as my desktop is 1280x1024, but due to speed concerns SL is 1024x768. I'm just not keen on seeing a good idea cluttered with assorted trash that I don't allow to happen in my stand-alone browser.

I'd been timid about putting info on-line because so many tell me they can't open a browser comfortably when SL is going.

I will definately be moving away from notecards and will focus on HTML documentation.

(woooooot!)