Frustrated with haters

I won't say any names, you know who you are (and if 'teh darma" has taught me anything, you'll reply)... I'm frustrated with people dissing the in-client browser. People who say they don't "get" the point of it.

The point is it, combined with llHTTPRequest and XML-RPC, offers us interface possibilities beyond llDialog. It offers us, finally, the ability to read-in and write-out data with greater ease than copy and pasting from a notepad. It gives us the ability -- eventually, since chatzilla seems a bit ornery -- to get into other, out-of-world chat channels and talk to people. It binds Second Life tighter to the Internet than it ever has been before.

That's not a fun, dinky extravagance either; that's pretty important for Second Life as a viable, communications platform. It's a small first step, but it's a giant leap for the grid! And it bugs me that people don't understand this... That they don't understand it to the point of complaining about it, instead of just ignoring it.

Khamon says these are the kinds of people who prefer playing Second Life without the mini-map, without land owner lines displayed, and who would probably like to play without the menu bar up top. If people really like a world without those kinds of digital streams, then I have a suggestion: log out and go outside!

[post=1069217]screaming at you[/post]!

Why you gotta be a playuh hater?

I don't hate the inclient broswer. One of my best friends is an inclient browser.

If people don't understand it, it's because a) we can't see the need for it, b) we can think of more important things to have development time spent on to improve the game for everyone, c) it's not a 'giant leap for the grid', it's a feature that a lot of people will probably never use.

I'm not complaining about it, I'm stating my view that I don't see any point in it, just like you're stating your view that you think it has some merit.

I really cannot figure out the point of 'tying SL to the internet'. What's the point of replacing something that's perfectly useful enough already?

Lewis

Don't blame me, I *love* the idea of integrating SL more tightly with the rest of the internet. If SL is supposed to be a platform instead of a game, then this is very important.

I know that there are a lot of people who would prefer to use SL as an Internet Gloryhole to RP their fantasies and hey, that's fine. Whatever floats your boat. and I can't see anyone trying to stop them. But I really like the idea of using it as a more realistic communications medium. That's why I came here.

In my opinion, another good step would be a system to allow those who want to to use their real names, and to confirm their identities on-line, and a built in way to differentiate those who are present as themselves, and those who are present anomously. I want to be able to combine the rest of my 'Net presence with SL.

In short, I want the Metaverse, not just another RPG. Hurray for this first baby step in that direction.

I think you've touched on something here, and I think it exposes the cause of most of these forum debates about the "direction" of SL. Simply put:

SL is an Elephant and we are all blind men trying to describe the whole based on the part we are currently in touch with. Lewis is in touch with the "game" of SL, Jamie/RBD/etc. are in touch with the "cash machine", several others are in touch with the other "platform" aspects, we're all getting bits of the whole, when it's really much greater than any of us suspect.

Now, to mix my metaphors: I for one am happy to report that it's both a dessert topping AND a floor wax!

I think Lewis, if you'd done much scripting of fairly serious projects in SL you would have run up against a few situations where you'd have found having a decent browser (or at least HTML rendering engine) to be immensely useful. Maybe those of us who sell can get rid of most of the laggy vendors out there and simply use these tools to link out to SLX and SLB, where quite frankly the shopping experience is better than any in-world vendor I have yet to see. LL needed a better text engine to bring us decent help and notes, while they were at it they looked around and saw what the potential that integrating Mozilla brought to the table, especially given their stated desire for SL to become a platform. I personally have been waiting with baited breath for Mozilla to come, and I'm overjoyed to see it arrive in whatever small way.

Also, most of what we fear from browsers has to do with IE and it's history, I'm not saying it's not a risk to have a browser in the client, but lets face it, you're already streaming tons of content onto your machine via SL all the time. Here's a tip: make all normal use accounts NON-Admin, that one simple step will go much further to protect you from crap than getting paranoid about the presence of a browser in SL.

[post=1069217]Yeah[/post]!

"Marriage" works fine too, why should we muck it up with same sexes. And voting was great before 1920... And, you know, slavery at least cut down on inner city violence... And Barbara Gordon should always be Batgirl!

When are they going to add a spreadsheet and word processor to SL? Minesweeper might be nice too!.

Anyone hating on the browser integration is a jackass who needs to stop wasting bandwidth discussing things they don't understand.

I know where you live!!

but Enabran, "Certain People" hate everything. I would even wager that "Certain People" would hate strawberries if they were freshly picked and delivered to "them" in a wonderful cake.

Thanks to browser integration, you can pull up a Google satellite map with your magic wand by typing stalk

I have to say this is a cultural fissure I had not seen explored in forum debates heretofore...

I didn't know anyone felt so strongly about immersion that they'd oppose an in-world browser. After all, we have browsers in the real world, and they don't ruin my immersion here...

and frankly, life could use hovertips.

That is where one benefit of HTML on a prim will come into play - the ability to make interfaces to the web that integrate into the world itself, instead of being a separate window. It definitely will solve a lot of the immersion issues as people will get very creative with them, I'm sure. I don't think there is an SL feature I have ever been more excited about than full HTML integration L - I have been waiting for it for a very long time. The amount of possibilities it opens up, especially if they add useful ways to be able to interact with SL itself, is staggering, and something that does benefit SL users as a whole. Some people are just too myopic to see beyond their little niche and see the larger picture.

It's not stalking... It's creative dating.

I'm not so keen on strawberries. Can I have a girl in my cake instead?

I agree. We don't need more smoke and mirrors. We need bug fixes.

Perfectly said. The benefits of proper, immersive HTML integration are impossible to fully grasp at this point in time. It's the height of jackasery to speak against these early efforts at implementation when the promise of the future is go great in this feature set.

I want hovertips in my real life NOW!

(Hovers over House == "Script Money"
(Hovers over Car == "Script Money"
(Hovers over Relationship == "Script Money", "No Modify/No Transfer"
(Hovers over Pet == "Free to Copy"

Would you prefer none of the innovations that have been added to SL in the past 3 years were added? Bug fixing is an ongoing process, and it is important - but so are adding new features to keep SL competitive and to continue to expand the possibilities of what SL can be. What showstopping bugs are affecting your SL so badly that no features at all should ever be added until they are resolved?

Well, you can try putting post-it notes on everything to simulate the effect

*takes a copy of Travis*
*edits and adds self-replicating and anarchist behavior*
*releases back into town*
*EVIL CACKLE*

"Holy crap! It's raining dogs... and dogs!!"

What he said!