settings.ini - wow, that's useability in action!

Why would they keep a leopard in the basement? That doesn't make any sense at all.

Well yes. I think that might have been the point.

As someone who approaches the SL UI at times like a baby with a busybox, .INI files scare me. I've edited it before, but it's out of necessity (i.e. FOOT SHADOW-KILLING HACK) instead of comfort. Thar be a big difference.

Some other related observations:

1. Remember when Chat and IM was a single Chat/IM tab in Preferences? Now it's been split into Chat and IM, with the latter looking suspiciously empty. I wonder what else will go in there, and having looked deeply into Tab Mix Plus for Firefox, I still doth ponder why there isn't a simple slider to change width of tabs. (Some Resis like to show full long names, others want to show many tabs at once so they shorten it up. 1.7 tabs are slightly wider than 1.6 ones.)
   

1. I'm going to play with the new hovertips setting to see how it goes for me in action. My preemptive feeling is that like most other system prefs, I'll initially be resistant but usage with time will fade that, and it'll be the second nature of my Second Life. (Wish I could say the same for the splash screen, which has become a technically-impressive but emotionless bore compared to 1.5's golden sunarc.)
   

1. Something that long drove me nutty about customizing particles in SL was how fidgety it was to do in a script. Even with Jopsy's mod of Ama's script, which is handeeee, not being able to move a slider in realtime and watch the gradual changes—as I'm accustomed to on sonic synths—put a damper in my creativity. I haven't seen an HUD or any sort of GUI for this yet, either—a few prototypes, yes, but nothing that I've really been able to get tactile with. There were some kewl synthesizer environments in which you'd especially have soundscripts, and map different parameters to a UI. You could then skin it and get sliders and knobs to respond. One of these is SynthEdit. Now that HUDs are a reality in our virtual reality, more "playful" interfaces are—and will continue to be a boon. Some Resident-created gadgets may even get LL to think of better ways to improve the client interface.
   

This is a bullshit answer. The avatar creation sliders are enough to cause sensory overload but i dont see you moving to make that system any easier.

WTF is the preferences for if not to toggle a setting on or off?

This is sheer laziness. Thank the GODS i don't pay for 3 sims anymore.

Briana Dawson

Sounds like we need LL to make a "power toy" or something to easily edit the INI file. Or one of us can just whip up an editor. It's not that hard.

Why did Philip bother to post it to the forums as a 'maybe, what do you guys think?' if it was a done deal? There's something worse than a company that doesn't give a shit what its clients want or think, and that's one who pats them on the head and pretends to give a shit.

Don't bother asking for our opinions on something that you're going to do no matter what we say.

KILL shiny?

Shiny is worth more than our lives!

Even to THINK of killing shiny is blasphemy!

That's it. Drop and give me.... INFINITY.

Come on Khamon:

touch_start(integer p) {
llEmail("effector@example.com", "presto", "i can control the world from my HUD!";
}

It's not perfect, but geezus, it's a huge step.

Sir, yes sir!

HEH at least its nothing like Poser. Talk about bad design. THAT company has problems. (Whoever owns it now.) Even thou it is a bit more detailed. Poser has been the single most annoying program I have ever delt with.

My sphincter, working three hours a day for two weeks, could have produced a better UI than Poser has. It is the single worst commercial example of user experience I have ever beheld.

Yes, which shows that you're a group of coders with no useability expert. Design being done solely by coders isn't a very good way to make your software accessible to the predominate user - the consumer. Do you actually have a useability expert on board at all? I mean, full time involved in the day to day development of SL?

EDIT: Yes, we already know it's trivial for the .ini because your actual UI is so convoluted to add new options that it's more trouble than you can be bothered with. That has been said by a Linden on these forums before - your own architecture makes you take the easy, less intuitive route.

Hey, that's such a normal way of a company making customers feel like they're involved! It's the way many companies operate.

As an analogy, we went for a visit to the school that my daughter is starting in January. They've just appointed a new headteacher which the current headteacher started by saying that said the children were involved in picking, by having discussions, saying what they'd like to see in a headteacher etc. Involving them in the process.

She totally ruined it at the end, by a slip of her tongue I suspect, by saying that when the headteacher was appointed the kids actually thought they'd had an input but actually their views hadn't been taken into account at all and were a seperate exercise that had no bearing on the appointment itself.

For some reason, that feels real familiar with LL

PS. Oh yes and another teacher said that picking the headmaster has been a very intensive process. That last 2 days!

You could already control the world from any other object, attachment, or website or application... dude i can send email from my freaking cell phone, who cares about your silly HUD

STFU noob
Who here remembers the last time LL tried to hire a "usability expert"?
His name was Oracle Omega... he got to play SL for free and in the end his input amounted to "yup, looks about right". The much touted 1.2 UI revamp ended up being the silly blue buttons at the bottom of the screen...

ok. Why not have a 'designer/scripter/builders' client, and a 'socializer's client'. I dunno. It seems like that's where we're headed. Download "SecondLife Basic" or "SecondLife Pro". The Basic version wouldn't even -have- building options as to not scare the ... as Enabran said, 'uninitiated'.


I thought that LL was trying to focus on conversion from basic to premium... I'm not so sure the mentality jives here... but we'll see. Hopefully we won't lose stuff like Debug and shift-alt-9, highlight transparent, etc.

I was the smart a$$ who requested that it be moved to the settings.ini file. I've been working surpadicly on a config tool for the settings.ini file. There are something like 300 settings. Most of which you don't want to change. Did you know there is a setting to change the increment that axis rotation snaps to?

Torley, about particle sliders, that would be wonderful , but....

Although particles are a client side production, altering the properites of a particle system involves an llParticleSystem call to the the server which both takes time and would also require an update of any other clients with the particle system involved in view. This would make twidding the particle sliders slow and server intensive compared to how particle system sliders could and should work, which would be that the visible changes would occur on the particle system designer's machine only, until she clicks an ok button or oherwise commits.

Imagine the welcome area full of HUD particle system controllers all making the particle system run through all the value of all the parameters, maximum particles and maximum updates. Heh Heh. Might be a self limiting problem.

Why didn't you tell me about that Strife , remember me complaining about how it uses 1/2 1/4 1/8 etc. fractions of a circle instead of nice old familiar degrees?

Well at least you did tell me now. Hmph.

---------------

How can you have a useful SL client with Zero building ability ? People might want to take an object out of their inventory, right?

Now if there was just a setting to shut off this blasted script scheduler, life would be good.

Does File Quit handle that?

Speaking as an avowed power user, might I suggest that a better way to go about this is to move these controls to an "Advanced Prefs" panel? Or something more akin to the Debug menu, that has to be turned on?

Even though I have no trouble finding and using .ini settings, that doesn't imply that I WANT to do it that way. It's still counter-intuitive and annoying.

Requiring users to leave the program entirely in order to change settings is poor design. It also reinforces the gap between normal and advanced user (by using completely inconsistent methods rather than building on what is already learned).

It would be trivial to make a really fast particle configurator if we had access to the damn code, or a client-side VM.
I've said before in another thread that LL is crap at paying attention to details. Everything available in scripting should also have a GUI and vice versa. There should be GUI editors for particles, vehicles, and complex multi-prim shapes a la ShapeMaker and XyObject.

YES! Gods above, yes.