User Interface meltdown!

In my opinion, the SL user interface needs a major overhaul. The interface at the moment is incredibly cluttered, and it's far too difficult to do far too many simple activities. I've only been here a few days, but I find much of the interface extremely frustrating, and a lot of the problems easily solved. (If this has come up before, sorry -- but hey, I am a beta-tester, right?

1: There's nowhere to put windows that isn't covering something inworld, and since we're constantly changing camera angles, every window will eventually cover up something important.

Solution: How about a window dock, on the bottom or the side of the screen? This is a common solution used by tons of games -- instead of windows, a pane in the dock changes for the type of inventory you're looking at.

2: There are simply too many little windows in general. There's no reason why I should have to double-click a landmark and then click a button AND THEN close the window to go a landmark -- I should be able to simply right-click on it, select "teleport" or "fly", and be done with it.

3: The inventory system is a mess. First of all, a lot of the categories in the inventory don't go together. I can accept that I "have" textures as well as objects, but landmarks? We need separate windows (or, as per above, panes) for objects, landmarks, textures, etc. At this point, there's no way for me to keep my commonly used objects (outfits, accesory objects, building objects) separate from the rest of the clutter that's in there. At the very, VERY least, we should be able to open a separate window for each folder if we want.

I think that's about it for now -- but really, in general, the UI needs a lot of tightening. I'm assuming that this UI is just meant to be functional, since the is the beta, but at this point I'd say it's the worst thing at SL. The dock I've request above is most important -- we NEED a place to store all of these windows that won't cover up the screen! Users should not have to drag little windows around. (An alternate solution, and another reqest of mine, is to be able to shrink the viewable area on the screen, creating a black border in which I could place my windows without fear of covering up my friends.)

Sorry if this sounds a little crotchety -- but hey, user interfaces are a big deal to me, and I don't see anyone talking about them here so far.

Thanks!

User interfaces are big with me too, and they have been talked about some, just not a whole lot.

I like the docking idea. Currently I use the alt + mouse drag a whole lot just trying to get things into the area of my screen not covered by windows. The point where that becomes about impossible is scripting, at which point we need the option to turn the script window partially transparent. It would be great if you could drag any window to the edge of the screen and 'dock' it, and it would adjust the viewing window accordingly.

I think the inventory needs a ton of work. My suggestions would be to make it tabbed, with 1 tab for each kind of thing that can go in there, each tab custom designed for what goes in there. The contacts tab would look like an address book. The textures tab would show thumbnail views. The sounds tab would look like a playlist, with folders of course.

Also someone else mentioned an idea that definatly needs to be taken as far as it can: simple mode. For apparence at the very least.

another feature i'd like to see in the UI is non-in-game windows. i don't know how feasible this is, but since i'm running a multi-monitor setup, i could maximize SL on my 19" monitor, and then put all the tools and such on my 17" next to me, leaving the in-game view free and clear so i can see what i'm working on and/or where i'm going

I agree entirely with the posts above, we need a UI overhaul. I mean, I know this and I'm just a newbie! lol. I think this problem should be addressed soon, to not follow the example of The Sims Online, where major problems with UI were not addressed propmptly or not addressed at all. Coming into the game was quite disorienting, there was tons of junk everywhere, Ive havent even gotten done with finding out to use under half the menus/windows/controls out there. LL, please address these issues as they could be impeding new players.

contrary to what the other people are saying here, i don't personally have a problem with the UI, other than sometimes winding up with too many UI windows open at once, clogging my screen. but then, i was born and raised on DOS, so any UI is easy for me to figure out

Actually, I'm thinking less of a dock and more a status bar -- think of what you see in pretty much any other computer game, for instance. Like, say, Warcraft 3 -- you have controls, inventory, and other essential clickables down at the bottom, the game above it, and a map in a HUD. I'd say that anything purely informational should be a transparent overlay (with the ability to turn it on and off of course), and that everything else should be off the game screen.

The root problem, I think, is that windows in general simply don't make sense in Second Life's game metaphor. The game screen isn't something we drag icons along, it's something we're supposed to be LIVING in. It's better to make our window into the world slightly smaller than to fill it with irrelevant dongles. Either in first life or in second life, I should never have to obscure a beautiful sunset just to see what's in my pockets.

Menus aren't nearly as intrusive into the game experience, but we shouldn't have to choose between using menus and using keyboard shortcuts to do simple activities. How about an actions toolbar? Anything, really, would be better than this unnatural interface.

One of the things I like about the interface is how clear it can be, and how much viewing space I can get.

Most everything can be closed or minimized.

Someone a while ago suggested a dynamic pie menu to replace the current pie menu, one with sub menus that poped up around the center ring depending on which option you hovered over. I think that would be great.

One thing with the interface is, it is really designed around advanced users. People who know their way around a computer. There is a lot of adapting to the interface being done. The ideal interface should adapt to the user instead.

I do not want a permanant docked bar / status bar ala war craft. It would take up too much space.

I wuld like to see some simple mode stuff. For apparence, the 'file' etc menus along the top, maybe more.

I would also like to see an inventory overhaul. It is way too messy and cluttered now. I decided to make some quick scetches of what I wanted and I realized that only 2 features are really needed to make the inventory much much more usable.

1: Seperate the different types of items into different tabs, one each for: objects, textures, sounds, scripts, clothes, landmarks, notecards, and calling cards.

2: A 'preview' pane at the bottom of the inventory window. Whenever an inventory item was selected, information or options would automatically be shown in this window. For each of the different items this window would show:
Objects: Name of the object, cost to rez, permisions, sell cost.
Textures: A preview of the texture
Sounds: Options for playing the sound and show the length.
Scripts: Which events are handled.
Clothes: Same as Objects? I don't deal with outfits much. :/
Landmarks: Distance to the landmark, buttons to fly or teleport.
Notecards: The actual text of the notecard.
Calling Cards: Online status, muted status, group in, rating, button for IM.

I will attach my sketch, although it is very rough, and has a different calling card layout then I say above.