New or improved Inventory

I did a quick search and found many ideas for sugestions. But some seem either too ambitious for the time being for lindens to impliment or not enough people like the idea. Below I will propose some ideas:

1. Explorer like management: 1 folder explorer window frame and 1 file frame, allow drop n drag from either frame just like Ms Windows explorer or Mac OS X.
2. Opening objects in inventory such as containers (may be too hard to impliment)
3. Offline Management tool (post 6 Argent Stonecutter has suggested a method and examples)(May take too much dev time)
4. Allow symbolic links instead of having to copy objects, similar to windows shortcuts (existing proposal for this is here: Proposal 1165)


Please post if you agree, disagree, have a suggestion i should add, or any other comment. This is my first post so if I have stuffed up some where, please be gentle I have made the harder suggestions in italics.

Dave

I'd love a Windows-like (or Mac like) "file" exploration system.
Opening containers like a folder would also be awesome.

I'm still in favour of a Mac OS X column view, a vastly superior list view.
Basically, each column is a list, where the rightmost list is the one you're looking at, which each list to the left of it being the parent folders leading you to that location.

An alternative to this (and similar in style but requires less space) is to open folders in new tabs, for example by pressing alt and double-clicking a folder, or by right-clicking and choosing "Open in new tab", with another option to open in new window. This new tab or window is JUST that folder and it's contents, allowing you to narrow the list down rather than making it more and more massive as you expand folders all over the place.

That's why I said "or Mac" as I've found that kind of view useful, if not my favorite.
Any of the solutions is fine by me, so long as it improves.

Yep mac os x style would also be great!

How about making inventory management an external function... download an XML copy of your inventory layout from secondlife.com that you can edit in an external program, or have the client able to dump it for you, and have that external program pass back a list of changes. For example:

<inventory oid=1 name="Argent Stonecutter">
  <save-set-id>0278-2676187-37861736-386782368-37267826</>
  <folder oid=2 name=Animations>
    <animation oid=3 name="Floating Meditation">
      <access>copy transfer</>
      <creator>Forgot Whoitwas</>
      <received>1897621673663</>
    </>
    <animation oid=4 name="Bad Upload">
      <access>mod transfer</>
      <next-access>transfer</>
      <received>1897621670110</>
    </>
    <!-- etcetera -->
  </>
  <folder oid=5 name="Clothing">
    <!--...-->
  </>
  <!--...-->
</>

(I know the save-set-id isn't really UUID format, but it's supposed to be)

The IDs sent down are OIDs local to the save-set, not UUIDs, so the external application can't snarf things like texture UUIDs from it.

Then the program could return a list of commands like these, to be applied to the set:

<inventory save-set-id=0278-2676187-37861736-386782368-37267826>
  <delete oid=4/>
  <move oid=1569 folder=2/>
  <copy oid=161123 folder=2/>
  <edit oid=9361><next-access>copy mod transfer</></edit>
  <!--...-->
</inventory>

That would be a cool idea, provided there are no security holes or vulnerabilities. But obviously this would be sorted out in the beta phase along with debugging.

But from what I can tell that may be too much to ask for. It looks like it may take a little bit of dev work as well as heaps of testing.

But in any case I would also love that feature! I'll add to the top.

Do recall that they recently reproduced a bug that wouldn't show if you tabbed through a dialog but did if you clicked. I don't know how you even start to make that kind of bug.

Also, it was years of requests to get searchable inventory. Don't hold your breath.

If we don't ask for it now, then we certainly won't ever get it. I can understand this kind of thing is probably on thier lowest priority, but if enough people reply to this post and we can get it to the voting stage I think it will stand a good chance of going through. Especially if we request just the explorer like aspect.

It is mainly cosmetic in nature. They will just need to add a few extra calls that already exist and that should do it. Personally if it takes 2 years..them's the breaks. But if we don't ask for it and follow proper procedures we certainly won't get this any time soon or ever.

I am willing to try. All i need is people to post or reply. Then I can get this to the next stage.

Well to be honest, inventory is a problem, people have thousands, tens of thousands of assets and no easy way to manage them, which only makes them worse. Inventory updates, including things like some kind of object shortcut or symbolic link (so you can re-use an object between avatars) would reduce copied objects and things like that.

Added symbolic link idea to original post. Cool idea btw. I thought about that when I first started sl, but i got used to the system and forgot about it. But it is a good idea! Especially for items that aren't copyable, should be able to have a symbolic link to it for outfits etc.

If you want this, vote on proposal 1165, it's the oldest proposal of this type and has the most existing votes.

I suppose this (inventory viewer) is something that can be done by a 3rd party now that the SL client is now open source.

Nice thanks for that. I voted for it I did try and search for some proposals for inv but i was only looking for the "look" kind of mod. But this is great..i will add the link to the original post.

I spend at least an hour a week culling my inventory online. If I could perform this function offline (times 21,000 users online at any given moment), think of the number of hours that potentially could be freed for SLers.

The UI already has the ability to add multiple - functional - inventory tabs (http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4224/inventorywu3.gif) to the inventory window by playing with the XML, removing the need for multiple open inventory windows. You can drag/drop between them the same way you can drag/drop between All Items and Recent Items.

There are some quirks, such as setting a filter always only affects the first inventory tab, but it seems like someting that should able to be polished up without much effort.

(The above quirk is enough for me to decide that it's unintended behaviour and I won't risk my own inventory over it, let alone someone else's, but I would love multiple inventory tabs in addition to multiple inventory windows as an official feature)

Now when I open a folder in the invetory, it keeps opened even if I close the inventory window for a while. This is a good feature to have.

But, I would like that when I close the same folder, that then that folder keeps closed when I reopen the inventory. Now the same folder that I once opened keeps staying open no matter how many times I close it, when I open the inventory again, and that is frustrating.