08-20-2007 17:37
Hello forums!

I decided to make a scripted HUD friends list after a few people suggested adding a Refresh button to Second Life's friends list as a way to fix it when it shows inaccurate information. The Aux Contacts list, as I have named it, queries the dataserver to check the online status of the people you have added to the list. There's a Refresh button, and an adjustable/optional automatic refresh.

You can add whoever you want to this contacts list, friend or foe, as long as their name is in the w-hat name2key database, they are within sensor range, or you can enter their agent key manually. (HUGE thanks to w-hat for providing their name2key database, without the likes of which this would be a hell of a lot harder to do. www.w-hat.com)

The HUD is small, unobtrusive, and provided modify/copy. You can tuck it neatly into a corner, and hide/unhide it with one click.

If you have 67 prims to spare, you could even place it on your land to show which employees are online or something. The scroll buttons and Refresh button are public access--only the menus and minimize button are restricted to owner.

I think this is best provided as a freebie, for many reasons. Firstly, it's not always accurate. Sometimes the friends list will show incorrect data while Aux Contacts shows correct data, and sometimes it's the other way around. Second, there is a limit to how many names you can add to Aux Contacts before it crashes and you lose the whole list: about 40. There is a load-from-notecard feature to make this slightly less painful. Third, it makes extensive use of a free service provided by w-hat to resolve keys from names, and before long you'll probably have trouble adding someone to your list because their name isn't in the name2key database. Fourth, I hope you'll see something else you like when you tp over to grab a copy. And finally... we need a friends list that works anyway. This is alot of script time and dataserver usage that shouldn't be necessary.

Well, if you are interested, come pick up a copy from my place in Eon (:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eon/174/123/701