Should we stop showing hover tips for non-interactive objects?

*Sigh* This will be discussed ad nauseam and never reach a conclusion, I'm afraid, since LL does not disclose the way their platform works. I can only assume that this request from Philip is tied into increasing performance. My early assumptions (unnecessary hits on remote database servers) apparently have been shown to be incorrect — and I'm glad they were. On the other hand, there may be rendering issues instead which can be solved this way. I don't know and LL won't probably tell us anyway.


50-100 people out of 85,000? It's still just a handful.

And it's not even something they're "hiding" somehow — it's loud and clear on the release notes, for all to see and eventually comment upon.


Kelly's post on the other thread seems to explain quite well the reasoning behind it — he breaks down the user base of each feature, and how a feature gets to be a) implemented directly; b) optionally selected from Preferences; c) configurable from the settings.ini file.

What you seem to be suggesting is a nice opportunity for the programmers in SL to finally create the first "SL add-on" — a settings.ini editor! After so many years demanding user collaboration on the SL platform (beyond providing content, I mean), here is at last an opportunity to develop something useful and easily integrated, by contributing code for an external application which does useful things to SL's settings.

lol i could not find mine so i search for it in start menu

YUSH!!!

A friendly frontend with HANDYDANDY sliders instead of having to manually edit values.

Best Idea so far. I was actualy very annoyed when I downloaded the latest version of the SL viewer and my tooltips were missing. The tool tips give you the very useful information of who something belongs to.

You really think only 50-100 people will be irritated that they can no longer use mouse over to find out who owns an object on their land? Or 50-100 who can no longer use mouse over to find out basic sales info on plot of land? For every person who bothers to post, there are many many others who do not.

I followed this thread before the change was put in and it seemed that the reasonable consensus was to give us a choice of how we want to use the mouseover:
- no mouseover
- mouseover on useable objects
- mouseover on all objects

AND to be able to easily switch between the various modes from the client. They didn't give this to us. They hid it from us in the ini file which means I have to log out, switch it on and log back in when I want to use it.

Hopefully among the "angry people" are a few programmers that create the before-mentioned "settings.ini" editor, then.

A few Preferences also demand logging out and back in for changing it — so this is just another one...

I'm with Aurael, While sometimes hoover tips can be annoying, as in playing mahjong which someone already stated, I do use them a lot. Make it a choice and default it to show on interactive objects. I'm all for free choice!
Digi

How about a choice where if you want all hover tips to be shown they can be or if you just want the scripted to be shown?

I'm glad you pointed this out.

It is estimated that only 10% of SL users regularly access these forums. Of that 10%, many never post, for several reasons. Either they're just not the verbal type, or they don't want to get blasted by some brainless troll, or they don't want to get in an argument, etc.

So for every post we see here, it can be accepted that likely several hundred (thousand?) people feel the same way... they just don't bother to post it in the forums.

It seems to me that this "hack and slash" solution has done more harm than good. It needs re-working. I mean really... no professional system should ever have a customer go to the ini file to make changes. It should always be done through a user interface. Especially changes entailing the degree of difficulty Linden Lab sent us in those instructions. And it's not MY system I'm concerned about-- it's new users who will miss the names/instructions posted on various items for their information.

Eliminating redundant hover tips: good. Eliminating valuable hover tips with limited or no real user options: bad.

Here's a major example of the hover tip elimination problem:

ElvenGlen Museum. We have an extensive sword, archery and artifacts display. Up until now, we had used hover tips to identify the name of the item on display and the artist who made it. Now... nothing. People walk by all the displays, swords, bows, shields, paintings, scupltures... and never see a thing about any of them. If they do wish to see something, they have to *right click*edit*more* just to see who the item is made by. Imagine doing that for 100 displays. That is just not right. Before,all they had to do was hover over the item and they'd see item name, description and owner.

Same with our paintings (and this applies to just about every museum in SL).

Do you know what a pain it is to work on sim cleanup now? Trying to figure out whether an item belongs to a landowner or whether it's just trash?

So really, I have to wonder whether this was thought out well. The disadvantages to eliminating hover tips for non-interactive items are numerous and should have been forseen.


I'm just pretty sure that when users responded in this thread that they'd like to see excessive hover tips removed, that not a one of them meant to default newbies to limited hover tips and then don't give anyone the option to have all hover tips show. Didn't anyone at LL think this through?

The DEFAULT of hover tips should be FULL HOVER TIP DISPLAY, with other options should a user so desire. And I still agree that the option to hide only hover tips for "Object" titled prims is an excellent option. But newbies should definitely have hover tips turned on full to help them become better acquainted with SL.

Or even a 'always show hovertips' checkbox on items. Sure, annoying to go back and fix our items, but anything that started as a post by Philip 2 weeks ago and is now in production was obviously fastlaned for a reason (gotta be server or database load), and I'm for nearly anything that reduces lag these days.

If you have modify access on the items you could put a small script inside them for object pays that immediately returns the money to the payor -- that would get a hover tip to show. (Again, hackery at it's finest.)

LOL, yeah, I thought of this. However, 3 thoughts...

I definitely 199% agree that an option to "Show all hover tips" should be available to the user... and the default for new users.

It could have been fastlaned just because someone at LL was personally getting tired of hovertips. That's the simplest and most likely explanation... LOL... because as mentioned before, in order to decide to NOT show a hover tip, the system still has to retrieve the data to make that decision. From a logic standpoint, if anything it increases data access time, because the server now has a to make a decision: do I show the hover tip on this item, or not? To do this, it has to ask: Does this item have an interactive script in it? Is it for sale? Is it copyable?. Before, hover tips just displayed, no decision time involved. (Of course, I don't know the actual inner workings of the system). Either way, it seems the data still has to be accessed.

Re adding a small script... LL tells us that all scripts cause server overhead. So if we have 100 items in our museum... that's 100 more scripts to get added to the load... and we have more server lag. It's a catch-22, no-win situation.

What LL might need to do is take this basic idea (ie, eliminate unnecessary hover tips) and do it right.


*btw... a more efficient system than a pay/return payment function would be to simply set the item for sale at $99999999999. That would work. . But even that wouldn't work for items that are no copy or no transfer.

Sometimes I think they do stuff like this just because they get tired of nebies asking how to turn off the hover tips.

Kaching! Barbarra hits the bullseye! LOL

***Please be careful when editing .ini that you don't change something else that you might need.


* New Hover Tip default behavior:
- View menu > select "Show Hover Tips" option (the default setting) now shows Hover Tips only for objects with which one can interact.
- View menu > deselect "Show Hover Tips" option works as before; no Hover Tips will be shown
- To view Hover Tips for all objects (the old default behavior), LOG OUT OF THE GAME and add the line "ShowAllObjectHoverTip TRUE" to the settings.ini file, found in the following locations:
- Windows: Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings
- Mac OS X: Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/SecondLife/user_settings
- To view Hover Tips only for Land, add the line "ShowLandHoverTip TRUE" to the settings.ini file instead.
***IMPORTANT NOTE: Be sure to use a TAB character between the option name and the "TRUE" setting. Then, after editing the file, restart SecondLife to see the Hover Tips as desired.***


***You can find your settings.ini file with a Start/Search

`````````````````
This is off of a notecard authored by Char and passed on to me...
I think this is a terrible idea to have us, as users/consumers, modifying our own .ini files... seems like more chances for ppl to mess up their game.

Also, I feel that turning off the hover tips could have been an *OPTION* not a *DEFAULT*. As a retailer and builder, I use those tips to instruct and notify my consumers and friends of how to use the objects I create and any other little tidbits that would be benificial for them to know.

Another valid issue Dreams.

How many merchants out there sell boxes which contain instructions in the item name and description? That's what the item name and description are THERE for.

Won't work now! Now we have to put in a script with either floating text or a notecard giver. How many tens of thousands of merchandise items just become non-understandable to newbies?

YAY! More scripts in world that should help speed the sims up

Definately not the idea' solution, but if you're relying on the hovertips for something like the name/artist on a photo, painting, sculture, etc in a gallery, it's a solution.

Obviously the most elegant solution would be one developed by LL -- Maybe someone should hotline this?

A rep from LL came by ElvenGlen today and spoke with me regarding SL status. I thought it was very nice of them. We had a very decent discussion all in all. I know LL can't do that all the time, but it's appreciated when it happens.

I made a promise to relay information on to others. Linden Lab states (paraphrased): yeah, not everyone is happy with the current stats of hover tips (including some at LL) and it is going to be "fixed" in some form or another within the next week or so. First thing they said was "It was a mistake"... and I cannot fault someone for fessing up to an error of judgment. 'Cause maybe that way, when it's my turn, folks will be equally forgiving. LOL

Anyhow, the word is they don't know exactly yet what steps will be taken, but that they will be providing more options in the matter somehow, and shortly.

The thought was to still have newbies default to limited hovertips mode... but I took the opportunity to recommend just the opposite. It's an easy matter for experienced users to turn off hover tips. It's very difficult for newbies to figure out how to turn them on... and they're the ones that need them the most.

I further suggested the "default" status of not showing hover tips on either land or on items named OBJECT (recommended by several in this thread). I believe all other hover tips should default to SHOW... and hope LL agrees.

OK, done me fair duty. Passed the word on. This is one LL is working on and wanted to let us know that they are. Kudos to them on this.

A simple suggestion that might alleviate some of the concerns raised in this thread. Why not add ANY object with a description to the tool tips that show by default, in addition to any "interactive" object. If the creator of the object went to the trouble of setting a description, you might as well show it. A better option would be a checkmark on all objects for tool tip settable by the creator or anyone with mod rights (check it when you want tooltip to show), but that requires some UI changes and its obviously harder to implement.

erf. I really liked the hover tips.. I hope they come back soon. in the meantime..

I just got one thing to say here....(not directed to way personally)

Everyone keep talking about the small percents that view and post at the forum, how so many little use it etc etc etc......

then what the hell is LL relying on only the few people to make votes and changes to the whole world??

sorry Linden Lab, I give you great achievment points for positive changes but really there has to be a better in world announcements to these changes and proposals....Most people I know that I even had to remind of the change then show them how to change back the ini (opening a can of worms there btw) never check the forums due to the massive drama infested execution style posting that goes on here.

all I am saying is yes vote on changes but it is a small % over all suggesting them. want to make a useful change....introduce a better in world communication with people that do like things the way they are therefor dont come to the forums.
forum is drama for thousands of people, that is why they wont even log on to them.

Note: I like the old hovering tips, most devolopers and shoppers do.

that they have taken away this feature. Some of us NAME our things and they are named for a reason.. it is so that people can see what things are. Do i now either have to set everything for sale? or stuff them with a note card?


PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE make it an option to turn it on or off in your next update.

A Really disappointed
Luthien Unsung.

I think that's a perfectly valid question, myself. I wondered about that too...but just a quick mental adding-up on the voting system suggest that there are a lot more people voting on proposals than posting in the forums. Not just every forum-girl and her 2 alts, but a lot more.

I'd guess that it's more representative (being that more people seem to use it than the forums), but I'm still guessing that many residents don't know about the feature voting system.

Of course, then there's bread and circuses, but that's a whole separate issue. Not in this scope.