oh for the love of your residents...

AAARRRGH! Same problem here! I was wondering what was going on and this thread has explained it.

Try this... tap the alt button... see how the menu items at the top become underlined? Now when you press wasd to move you end up opening the menu at the top. I press the alt button all the time to zoom and pan around objects when working on them or zooming into someone. When I try to move... pow!... i'm AFK all of a sudden. What happens is after I am zooming around with my view with alt.. I try moving by pressing w.. which brings up the world menu.. then i am holding w down I end up selecting 'set away'.

Why not just use tab to get to those menu options?

Yes, agreed, whatever was changed with the Alt key is extremely frustrating. It's good to know not everyone is experiencing it, but why the heck that would be is beyond me. I'd love to see it back to normal ASAP, it is real difficult to talk, build, etc.

The problem is that the ALT key already had a functionality, which wasnt broken and didn't need 'fixing'. To list it as a 'new feature' is absurd... more likely it was something they actually borked while trying to do something else and never got around to fixing THAT mistake before this latest 'update'. "So, hey, lets just call it a 'feature' and maybe no one will notice how incredibly stupid it is!"
Considering that I have the menus constantly at the top of my screen, focusing on it was something I could easily do with my eyes and mouse. If you wanted to impliment a hotkey for calling up the menus, why o why would you use a key who's functionality has already been established?

Gahhh!!!! So THAT's what caused me to, on three different occasions, accidentally TP back to my home location!

And my dear friend typed quite a bit of personal text into a Help Request window instead of IM window....

Yes, I would concur this "feature" is something we could do without.

I still can't find anything wrong with the Alt key behaviour, but I did notice that if you have your mouse cursor over the menu (or near the top part of the screen) and you start typing, it'll start picking menu options regardless of where the current text focus is, but it happens without holding the Alt key so I guess that's not what people are complaining about?

What I'm complaining about is this:

You use your ALT key to focus on an object in-world; the thing you're building, the store you're perusing, your lover's face, whatever. You're using your ALT key a lot, for whatever reason, but you are also trying to chat, or type in coordinates while building, or whatever, and NOW, a mistaken 'tap' of the ALT key that you've been using so much all night while constructing your dream house, takes over the menu commands and you are inadvertantly teleported home, or at least your screen gets filled with a bunch of drop-down menus, because you've been typing away thinking your cursor is still in the chat bar rather then being hi-jacked by some new 'feature'.

**inhales**

It's annoying, it's stupid, and it wasn't necessary... or, if it was, the function should have been assigned to a key without a current function. Simple as that.

It's REALLLY simple, TAP the alt key, for just a half second, and watch the focuss change to the menus

dnel....no offence but what are you snorting? we know what the hell we have to do. are you reading at all wtf we are complaining about? i mean really wake up open your eyes read and read again and again if you have to. we don't want to keep tapping this shit everytime we're panning or editing. we like what we had....this is no damn "feature"
how about this dnel....you show me how this is a "feature" rather than a pain in the ass and maybe i'll let everyone else know about the "just tap the key for half second" to. accidently typing in live help or tping somewhere you didn't mean to go to is just not ok in my eyes....the accidently typing in live help is gonna be embarrassing for those cybering when they are getting all explicit and linden come in the window saying wtf? oh then those anal lindens who will think it's cause the person is griefing so now they are being reported with harrassing or intolerance.....come on now. wtf are you guys snorting?

it's value as "a feature" is undeniable. Adding a way to navigate the GUI via keyboard only is an important accessability concern. One that SHOULD be strongly pursued.

However.. the Alt key... being as heavily used by mousers as it is.. was the WRONG key for the job.

Frankly, I think Linden Labs would do well to spin off some "accessability tools" that could be downloaded as an "add on" pack for the main SL client. So when we were downloading and installing the latest client., we could check "Easy Access Features" or whatever. Frankly, there ought to be a panel on the preferences window JUST for all the "accessability features" that often conflict with other things.

blink text entry firld outline when it has focus
display cone of context for colour pickers
enable keyboard menu navigation
etc

BUt then.. they could give us a way to bind our own keys to various functions as well.

I discovered a hidden setting to configure (and disable) the alt-key-tap functionality. I describe it here:

/142/28/161210/1.html#post1390200

Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

This is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE UI derailment.

It was in the beta and it was in the first look client and I and others reported and warned and reported and warned some more. It is one of the worst "feature" bombs we've had yet.

This kind of thing is unforgivable. EVERYONE report this as a "bug". It must be fixed!

Thanks for the temp hack but this litle surprise does not need to be there to trip up every single person that logs into SL.

Saving the alt+WASD ketys is NOT worth this hassle. Making the menus KB driven IS a good thing and they SHOULD be with the alt key as that is the standard. If the WASD keys need a new meta-key then CHANGE THAT!

I was responding to Kitty's posts that she couldn't find anything wrong (See 2 posts back from where I posted last) Perhaps I should have quoted her. If you read my posts on the subject you would know that I do not like the new 'feature' either. And yes offence taken, I have no idea what I ever did to you to evoke such a personal attack. Disagree? Sure. Debate? Sure. Personally attacking me, especially since my comments were misconstrued, out of line. Rude much? Sheesh...

ok so i didn't see that post till now but umm.....me rude? hmmm......this is actually me being polite. tis ok, many don't understand me.

No, it is simply not OK. Laughing off a personal attack because 'many don't understand (you)' is not OK. I suppose I shouldn't expect more though. I'm begining to understand why all our forums are disappearing.

I'm done here now.

i'm dying over your comment of asking if i am rude....you aren't the first nor last that will tell me this nor do i really care. the thread isn't about me being rude or being nice. i personally don't care what others think of me. me thinks someone pissed in your flakes this morning if you have to be that anal over a comment but oh well. not all of us can brush things off and have a laugh.

Lousy feature! Drove me nuts last night. Its gotta go!

I'm not sure which is more annoying. Alt-tap, or Kinga.

Can we get rid of both?

It's not actually the tapping of the ALT key that's the problem. It's the order in which you release keys after focusing.

Try this:

1. Hold ALT. You get the focus cursor.
2. Hold left mouse button. Do some focusing. Get your focus on. Work that thang.
3. Still holding both ALT and left mouse button, right?
4. Now let go of the ALT key, keeping the mouse button held. Oh snap, did you see that? The menu highlighted.
4. Release the mouse button. Menu is still highlighted.

Now when you try chatting or using hotkeys, you end up deleting your builds, parking your hard drive, and letting all the air out of the hydraulic lift in your office chair.

Okay, now that really is a bug to report, in that that's not how things work for me. I always let go of the ALT key after holding it down just long enough to click down the mouse button, and I am not experiencing any odd behavior.

EDIT: Actually, I'll double-check that tonight. I'm pretty sure I let go of the Alt key, but I suppose I've never really paid attention.

Not reproducable behaviour for me either, it doesn't focus on the menu at all *confuzzled*.

(Edited to add that I always use full-screen if anyone ever tried to see if it makes a difference. I see the brief flash of focus in step 4 when I have SL in a window, but it still doesn't stay highlighted after releasing the mouse button)

lol.. for some reason help request is the thing it keeps jumping me to also..

that and everything else. I use alt constantly just for moving the camera.. i don't " tap it" when I am just typing normally but for some reason in the middle of my sentences im opening up all kinds menus

I also feel like the way chat works is different for me or I'm just losing it.. or both but before it seemed the mouse curser defaulted in the chat bar for me easier.. if that makes sense.. I guess what I mean is I feel like I am having to click in the chat bar more often to type than before but not really sure if thats the case

Release Notes for Second Life 1.13.2(15) January 25, 2007
=====================================
Changes:
* Tapping Alt to focus on menus has been disabled


I just thought I'd post a follow up on what has happened. So yeah! Thank you for correcting this!

YES.

THANK. GOD.

Also, if they could put a muzzle and a leash on whomever came up with the idea and control his or her moves verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry carefully for a little while, that'd be lovely.