"Release Keys" button: Terrible Placement

The "release keys" button defaults to the spot where the "IM Received" button appears when you get an IM. When you actually get an IM it slides over to the right and then back once you click it.

Really. Terrible. Placement.

On the bright side, while i noob walk around, the enviroment looks great ^^

Also fun is that it will drift upwards each time you go into mouselook until it moves off the screen about halfway through. You then no longer have any buttons (no IM, no Release Keys, no Stand Up) and the lower right notifications will now take up 1/4 of the screen.

I'd love to know what the QA people at LL actually do (they are supposed to have them) because it's simply impossible to miss half a dozen bugs within seconds of using the viewer.

As I've commented in other places, the drift/strange height appears to be a bug, it normally appears in the right place, but opening/closing the chat bar or going into mouselook can mess it up.

But, what I'd prefer to them fixing it is to remove those buttons entirely, changing the IM button into an icon that appears on the "Communicate" button and pulses slowly so you notice it. Or heck, just make the "Communicate" button pulse when you have unread IMs, clicking it will open the communicate window with the IM tab selected, or if already open switches focus to IMs.
Then move "Release Keys" into a menu somewhere, as I never EVER use that button anyway. If necessary, make it an icon somewhere at the bottom as well in a similar vain, maybe alongside the media/voice controls where it doesn't take up extra vertical space.

To get rid of the "release keys"button,

Quit Second Life
Go to your root second life directory (C:/Program Files/SecondLifeWindLight)
Go to skins/xui/en-us/
Look for a file named: panel_overlaybar.xml
Open it in a text-editor
Delete the following

<button bottom="1" follows="left|bottom" font="SansSerif" halign="center" height="20"
label="Release Keys" label_selected="Release Keys" left="229"
name="Release Keys" scale_image="true"
tool_tip="A script has taken control of your keys. Click here to release them."
width="102" />

Save the file
Open second life and log in, presto, button gone.

Theres a slight catch, once Second Life gets updated again, and changes are made to the UI, its most likely that the button will be there again and you'll have to delete it from the XML file again..
Other then that, its working for me.

Err? Are you saying because there is some complicated hackneyed workaround that the problem is really OK and that we should live with it?

eh wow.. this is what i get from trying to help?
No i didnt say that you should live with it.. i merely found out myself how to get rid of the button and thought i'd share it with the people who think its placement is annoying too.

No thanks.

Why cant release keys be moved to the tool bar and off the screen totally it is a pain no matter where it is on the sceen!

It isn't complicated at all....you just delete a paragraph in a text file. And I don't see anything "hackneyed" about it either.
But if you don't want any workaround until it's getting fixed in the next release, your choice. It's not like someone told you to change your HD for SL or something.

Please do vote on this on JIRA:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4541

the layout has known bugs, youre late.

If I had a dollar for every time this bug has pwned me, I'd be rich. Or just have somewhere around 10 dollars. Until the next release, I'm going to try that workaround.

This bug is amazingly funny. Aren't I glad I still use* version 1.18.2.1?

*And by "use" I mean "log in about once a month for less than an hour"

Cheers for posting the work-around, but unfortunately I don't think it helps for the Mac version, since all the files are packaged up "inside" the application, so downloading any update will over-write it

Downloading any updates I believe screws with the windows install as well, if that's any consolation.
BTW, from what I understand about Mac programs is that the application is merely a folder with metadata on it that makes it a program rather than a folder: can you open it up and explore it? If so you could always copy out the xml file (like us windows users do).

Honestly, considering that I've never intentionally used that button, placing it anywhere near other common functions is terrible placement. I really fail to see any reason for placing it on the primary UI in the first place. Did anyone, at any point, ever have to explain that to the users or a superior in their department? What was their reasoning for it? There are other places that function's button could be placed which are further out of the way and yet still make the button -more- functional than it currently is (just like a car's brake pedal would be less functional if it were placed somewhere that caused it to be activated frequently by accident).

Thanks for the posting of a workaround, though. I've been pining to remove that button from my UI since the second week of being in SL and just never knew what to edit. It's such a common annoyance (yes, I'm clumsy) that I don't mind editing the file every time there's an update.