Cliffhanger

Now that the TPVP (Third Party Viewer Policy) series is over, let's focus on the second soap opera from the Linden Lab Studios: "V2". The scenario is very impressive but the realization... not that much.

So, the scenario in short: Let's make a new viewer! Let's try to keep those new visitors who come once and never again. Let's make a browser!

My last post about V2 says it all. I hate everything about it. I haven't found a single feature to save it. And I'm not alone. A little visit in the so-called forums shows that every thread about V2 degenerated very quickly in a bashing party. PR bullshit and frustration have that tendency to push people over the edge.

The chat/IM system is totally broken. The chatbar forgets to take the focus and you type into the void half of the time while your avatar starts to move, jump, etc. The chatbar is also ridiculously small. The popups are a real nuisance. (Every modern browser has a popup blocker... except V2.) The use... over-use... abuse of the profile pictures everywhere just wastes space. The sidebar is totally crippled and limiting. Too many things try to forcefully find a place into it but you can only have one single tab open at any time. The layout is pathetic. There are huge empty spaces all over the windows, floaters and toolbars but everything in them has so few room that you must use arrows, links and buttons to have access to the full version. The tiny icons lost in an ocean of black at the bottom of the sidebar are really misplaced. The floaters which don't turn to transparent when they lose focus raise a real wall in between you and what's really important in Second Life: the world. The bottom toolbar lacks some very useful buttons of which the functions are now hidden in menus. The land media controls are too well hidden and make no sense. The ones who decided to shrink the view when the sidebar appears are now the most hated people in Second Life. The menus labels are totally alien and the menu organisation totally disrespects the long tradition of what people expect to find in the menubar. The navigation bar can't be hidden... unless you don't want to know where you are, what the land settings are. The pie menus are sorely missed. The level of personalization is close to zero. The colors are a bit depressing.

These are the problems I really care about. To the list you can also add the crippled camera and movement control floaters and the broken search which now seems to obey to the new policy of the maximum wasted space to present only a few results by page. I say "seems to" because the search doesn't work for me. Whichever way I open the Search window, I can see the contents for 1/4 of second and then it's replaced by a empty black page.

And last but not the least: V2 is slow! Very slow! I hardly reach half of the FPS I have with Imprudence viewer. I was using V2 recently to check the script memory usage on my land and in my attachments and it was almost laughable to see it load the items in my inventory one by one, at the incredible speed of one item per second.

And the answers from the Lindens to these issues when they still bothered: "You're allergic to change". Seriously? Yes. Or else "v1.23 is confusing". This one is the most laughable argument. In v1.23, you have only floaters which may contain tabs. Period. In V2, depending on the mood of the designers, you may have a floater or the (huge) sidebar will jump to your face. The sidebar has embedded floaters which will slide over the expected contents and stay here if you forget to close them, even if that means showing obsolete informations. The ridiculously small text areas have sticky popups to show the full contents. Talk about confusion.

The reason behind the split of the Communicate window is "because some people find it confusing to have both public and private chat in the same window and may end up typing private chat on public channels." Errr... First, this doesn't hold when you see private IMs mixed with very public group IMs. Second, this concerns only some people who could detach the public chat or any IM thread from the Communicate window. Instead of that, the majority of the people who don't find it confusing can't have a single window for chat and IMs any more.

There are still arguments about the whole Communicate window as demonstrated by the Cool Viewer where everything is still split as a long time ago. I didn't remember how it was and all I can say is that I love "my" Communicate windows. All the posssible ways of text chat in one single window. You can choose a friend, a group in 2 click. The layout can be improved but even in its current state, it makes sense. Instead of that, V2 forces you to open the sidebar and shows you the nearby people so you have to click to switch to friends or groups, then select, then right-click to open a popup menu and click again or else click one of the buttons nobody sees at the bottom. Come on! Talk about a rare efficiency!

I won't bother about proposing solutions, the Lindens don't care about user input. They took a very powerful drug which made them think that everything they do is wonderful and those who don't agree just don't understand the concept but will eventually get used to it... if they swallow tons of video tutorials.

At least, that's the feeling the Lindens have been sending until last week blog post. They have deserted the so-called forums... Probably repelled by the numerous bugs... The number of bugs filed against V2 on the Jira has exploded and these bugs are now treated behind closed doors. No need to come to monday's bug triage, there's nothing interesting any more.

Back to last official blog post. Once you remove the crust of PR crap, you can read: If you download V2, it means you love it. (Ho yeah! Really NOT!) It works well for those who know nothing else or, at least, some new comers come back... as if all the noobs never came back before V2. Linden Lab has also decided now to acknowledge that the oldtimers exist too.

(Excuse the sarcasm but Linden Lab has totally lost my trust in them with their repeated attacks against the users.)

So, in the future V2.1 which should arrive this summer, people will be allowed to choose not to let the sidebar squeeze the view. Not an option but already fixed in the V2 tweaks on the wiki. The "Build" option will come back into the menu where it should never have disappeared. (Fixed by the tweaks.) The bottom toolbar of v1.23 is coming back. (Partially resolved in the tweaks too.) I'm just wondering if all the buttons which used to be there will fit in the tight space. Some space must be reserved for the IM profile pictures, even if they are microscopic. (The really big question here is: Will the "Inventory" button open the sidebar or a floater?) The camera and movements controls will be reverted to their previous version. (Just one of those non-broken things that were fixed.) "Individual volume controls for Shared Media objects" will appear. (I've no idea what it means, I'm just expecting something laughable.)

The Lindens should now be a little relieved that the flood of hatred has greatly diminished in the so-called forums. I really hope that they don't fool themselves in believing that everybody will suddenly be happy with V2.1. Actually, when you look at it, there's really not much in this announcement. The major problems --the sidebar, the chat/IM mess, the land media controls-- are simply not addressed... and until at least 75% of the users have a viewer compatible V2, any improvement they might do in Second Life is useless. Period.

Let's wait and see... and prepare ourselves to be greatly disappointed.