[sldev] New Viewer Shell Proposal

[Lawson English]

Ben Glenn wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> It’s been a while since I’ve posted to the list so I want to start by 
> thanking everyone who’s been helping out with efforts to improve 
> usability in the Viewer, either by attending office hours and bug 
> triages, filing and managing bugs in Jira, or sending me useful 
> suggestions via email. It’s all incredibly useful, so thanks!
>
> But the real reason I’m writing is to let you know about a new 
> initiative to make measurable improvements to the Viewer UI. I posted 
> a high-level project description to the Wiki:
>
> https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User_Interface_Improvements
>
> The goal of the project is to revamp the overall organization and 
> presentation of commands and tools in the Viewer in order to make the 
> UI less intimidating for new users, while still remaining flexible and 
> extensible enough for power users. I don’t have many specifics in 
> terms of schedules and deliverables as of yet but I wanted to get this 
> out there and start gathering Resident feedback as early in the 
> process as possible. Consider this an experiment in “open source UI 
> design.” Please feel free to add your comments in-line or on the 
> discussion page. And if you’re interested in helping with a particular 
> aspect of the design or implementation, even better!
>
> Thanks again and I look forward to working together with you on this 
> important project.
>
> Ben
>
Saijanai Kuhn here.

As you know, I'm a big fan of the power and extensibility of the 
scriptable WoW GUI and client:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Widget_API
http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft_API

I believe that any new interface should be designed with two goals in 
mind: the utility of the GUI to the end-user at various levels, AND the 
[future] ease of scripting (keeping in mind that most/all of the SL 
client should be scriptable at some point in the future, starting with 
the GUI).


Lawson