[sldev] Linden Lab Navigations and Landmark Project

[William F. Zachmann]

No need to be insulting, Callum.  Nor is there reason to assume that
because I advocate the case for technically challenged SL residents that
I am one.  I have been programming for a very long time -- likely since
well before you were born -- in a wide variety of programming and
scripting languages and on an equally wide variety of software
platforms.

As to the point at hand, I do understand what you are proposing, at
least to the degree of specificity you have offered so far.  My concern
is that it is far from obvious how to implement it without making it
MORE rather than LESS complex for non-technical residents to do what at
least quite a few of them have so far managed to learn to do reasonably
well:  to easily and conveniently put locations and/or pictures of their
friends in the Picks page/tab of their SL profiles.

If you want usefully to discuss the matter a good next step might be to
spell out just how one could implement your suggestion while creating a
user (resident) experience that makes it at least as easy/convenient for
folks to do what they already do -- preferably even easier and more
convenient.

As to your "technical list" comment and its implication that it is
somehow irrelevant in the context of Second Life software development to
discuss the impact on a non-technical user's (in this case an SL
resident's) experience of the software being developed, well, I'd say
that is fair evidence that my concern about technically-oriented
developers sometimes paying insufficient attention to the purpose,
function, and impact on users (SL residents in this case) of the
software they develop is reasonably well founded.

All the best,

Arifi/Will

Arifi Saeed
     Research Director,SL
     Canopus Research Inc.

William F. Zachmann
     President, Canopus Research Inc.
     Contributing Editor, Redmond Developer News

wfz at canopusresearch.com
   +1-781-934-9800 (office)
   +1-617-851-0773 (mobile)
Skype:  william.f.zachmann





-----Original Message-----
From: sldev-bounces at lists.secondlife.com
[mailto:sldev-bounces at lists.secondlife.com] On Behalf Of Callum Lerwick
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 3:20 AM
To: sldev at lists.secondlife.com
Subject: RE: [sldev] Linden Lab Navigations and Landmark Project

On Sat, 2008-04-19 at 13:08 -0700, William F. Zachmann wrote:
> I think this is an important issue not simply in terms of the specific

> point here, but more broadly in that there does not seem to me to be 
> sufficient awareness and concern among developers working on the 
> software of the perspective of ordinary residents in Second Life (and 
> many more who do not ever become active residents because they find it

> too difficult to learn their way around).  My concern is that 
> technically proficient programmers do not typically find it very easy 
> to put themselves in the shoes of a non-technical user (SL resident) 
> or to appreciate how difficult it is for ordinary people to learn 
> their way around SL.

And non-technical users have trouble understanding what engineers are
talking about on (what I thought was) a technical list. I really have
better things to do than hand-hold everyone through every offhand idea I
toss out to the world.

No, I'm not proposing users hand-write profile pages in vi on their own
server. I'm talking about moving the *backend implementation* to
standard, proven, flexible, adaptable and interoperable web technology.
This would all still happen within the SL viewer on top of Linden Lab's
infrastructure.

Assuming LL is at all interested in this idea.