Dazzle comments (was RE: [sldev] Viewer Roadmap)

Matthew Dowd matthew.dowd at hotmail.co.uk
Thu Apr 24 02:11:56 PDT 2008


Thanks for the roadmap. but (presuming the roadmap was sent out for comment/feedback not just for information)...

"Dazzle" and SkinningThere has been some amount of feedback regarding the release of the Dazzle UI changes before we release "Skinning Phase 1" (which will allow residents to install custom skins and switch between them, e.g. switch to a "classic" skin). This was an internal decision based primarily on the desire not to try to support more than one official skin. 
As many have indicated this was a predictable (and predicted) PR disaster - the result is that Dazzle now has strong negative connotations which will be particularly difficult to shift - particularly if LL proceed by just minor tweaks rather than a proper rethink initiated by the feedback, as this will just perpetuate the feelings that LL do not take notice of users comments.
 
Having now written a patch to enable skin switching, I was struck that most of the foundation code - particularly in handling fallbacks to defaults - is already there. The actual code to load a designated skin is only a few dozen lines of added/modded code - the rest (and bulk) of the patch is to add a UI panel to preferences to allow the user to change the setting.
 
Whilst I can understand the motivation to only support one skin, this doesn't reflect the user demand. I think you will need to support a minimum of two skins due to one simple reason - a well designed dark skin will not be harsh on the eyes whether you are using SL in a brightly lit room or a dimly lit room; however a bright skin, even well designed, will always seem harsh on the eyes in a dimly lit room (and your userbase will be working in both). Whilst you could get away with a single skin if you went with the dark one (e.g. the current one), going for a bright one, does force you into also supporting a dark one.

That being said, because the majority of the objections to the new look appear to be contrast and color scheme issues, we are going to immediately prioritize a project to provide an in-client interface for modification of custom colors and maintenance of these customizations across updates, just like we do for other settings.
This feels like sticking plaster over a problem rather than addressing the problem directly - also if this customization does not change the colours in textures (such as buttons, icons, etc.) its effectiveness will be limited. The current palette underlying the Dazzle scheme is fundamentally flawed (see Aimee's comments in the jira issue), and it really needs a redesign not a few tweaks. Moreover, you shouldn't be expecting a large proportion of your users to have to customise the colours before they being to use SL just to make the default UI usable - this is hardly going to help new signup retention.
 
Matthew
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