[sldev] Roadmap: 1.19.0 Viewer

[Lawson English]

Argent Stonecutter wrote:
>
> Second Life has the XUI files, configuration operations in the XUI 
> files are pretty close to free... because they have to be there 
> anyway, but they're limited. You can make minor changes, but you can't 
> script them, you can add a tear-off for the contacts tab, but you 
> can't add a button to open it. And you can't save them... every time 
> you get an upgrade they go away. The best thing that LL could do 
> *right now* to improve the UI is have it look in your SL application 
> profile for skins/* before looking in the Second Life 
> application/resource directory.
>
> And then *see what people do with it*.
>
> And *learn* from it.
>


And they should  keep in mind that "game" interfaces have always been 
exempted from the Apple Interface Design Guidelines, even in the 
earliest days and that even for production-oriented apps, a provision 
was made for logical exceptions to the Guidelines. The 
paint-palette-like curving trail of choices used by the original Bryce 
Tools (IIRC) were later copied by many other interfaces, including 
Apple's, not simply  because they looked cool, but because the natural 
motion of the arm follows that curve.

The point being that the immersive goal of an MMORPG (which is what 
Second LIfe is cloesest to) allows for a different KIND of interface to 
facilitate that immersion: we don't need the interface to look and act 
like a LL version of a commercial app's in order for it to be usable--in 
fact, quite the opposite, in many situations.

So whatever options LL provides for, near-term and with some hoped-for 
complete rewrite of the GUI, should be with an eye not just for 
customization, but with an eye to facilitate the immersion process, 
since that is, I believe the overriding goal of Second Life for most 
people, including builders.


Lawson