Focus Beta Refreshed
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 10:59 AM by: Which LindenWe’ve posted a refreshed Focus Beta to the downloads page. We made the minimum changes in order to get it compatible with the main grid again, and also fixed some of the more egregious bugs while we were at it. Don’t remember what the focus beta is? Check the previous post to refresh your memory.
The feedback we’ve been getting from this beta viewer has been great. The survey results have been very valuable to us, especially the well-written comments. We’ve also seen a lot of bugs reported via the bug reporter, some small, some large. All together, it’s really helped us make positive changes (most of which, sadly, don’t make it into this particular refresh, but you’ll see them soon). Great work, everyone! Thanks for helping us make Second Life better!
The (short) release notes follow:
Release Notes for Second Life Focus Beta 1.13.0(55375) December 6, 2006
=====================================
* Fixed commit-on-enter for spinners
* Re-fix IM window resize bug
* Give focus to the IM text field when you reopen it
* IM window doesn’t close if you hit Ctrl-T when it’s unfocused. Enables switching between chat and IM via Ctrl-Enter and Ctrl-T.
Let us know what you think of this refresh!
December 6th, 2006 at 11:24 AM
Still working on fixing find?
December 6th, 2006 at 11:36 AM
Lets see, main grid is broken, so every linden, receptist, community team including Torley, programmers, sysadmin, lets not forget Robin and Phillip needs to drop everything and start debugging and programming.
I hate to see the results of that programing experience.
Come on people each linden has a job, and they cant all fix the main grid. Every heard the term too many cooks in the kitchen? I am very happy that some of them are working to further along SL, and fix focus issues.
December 6th, 2006 at 11:40 AM
Yes Angelita, we have good people on Search, and I’ll continue to blog about it — we have a variety of Lindens with a variety of talents working on a variety of things. If you recall all the “Why the heck does my av keep jumpin’? DAMNIT I JUST WANNA CHAT!” issues from months before, as well as everyday usability confusion, you’ll know this has precedence — and a bona fide history of it’s own.
Also, please don’t make off-topic posts like the big text crawl says above the comment box. Comments here should relate to the Focus Beta… Refreshed!
I’m excited about the new Focus Beta too!
*goes back to Linden Answers*
December 6th, 2006 at 11:52 AM
Excellent!
I was disappointed when I had to stop using the last Focus Beta. I quickly got used to the new keyboard setup and was almost as frustrated with going back to main release as I was with all the post update SL issues. Using chat is so very much improved in the Focus Beta… no more avatar turning left and right when trying to back up in the chat text you’re typing.
December 6th, 2006 at 11:54 AM
hey as far as I am concerned you folks at LL are working your tails off on this. my 1 year renewal comes up this month, and i will whole heartedly be honored to support this wonderful RPG platform, by the way! Flameing & complaining accomplishes nothing you folks out there. this is a constant state of BETA software, we are dealing with. Get a grip, and step up to the challenge, or pack up you bags and search elsewhere for perfection.
Some what angry
JayR Cela
December 6th, 2006 at 12:12 PM
Agree with JayR. SL is something very new, and big picture wise it’s one of the first of its kind. Early adopters always have some bugs. LL may not always be the fastest on bugfixes or features, but I think they are the right people for the job because they see the right side of the big picture. I also recently subscribed- mostly because I’d rather see philip/LL in charge of this type of thing as it develops than some huge faceless corp that never talks to the users.
But back on topic (sorry torley!)
The last focus beta was great and I’ll be downloading this one tonight when I have some time to play with it. The controls are far more intuitive for a windows user than the main client, esp. the chat focus tweaks. Other stuff is nice but not saying wwwwwwwaddddddsssseeee (or going flying off in the middle of a conversation) is probably the most useful feature.
As I mentioned in my feedback survey, one important thing for the new feature set when it merges into the main client will be making people aware of many of the features. the ctrl/shift-tab type stuff most people wouldn’t notice, same with the numpad directional controls. if/as/when it gets merged into the main client, IMHO there should be a little popup help thing on the first launch which offers the user a quick run thru of the new control abilities. Otherwise I can see a lot of users getting used to the control/chat focus changes, but never learning of the mod-tab stuff or the numpad directional control.
And speaking of that, when might the focus changes be merged into the main client? Just curious…
December 6th, 2006 at 12:22 PM
I think LL is doing a good job and im anxious to see this actually hit the main grid :). Beck just a side note why should torley, and community people and other people that may not know a thing about programming get into a try to debug and code SL bug fixes will come and they are working their tails off to see it happen. They didnt intend this to happen and non of the stuff on the test grid is really going to tell you what happens when it hits the main grid thats a given. You dont have near the same load on a test grid nor near the same objects/scripts/textures and everything else going on with other people.
There is only one sure fire way to fix all the bugs in an update and that’d be slapping the suckers directly on the main grid as soon as they start coding them and then that would create more instability and more problems. This is an online game and new technology this kind of thing happens everywhere and if you really think you can do a better job go and do it and make your own game that has some innovation to it and see how easily things happen…..
December 6th, 2006 at 12:24 PM
Also a side note……. LL’s dev team is much smaller then a commercial companies they have mabye 40 programmers dev team…… And again see my post and the 2 above it
December 6th, 2006 at 1:41 PM
My fingers cannot readjust to the new keyboard layout (I am soo stubborn. :P); I’m worried that when Focus is released, we won’t have a choice between the old layout and the new layout. Please please PLEASE tell me there is that option? :O
>; Thanks, Torley.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:23 PM
Luna -> “I think LL is doing a good job and im anxious to see this actually hit the main grid :)”
If you are talking about the Focus Beta, it is main grid stuffs
You dl and use on main grid just like the regular client.
December 6th, 2006 at 3:28 PM
I think she means when it’s a part of the normal viewer download. That will happen as soon as it’s ready!
December 6th, 2006 at 4:00 PM
Great thing, that the user survey for the testers produced valuable results. I hope its not too much additional work to gather all the various opinions to see if a further development has worked out or what is still missing for an improved user experience.
December 6th, 2006 at 4:01 PM
Thanks Lindens, I liked the UI changes and disliked having to go back to standard. SL to connect to main grid.
I’ll be using it tomorrow.
December 6th, 2006 at 4:39 PM
The version number shown in bold print following the description of what the focus beta viewer is reads:
1.12.3.55375 The Focus Beta Viewer (Main Grid)
But the filename that gets dowloaded when you click the link says:
Second Life 1-13-0-55375 Beta Setup.exe .
This is on url http://secondlife.com/community/focusbeta.php .
December 6th, 2006 at 4:48 PM
And yet, still no Linux build…
December 6th, 2006 at 5:02 PM
I’ve been using the focus beta for several days and I can’t undo 13 years of document and code editing just for SL I’m sorry. I need the number pad to edit with when text has focus and I want it for player movement when the world has focus, you know, like it is now?
That makes sense. PLEASE put an option for keeping it that way when this client is released.
On that note the “Numpad numbers move avatar” selection is particularly meaningless now because if you put that on you get two sets of controls that move your avatar and NONE that edit text. AT LEAST make that function swap the av movement and text edit functions between the two sets of controls. That might actually have some utility then. (A better solution to prevent mutiny is priovided below)
Honestly, I am not sure you guys are prepared or appretiate the insane backlash that this current set of UI input changes is going to cause… Jumping wildy has become far far more common now than it was before. Coding and writing notes has become much much harder. There seem to be a few people here commenting on it positively and yet EVERY SINGLE PERSON I have met in world that has tried it HATES it with passion. I seriously do not think these forums reflect what the true opinion of this thing.
If you want to make changes but not utterly freak everyone out then at least provides is choices to set the movement/edit controls to:
1) Modal (like it is now)
2) Fixed Numpad moves / Arrows edit.
3) Fixed Numpad edits / Arrows move.
I do NOT want to give up my keypad for code and document editing in SL and I do NOT want to give up being able to adjust my camera without losing chat focus. That very issue was a HUGE hot button when it was last implemented. So much so a quick fix was made to correct it. I truly do not understand why you are now purposely re-introducing that unwanted mode of operation again…
I seriously hope that previous linden comment didn’t hint that this is planned on being rolled out anytime soon because it is far from “ready”.
Oh and please put back the fly/nofly key ([Home]), thanks!
December 6th, 2006 at 5:03 PM
Sue, thanks for noticing that, I made a typo in the page. It’ll be fixed tomorrow when the web page refreshes.
Sorry, Jesse, I’m actually splitting my time between this project and tracking down sim crashes, so the Linux build would have taken too much time. The normal linux viewer is alpha, so what would a linux focus beta viewer have been, an alpha beta viewer?
December 6th, 2006 at 5:12 PM
Thanks for the detailed description, Farallon. We definitely recognize those two issues as ‘hot’, and I think you’re describing the problems and potential solutions quite well. I can’t say for sure what we’ll end up doing, but we’re certainly trying not to break stuff for y’all.
December 6th, 2006 at 5:31 PM
Oh please please please make the new chatbar features be toggleable in preferences!
I hate the new way of doing things because I DO like to move around while typing, and it’s very frustrating trying to always be switching between chat mode and move mode.
For all you people who didn’t know…. you can CLICK in the chatbar where you want the text cursor to be. You don’t need to use the arrow keys on the chatbar!
*bangs head on desk*
December 6th, 2006 at 5:35 PM
One word: Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
December 6th, 2006 at 7:46 PM
Does ctrl + arrow key left / right and shift + ctrl + arrow key work in the chat text too now? I mean, the way it works in all Windows applications except for SL (moving the cursor one word back or highlighting a complete word). I’ve always missed that, to quickly edit a sentence before I send it.
December 6th, 2006 at 8:54 PM
One other thing to consider- allow all keys to be remapped at will by the user, much in the same thread as WoW or most other games. Allow 2 or 3 maps for each function, and import the current set as defaults. Possibly have a way to switch between saved sets of keys…
you could also take it one step further and store keybinds on the server…
That way those who use the dpad or numpad for movement could permanently unbind the wasd area from movement and never be bothered again.
December 6th, 2006 at 9:39 PM
i havent read the whole thing, but one bug really ‘bugs’ me that, if we go teleport ourselves, sometimes we came out shorter and fatter than our current avatar. Other can only see it but not the user who’s handling the avatar. the only way to fix it is by teleporting to somewhere else and back again., But then again, sometimes it works sometimes it don’t. does anyone have the same kind of experience?
December 6th, 2006 at 9:40 PM
I just want to add that I play SL on a laptop so any issues with the number pad don’t affect me and I don’t see them. Also I loathe WASD for movement, being a console gamer and always use the arrow keys. In fact I wouldn’t mind if SL had joypad analog stick support for movement. (how about porting it to the PS3.)
December 7th, 2006 at 3:09 AM
Perhaps I’m allowed to ask a quick question before downloading the new Focus Beta. At least on the Mac version, the previous Focus Beta did have a “random shout” bug — because of the way the keyboard input is processed, during some lag spikes, it was not uncommon to have your avatar shout instead of saying things (I was explained that this sometimes happens because the lag spike caused a previous “shift” toggle status not to have been cleared, and since on Focus Beta Shift+Enter is a shout, that’s what you sometimes got). This was rather frustrating and embarrassing during some of my business meetings
The release notes for this Focus Beta don’t seem to address this issue (perhaps it’s so deep ingrained in the way the keyboard handler works that it’s “unfixable” in the short term, except eventually by reassigning the “Shout” button to a different, more-hard-to-”stick” key combination). This is a minor bug, of course, and most of the people don’t really care about shouting by mistake, except for the ones engaged in private communications
(which these days is not only about sex 
).
Of course, instead of addressing this issue, there might be alternatives under way that I’m not aware of. Once SL is totally ported to TCP instead of UDP streams, out-of-order packets will be dealt with in a totally different manner, and this “shift sticking” bug will simply disappear. Or some change might me in the works where parcels get a new feature that allows you to check “Restrict chat to this parcel” (similar to what we have to sound for so long), a really needed feature which might be under development for ages and just hasn’t seen the light of the day yet, and thus introducing more complex code to validate that the Shift key is not “stuck” is a waste of developer’s time at this moment.
As to using the Numpad keys exclusively for movement, I would like to point out that laptop users don’t have the benefit of a Numpad — unless they override part of the keyboard, thus preventing effective chatting, as is supposed to be the purpose of the Focus Beta. One might argue that this could be, indeed, an option, for the “Numpad-impaired” users to be able to use the usual cursor keys instead.
Farallon, I’m sure that Linden Lab is not evaluating the success of the Focus Beta based on the answers here on this blog entry, but really from the completed surveys. I, for one, have liked the previous Focus Beta very much and said so on the survey, although I’m afraid I won’t be using it until I can be assured that the “stuck shift bug” gets fixed. I’m sorry for that — I feel rather uncomfortable to discuss business with my RL companies and having all the neighbours listening in to the conversation due to a bug
(which I can’t always explain that it’s not my fault, but a flaw in the SL client application I’m using)
December 7th, 2006 at 8:00 AM
I’m still not grasping exactly what is meant by “focus”, in this context.
What bothers me is not being able to move my avatar when I am IM’ing someone who is just out of chat range while we are working on an extended build or just out shopping and they’re moving faster than I am.
Personally, I’d like something where the arrow keys move the avatar. Period. All the time.
December 7th, 2006 at 9:48 AM
FYI, the random shout bug is still there, it hit me again last night…
December 7th, 2006 at 4:25 PM
Hmm.. looks like the survey is remembering everything i entered last time …
December 7th, 2006 at 5:51 PM
Oh, yeah, SurveyMonkey tracks you via cookies, which is quite handy if you want to interrupt a survey that you’re in the middle of taking.
December 7th, 2006 at 6:01 PM
Max, ‘focus’ means that only one part of the program handles your keystrokes at any one time. If you put your cursor in a text field, like to edit the name of an object, you want the arrow keys to move the cursor, and not move your avatar, and you want the ‘f’ key to make a letter, not make you fly. All programs have a concept of focus, it’s just that the way they implement it that varies. Second Life is a particularly tricky program to get it right, since it’s so completely unlike any other program. In some ways, it’s supposed to act like a first person shooter, and in other ways it’s supposed to be more like a document editor/word processor/file explorer. So, it’s a pretty weird beast in the UI world.
December 7th, 2006 at 9:11 PM
Sorry but i can’t grasp the logic.
Ctrl-Enter open/close chat field, leaving content intact, switching rapidly between chat focus and avatar focus. Ok. Like it, because it makes my chats more correct (i really don’t have the time to find the pointer, move it to chat and click. Way too long). I don’t leave anymore typos go out. Just a small detail: the insertion point is lost.
Enter open chat field when closed. That’s intuitive, and what wa are used to.
Enter when chat field empty does nothing. What I’m waiting is: Enter toggles chat on and off, with focus to chat. Huge problem here: opening/closing chat is now (Enter, Ctrl-Enter). And on the Macintosh keyboard, Shift is side to Alt, and Alt-Enter is Change Resolution, an slow and horrible experience. Hit me about five times, then reverted to main version. Is there a reason why Enter on empty chat should not close it, or did I missed something?
Here we have:
(Enter, Ctrl-Enter) toggles chat on/off
Ctrl-Enter toggles focus in/out.
What I would like to retain:
Enter toggles chat on/off.
Ctrl-Enter toggles focus in/out.
Simple, straightforward.
I’ve noticed a lot of improvments in floaters focus handling. It’s a pretty weird beast in the UI world, but you are on the way to better ergonomics. Thanks for the good work.
December 8th, 2006 at 12:48 PM
There’s an option in Preferences > Chat to close chat when hitting return on an empty text field, Jeff. Not many people know about it, and it’s off by default.
December 12th, 2006 at 12:59 AM
Which, not many people know about it because it is difficult to find: http://www2.pescadoo.net/chat.jpg
This is 1.13.0 (55375) running.
But there is point I really hate (i really, really don’t understand why it hits me *today* ??? after i’ve filled the survey) : when the chat is opened and i Alt-Click to move my camera, the “Press Ctrl-Enter or click to chat” appears and chat looses focus. I’m debugging a script in the sky, i adjust carefully my camera to see what’s happening, and when i speak to say “first” to the script, focus goes the flying avatar which F……alls !
I thinks focus rules are complex enough to NOT add automatic focus change. A camera movement is not a focus to avatar. And sorry, but the semantics is fuzzy. When focus goes to av, the chat box is closed. That’s what i’ve learned from the UI. Chat window closed, focus to av. Chat window opened, focus to chat. We all love simple and easy to retain things. So what is an opend chat window with a greyed message? A half-opened chat? That makes no sense to me.
A last thing. Please do that from chat closed:
Enter -> chat opened
Ctrl-Enter -> chat closed
Enter -> chat opened
Alt-Click to move camera
Ctrl-Enter -> chat opened (or closed)
Ctrl-Enter -> chat closed
No sense again. I’ve to remember that the chat was half opened (ore half closed) to know that i have to Ctrl-Enter twice, or Enter Ctrl-Enter to close it. Way to complex. This, added with the number of times i’ve triggered a change of display resolution (Macintosh) hitting Alt-Enter instead of Ctrl-Enter, makes that i revert now to the main version. I appreciate greatly the efforts you make to improve the UI, but the solution as now is not workable for me.
December 13th, 2006 at 9:52 AM
[...] have been helping us in testing the focus beta. Big thanks to those who have been helping us with this! [...]
December 13th, 2006 at 12:33 PM
[...] Hello everyone, we’re in the midst of the 1.13.1 update, the bulk of the 1.13.1 release are bug fixes and the User Interface changes which we have been helping us in testing the focus beta. Big thanks to those who have been helping us with this! [...]