SO! We have a small little experimental feature we want you to know about…

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[Resolved at 10:50pm Pacific] Our Support Portal is back online!

[Updated at 10:10pm Pacific] Maintenance is in progress. — Frontier

As reported earlier this week, our support portal will be offline for system maintenance tonight, Saturday, 26th April.

Our software supplier has reduced the length of the downtime from six hours to three, from 9:00pm-Midnight PDT.

During that time, the support portal will be unavailable for chat or ticketing services.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause to you.

Our support portal will be offline for six hours of system maintenance this Saturday, 26th April from 6:00pm-Midnight PST. During that time, the support portal will be unavailable for chat or ticketing services.

We’re excited to announce that Second Life 1.20 RC0 is now available for download from the test software page. This Release Candidate viewer brings lots of goodness in the form of fixes, a new UI look and feel (formerly codenamed ‘Dazzle’) and UI improvements, scriptable glow and better support for 3D input devices!

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a known issue in this Release Candidate on OS X with Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The primary mouse button will toggle the “Flycam” mode. This will cause unusual behavior and we do not suggest using Second Life 1.20 RC0 with a Mighty Mouse at this time. We will fix this bug in the next RC.

[UPDATE 9:48 AM] Tools menu: The Tools menu has not gone missing!  It now displays in the main menu when editing/creating objects.  Click on the Build button or right click and select Create.  Existing short cuts  (CTL + 1, 2, 3) all still work and will also activate the Tools menu.

Reminder: Release Candidate viewers are optional updates that contain the latest round of bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Please try the RC viewers only if you want to participate in the bug reporting process and identify issues before they become the default viewer. You can have both a Release Candidate and the primary viewer installed side by side on your computer, so if issues are encountered when testing the RC viewer you can switch back to the production viewer.

Details:

UI: This Release Candidate includes significant updates to the visual design and architecture of the Viewer’s user interface, including:

• A new, lighter color scheme
• Improved UI graphics (icons, buttons, etc)
• Ability to customize text color of Instant Messages
• Enhancements to the UI texture rendering system
• Ability to reference textures by filename
• Support for non-powers-of-two textures
• Support for PNG textures

Some important notes regarding the new UI appearance:

• The new UI appearance is installed by default with 1.20; Residents who wish to continue using the pre-1.20 UI appearance should not update to 1.20.
• Based on feedback from the Dazzle First Look viewer, we are tracking a number of bugs related to the new UI appearance; see PJira for the complete list.
• 1.20 includes a limited capability to create custom UI “skins.” Although this functionality is not officially supported by Linden Lab, a basic overview of the current XML functionality for creating custom skins is available on the Second Life wik
• The new UI appearance was developed in parallel with ongoing initiatives to improve Viewer stability and crash rates, and did not impact those important projects.
• For more information about the new UI appearance, including a list of frequently-asked questions, please see the Dazzle page on the Second Life wiki. For more information about Linden Lab’s longer-term plans to enable Resident-created UI “skins,” please see the User Interface Roadmap.

As always, Residents concerned about user interface and usability issues are welcome to attend Benjamin Linden’s weekly in-world User Experience Office Hour, held every Thursday at 3pm in Beaumont

LSL scripting for object glow!

• Script a prim’s glow attribute, details on the Second Life wiki:
• You may want to try a script such as THIS!
  default
  {
  touch_start(integer total_number)
  {
  list values = llGetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_GLOW, 1]);
  float glow = llList2Float(values, 0);
  llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_GLOW, ALL_SIDES, 1.0 - glow]);
  }
  }

Improved Joystick and 3D input device support

• Integrated a new open source library created by 3Dconnexion designed to integrate multi axis input devices with Second Life
• Joystick devices can now control the Avatar, Edited Objects, or the Flycam (View menu > Joystick Flycam)
• Added a “Joystick Setup” window to the Preferences under “Input & Camera” for adjusting multi axis input devices
• Settings are currently optimized for Logitech’s 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator but should be tunable for any joystic or 3D imput device

Other changes:

• Removed voice setup wizard from Viewer
• Removed “Detecting hardware” from first-use startup to save 10 seconds of start time
• Removed “Critical Message” string from startup community standards dialog
• Removed “Start Gesture” from menu bar
• Removed “do you want streaming audio” dialog
• Removed Friends dropdown on Map
• Display the Camera and Movement controls by default
• Added online offline notification to open IM windows
• One click sit not be available if you’re already sitting
• Replaced “(hippos)” and “(waiting)” with “(Loading…)”
• Print the name of the missing gesture in the error message
• Double-tap forward to run
• Adjusted the right-justified text on the splash screen
• Ctrl-shift-1 now displays Statistics in a floater
• Login progress bar change
• Option available to turn off all group titles to make name tags smaller
• Small UI tweaks made to the “near me” floater for usability

List of fixes:

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Fellow Residents! I want to talk- with YOU!

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[Completed 4:30 p.m. PST - Kate] Operations has concluded changes and restoration of group and profile services. Please clear group cache via the debug/Advanced menu or relog to have group and profile services restored.

As part of a plan to increase overall stability of the grid today during peak usage hours, our operations team will make some changes at approximately 1:00pm Pacific which will reduce overall database load and create a more reliable experience for everyone. As a side effect of these temporary changes, some group and avatar profile services will not be available.

Specifically:

• Avatar profile information will not be transmitted to the viewer. This affects both floating and embedded profile windows.
• General group information (name, charter, etc.) will not display
  in floating or group embedded group info windows.
• Groups will not show their member lists.
• Group owners and officers will not be able to eject group members.
• Group proposals will open the UI, but will fail to create.
• About Land will show 0 for traffic. (Please note: this is temporary, and impacts only the display of traffic, not the recording of it.)

Please note that all of these effects are temporary and will return to normal behavior when we re-enable these services later today.

We will update this blog post to indicate when these services are re-enabled.

Over the next week or two, we will be making some changes to the database cluster that we believe will significantly reduce the effects of peak loading that many of you have experienced over the past several weeks. The mitigating measure we’re taking above is something we will only use until those permanent changes are in place.

Thanks for your patience as we work to improve the Second Life experience..

So, since yesterday’s viewer release, we have gotten a flurry of responses- about half seem to want to give us their first born child: “thank you for making this such a wonderful lag free experience now!” “runs better than release” “Great work! Great product!” … and about half want to tear us limb from limb “<expletive deleted>” “<expletive deleted>” “<really expletive expletive deleted>”

So, what *is* a resi to do?… (more…)

A new 1.19.1 Release Candidate Viewer (RC3) is now available with fixes based on issues reported in RC0, RC1 and RC2.

Remember: Release Candidate viewers are optional updates that contain the latest round of bug fixes and/or soon-to-be-released new features. Please visit the test software page to download the Second Life 1.19.1 (RC3) Release Candidate viewer if you’re interested in helping us test these optional viewers. Source code will be available for download soon.

Changes and fixes new in 1.19.1 RC3 since RC2: (more…)

[RESOLVED Mar 22 08 - 2:42 PDT] - The issues have been resolved and should no longer present themselves. If you continue to experience related issues, please contact support.

There are currently issues with in-world transactions, teleporting and related activity. We are working to address the issues as quickly as possible. Please refrain from transactions as necessary and keep an eye on this blog for further information.

[RESOLVED Mar 21 2008 5:09 PDT] - The issues should all be resolved now. Please contact support if you experience any related problems.

[UPDATED Mar 21 2008 3:03 PDT] - Our teams are continuing to address these issues; however, we have no new information to provide at this time. Please continue to watch this blog for further updates.

We are aware of multiple issues affecting the whole of Second Life and are working to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Please refrain from uploading textures or making any transactions for the time being. You may notice problems with logging into Second Life, grey textures/avatars, inability to Teleport, failing transactions.. among other things.

We will update this blog as soon as we have information to update with.