Viewer Skins/Starlight

	Important!
	Use caution when installing these skins, as modifications to your installed software files are not officially supported by Second Life support

By:	Hitomi Tiponi
Viewer Version:	2.0 - 3.0
Information:	Starlight 2.0.1 - 3.0.0701
Source:	Various
Image:	StarLight skin - Original Orange Theme StarLight Themes

About

This skin is designed to give more choice, and hopefully improve the usability and promote usage of Second Life Viewers 2 & 3 - all Full and Beta versions of Viewers 2 & 3 have a StarLight version to work with them. StarLight consists of a number of previously published viewer tweaks - produced by various residents (see credits in the downloaded 'Read Me' file) together with a continual addition of new ones. In addition there is a slight reskinning to give the interface a lighter feel, several colour variants (called 'Themes') and a sidebar-free variant (called 'StarDust'). It should hopefully benefit those people who have no wish to edit the XML code themselves, yet wish to benefit from a number of tweaks made by other residents, without using a third-party viewer. The major changes that StarLight makes are listed here.

Over 12,500 downloads so far!

NEW! Version for Viewer 3.2. Please install against a new directory. Also, easy installer for Windows is now available.

Downloads

It is VERY important that you always use the version of StarLight for the appropriate viewer release. Always use the appropriate version from the table below of all supported versions.

ALWAYS DOWNLOAD THE CORRECT VERSION OF STARLIGHT IF YOU SWITCH VERSIONS OF THE VIEWER

StarLight is normally updated here within a few hours of Linden Labs issuing a new version of the Viewer (and sometimes before it is officially released)

StarLight Release (all OS's)	StarLight Easy Installer for Windows (NEW)	Designed for Viewer 3 Release	Date Added	New Features / Notes
StarLight 3.2.0685	StarLight 3.2.0685	Viewer 3.2.1* (3.2.1.244864)	November 15th 2011
StarLight 3.2.0701	StarLight 3.2.0701	Viewer Beta 3.2.4 (3.2.4.245931)	December 2nd 2011	Removal of GI options, and two new DoF options added. Some tidying of panel layouts.

* Main Viewer downloaded from the Linden Lab web-site is in bold - to see which version you have look in "Help->About Second Life" in your Viewer

Known Bugs and Issues     VWR-27416 - The ability to alter the amount of flashing of the IM tabs no longer works in Viewer 3.2 Linden Lab have removed the ability to alter the amount and rate of flashing of IM tabs in the viewer - so the sliders for this in StarLight 3.2.0678 no longer work. VWR-25735 - When 'plain text IM and chat history' is selected the name of the 'speaker' is coloured the same as 'URLs' A Linden Lab bug means that when 'Enable plain text IM and chat history' is selected from the 'Chat' option of 'Preferences' the colour of the name of the 'speaker' is set to the colour that has been applied to 'URLs' - this is useful to know especially if you are using the lighter colour schemes. As a workaround please set the 'URLs' colour to a suitable colour in 'Preferences'. Only working fully with English language version of the interface Versions for German and Japanese languages are planned for the future.

Beta Versions of StarLight

Occasionally new releases of Starlight are added here to test or see the reactions to new features.

StarLight Beta Release (click to download)	Designed for Viewer 3 Release	Date Added	New Features / Notes

StarLight for TPVs

Versions of StarLight are also available for:

• Catznip - versions of all StarLight themes, except Mono Teal, integrated with the viewer by Kitty Barnett
• Firestorm - modified versions of StarLight are included with the latest Firestorm Beta

Discussions, information, support and questions

To discuss StarLight and get news of changes/versions/bugs etc. please visit the Viewer xml and Skinning Forum.

Problems, issues and new feature requests can also be entered on the StarLight JIRA (which is kindly hosted by the Firestorm team).

StarLight is assembled by Hitomi Tiponi - she may be contacted through the aforementioned forum or in-world.

Major Changes to the Standard Skin (updated for 3.2)

• Choice of six colour schemes - Orange, Teal or Nostalgia Blue (giving a feel of the 1.* interface) plus two light-on-dark 'silver' skins and a monotone skin
• Comprehensive Shadows, Rendering, Depth of Field and Local Lights settings in "Graphics"
• Revised Preferences panels - with LOTS of extra options to control graphics, chat and many, many other features
• Camera control made smaller than the standard version (similar to the Kirstens Viewer approach but smaller)
• More buttons available in the toolbar 'toybox' NEW!
• Ability to slide across the World Map to fill it's floater, also with ability to shrink the floater more than at present
• Draw Distance slider added to Navigation Bar (between 32 and 992 metres)
• Removable Favorites Bar in 3.2 onwards NEW!
• More profile information available in the avatar inspector
• Much smaller Environment Settings Floater NEW!
• Film menu, for photography and machinima fans NEW!
• Several options added to the menu ('Marketplace', 'Grid Status', 'My Useful Features')
• Better formatting of tabbed IM window (tabs larger and no icons in them)
• Undocked windows are resizable to a smaller size than Viewer 3 allows
• Tweaks to the skinning and usability (more transparent panels, resizing columns, increasing glow, realigning text etc.)

Installation Instructions(all OS's)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR WINDOWS AND LINUX USERS

1. Log out of Second Life Viewer 3, if you are using it.
2. Go to the directory you use for Viewer 3.
3. Copy across the contents of the 'skins' and 'app_settings' folders into the Viewer 3 folder at the same level as the existing folders with the same name, making sure you accept any overwriting of existing files.
4. NOTE: This will NOT delete the existing 'skins' folder - it is essential that the only change to the existing 'skins' folder is the change to these two files as well as the addition of the new StarLight skins.
5. To uninstall rename the 'panel_login_backup.xml' file to 'panel_login.xml' in the /skins/default/xui/en sub-folder, and 'commands_backup.xml' file to 'commands.xml' in the /app_settings sub-folder.
   

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAC USERS

1. Find the Second Life Viewer 3 application in you Applications folder.
2. Right click on the Second Life Viewer 3 application icon. You will get a menu.
3. Choose "Show Package Contents" from that menu.
4. Open the "Resources" folder and scroll down until you see the "skins" and "app_settings" sub-folders of StarLight.
5. Make sure you are not actually running Second Life Viewer 3 as you do this.
6. Copy the files from the folders in StarLight into the Second Life Viewer 3 application folder - this will add in the new skin elements and will overwrite some files.
7. To uninstall rename the 'panel_login_backup.xml' file to 'panel_login.xml' in the /skins/default/xui/en sub-folder, and 'commands_backup.xml' file to 'commands.xml' in the /app_settings sub-folder.
   

Installation Instructions using easy Windows Installer

Simply download and run the associated file and follow the simple instructions.

Activating a New Skin

1. Start your Second Life client, but do NOT log in.
2. In the log-in screen, select the skin from the drop-down list - it is next to the "Login" button"
3. Restart your Second Life client and log in. The new skin should now be active.