User:Benjamin Linden/Office Hours/2007 May 10

[10:09]  You: hi Khamon
[10:09]  You: you found it :-)
[10:09]  Khamon Fate: hello, i was lost
[10:09]  You: hi. are you here for office hours?
[10:09]  Khamon Fate: i am yes
[10:09]  You: great. I just got here my self. let's have a seat
[10:10]  You: how's it going?
[10:10]  Khamon Fate: pretty well today, how about your end?
[10:11]  Khamon Fate: you're an interface designer?
[10:11]  You: doing great, thanks. very busy as usual
[10:11]  You: yes I am
[10:11]  You: what about yourself?
[10:11]  Khamon Fate: what interface projects are y'all working at the moment?
[10:12]  You: well we have a few things going on
[10:12]  Khamon Fate: i'm a net admin at a college in alabama
[10:12]  You: Voice Chat is rolling out in a few weeks
[10:12]  You: it has a fair amount of UI and we're also taking the opportunity to streamline the other communciation tools
[10:12]  You: also, there's work being done on the Search UI
[10:12]  Khamon Fate: streamline with LLSD?
[10:13]  You: and we're working on a project to update the visual appearance of the viewer
[10:13]  You: sorry, what's LLSD?
[10:13]  Khamon Fate: oh joy does that include moving the minimized buttons off of the chat area at the bottom of the screen? please tell me it does.
[10:14]  Khamon Fate: LLSD is the new messaging protocol the Icehouse team is working on but I can rephrase the question. What does "streamlining the other communications" mean?
[10:14]  You: can you clarify what you mean?
[10:14]  You: ah, you really are an Icehouse follower :-)
[10:15]  Torley Linden is Online
[10:15]  You: actually the UI changes we're making to the IM/Chat tools are independent of the messaging work Icehouse is doing
[10:15]  Khamon Fate: yes, when i have the map open for example and minimize it, the minimal representation floats right over the area of my screen where chat appears
[10:15]  You: right now there are several redundancies in the IM/Chat interface
[10:15]  Khamon Fate: the same is true for minimized scripts et al
[10:15]  You: Friends/Groups/Chat History/IM
[10:16]  You: the plan is to consolidate these into a single communication console
[10:16]  Khamon Fate: oh that will be nice
[10:16]  Khamon Fate: hi raven
[10:16]  You: that will also have voice chat controls for initiating 1:1 voice chats
[10:16]  Raven Welesa: hi
[10:16]  You: hi there Raven
[10:16]  Raven Welesa (E2J): ??
[10:16]  You: welcome!
[10:16]  Khamon Fate: will the console roll out all at once?
[10:16]  Raven Welesa: one of the sims i go to is next to furry japan, thqat translator is necessary
[10:17]  Khamon Fate: and will it replace the other windows or will they operate concurrently for a release?
[10:17]  You: it's really more of a consolidation than a replacement
[10:17]  You: but yes, it will replace the existing functionality
[10:17]  Alynna Vixen: Script run-time error
[10:17]  Alynna Vixen: Stack-Heap Collision
[10:17]  You: I expect this will rollout with the next beta viewer
[10:17]  Khamon Fate: hi alynna
[10:17]  You: hi Alynna
[10:18]  Alynna Vixen: hi..
[10:18]  You: wow cool footprints
[10:18]  Alynna Vixen: thank you..
[10:18]  Khamon Fate: that's exiciting news. did i clarify my question about minimized windows well enough?
[10:19]  You: yes, I was just re-reading that
[10:19]  You: and I know what you're talking about
[10:20]  You: that's actually not part of the project to update the visual appearance but there is a separate effort to provide better window management (docking, etc). we should probably re-think the way minimized windows work as part of that.
[10:20]  You: the visual update is meant to have as little functional impact as possible.
[10:20]  Khamon Fate: please do put it in the mix
[10:20]  You: because we are strapped for dev resources
[10:20]  Torley Linden is Offline
[10:21]  Khamon Fate: what impacts will it have? are they UI related or differences in rendering techniques
[10:21]  Steve Linden is Online
[10:22]  You: it's really not very technical, mostly we're swapping out the existing images
[10:22]  You: the UI is currently somewhat skinnable
[10:22]  Raven Welesa: when khamon is finished i have questions about the recent blog post
[10:22]  You: simply by switching the graphic elements in a folder in the SL install
[10:22]  Khamon Fate: very xml, go ahead raven
[10:22]  You: yes, exactly khamon
[10:23]  Rob Linden is Offline
[10:23]  Pramod Linden is Offline
[10:23]  You: what's your question Raven?
[10:23]  Karen Linden is Offline
[10:23]  Joshua Linden is Offline
[10:24]  Raven Welesa: first is, has linden labs ascertained yet the validity of the germans news organization's claims and have they further corroborated whether this was just an elaborate attempt by said company to discredit and slander sl
[10:24]  Mercury Metropolitan is Offline
[10:25]  Mercury Metropolitan is Online
[10:25]  You: Unfortunately I'm not the right person to answer that question, Raven.
[10:26]  You: I know that Linden Lab is looking into this matter.
[10:26]  Khamon Fate: Benjamin's an interface design guru.
[10:26]  You: This is mainly a legal and PR issue. Robin Linden has office hours and would be a better person to ask.
[10:27]  Raven Welesa: She knows my concerns and still I have yet to receive a response from them when i voiced them before
[10:27]  You: I'm sure she's getting a lot of questions about it right now.
[10:27]  You: The blog will probably be the best source of information.
[10:28]  Raven Welesa: the blog shows nothing
[10:28]  You: sorry I can't be of more help on this.
[10:28]  Raven Welesa: all it shows is one post and a bunch of people that put down comments that take away from true questions
[10:29]  You: since my area of expertise is UI design and usability, I'd like to stay focused on those topics during my office hours
[10:29]  Khamon Fate: speaking of the blog, is your team doing any work on the inworld browser? is that going to be any more functional than reading a help file off the hard drive any time soon?
[10:29]  You: yes, Khamon, I know there is work being done on HTML on a prim
[10:29]  You: is that what you mean?
[10:30]  You: or do you mean the actual web viewer window?
[10:30]  Khamon Fate: nope, just a plain inclient browser window
[10:30]  You: ah
[10:30]  PierreLuc Linden is Offline
[10:30]  Khamon Fate: the latter
[10:30]  You: actually I'm not sure what the status of that is
[10:30]  Khamon Fate: k
[10:30]  You: may I ask what you'd like to use it for?
[10:31]  Khamon Fate: do you know of any work being done to provide customization of scripted dialog boxes?
[10:31]  Khamon Fate: sorry, i'll answer your question
[10:32]  Khamon Fate: it's difficult to stay ahead of the hardware demands of the SL client. that's reasonable considering that it's being developed ninety-miles and hour.
[10:32]  Khamon Fate: but loads of people simply can't run SL and IE or Firefox at the same time.
[10:32]  Torley Linden is Online
[10:33]  You: oh I see, that's an interesting observation
[10:33]  Khamon Fate: an inclient browser, functioning in the same shell/vm/call it what you will can help them tremendously especially as inworld services are migrated to the web
[10:33]  Khamon Fate: i.e. we *have* to use the website now to view inworld transactions
[10:34]  Khamon Fate: we *could* teleport using SURLs from an inclient browser
[10:34]  You: actually a topic I wanted to discuss in a future office hour is a light-weight SL viewer, maybe even a browser plug-in
[10:34]  You: so it's sort of the opposite of what you're saying, instead of running the web in the viewer you run SL in a browser
[10:34]  Khamon Fate: schedule that and i'll talk it up
[10:34]  You: sweet!
[10:34]  You: I was thinking next Thursday
[10:35]  Khamon Fate: that's an interesting approach as well
[10:35]  You: I'll post to sldev. are you on that?
[10:35]  Torley Linden is Offline
[10:35]  Khamon Fate: yes i am
[10:35]  You: great
[10:35]  You: hi Traven
[10:35]  You: welcome!
[10:35]  Khamon Fate: hi traven
[10:35]  Traven Sachs: Hello Benjamin - thank you
[10:35]  Khamon Fate: my other UI question is do you know of any work being done to provide customization of scripted dialog boxes?
[10:35]  Torley Linden is Online
[10:36]  You: oh right, sorry I forgot. can you provide a little more context? I'm not sure what you mean
[10:36]  Khamon Fate: all we can script now are those horrid little blue boxes with those icky little blue buttons
[10:36]  You: oh I see
[10:36]  You: so you want the ability to bring up a regular dialog box
[10:36]  Alynna Vixen: cute tail. you make it?
[10:36]  Traven Sachs: modded it :)
[10:36]  Khamon Fate: ir customize the existing one in some ways, colour scheme, number of buttons
[10:36]  Traven Sachs: it was a single when I got it
[10:37]  Traven Sachs: I have a question regards development Ben
[10:37]  Khamon Fate: i know that's LSL-related too, but thought you might have some input as it crosses the UI border
[10:37]  You: Khamon, do you mean customize the blue notification box?
[10:37]  You: or a regular window like the profile window?
[10:38]  Khamon Fate: the box produced by llDialog()
[10:38]  Khamon Fate: with buttons in it that gives a selected value back to a the script that produced it
[10:38]  Torley Linden is Offline
[10:39]  You: that pops the blue notification box right?
[10:39]  You: in the upper right
[10:39]  Mercury Metropolitan is Offline
[10:39]  Khamon Fate: we can only define the button text and reply, but not the size, number or colour of the buttons
[10:39]  Torley Linden is Online
[10:39]  You: I actually haven't done very much LSL scripting, it's something I need to get into more
[10:39]  Traven Sachs: texturing the buttons would be kewl too LOL!
[10:39]  Torley Linden is Offline
[10:39]  Khamon Fate: yes to give the script user choices
[10:39]  You: right ok
[10:39]  Torley Linden is Online
[10:39]  You: I haven't heard of any work to do that but I'll ask around for you
[10:40]  Khamon Fate: if you can prompt an update to llDailog() that allows us to customize that UI a bit, you'll be my hero for a month
[10:40]  Traven Sachs: I've been contacted by The Open University who are apparently doing a project on teen education on the teen grid - they are interested (somehow heard about) the technology behind my touring balloon I developed for The Shelter here on the main grid - is it possible to arrange for a transfer of no-mod scripts to an agent that has legitimate access on the teen grid for use in their project?
[10:41]  You: I'll see what I can do Khamon
[10:41]  Khamon Fate: Char or Blue can likely arrange that for you Traven.
[10:41]  You: yes, I was just going to say Blue would be the best person to ask about that
[10:41]  You: he does a lot of work with the teen grid
[10:41]  Raven Welesa: why don't u just copy the script to notepad and send them that, so they can put it in a notecard here?
[10:41]  Traven Sachs: excellent :)
[10:42]  You: I'm not sure if Blue has office hours
[10:42]  Traven Sachs: I have no problem giving them the script Raven - but not the source
[10:42]  Durl Linden is Online
[10:42]  Traven Sachs: I 'sell' that technology
[10:42]  Traven Sachs: LOL!
[10:42]  Dan Linden is Online
[10:42]  Raven Welesa: no blue doesn't have office hours, at least not this month at any rate
[10:42]  Traven Sachs: k I'll send him a note
[10:43]  Traven Sachs: thanks guys that answered MY question :)
[10:43]  You: ok well let me know if you have trouble reaching him
[10:43]  Traven Sachs: thanks much benjamin :)
[10:43]  You: ohh Raven disappeared into a script error
[10:43]  You: np Traven!
[10:43]  You: thanks for stopping by!
[10:43]  Raven Welesa: no that was alynna
[10:43]  Traven Sachs: Pleasant day to you all :)
[10:43]  Khamon Fate: Robin is at her office in Ambleside Raven if you want to talk to her.
[10:43]  You: oh woops sorry
[10:43]  Raven Welesa: she is there right now?
[10:43]  Khamon Fate: yes now
[10:43]  Traven Sachs: oh and Khamon - nice job on the Breezy Willow - I love it
[10:44]  Traven Sachs: looks perfect by my castle moat :)
[10:44]  Khamon Fate: thanks Traven
[10:44]  Khamon Fate: flexible prims are daboss
[10:44]  Traven Sachs: aye
[10:44]  Khamon Fate: 'til the sculpties take over
[10:44]  You: is Breezy Willow a tree you made?
[10:44]  Khamon Fate: tis, i'll drop one on you
[10:44]  You: cool
[10:45]  Khamon Fate gave you Breezy Forest Tree.
[10:45]  Khamon Fate gave you Breezy Willow Tree.
[10:45]  You: great thanks!
[10:45]  Khamon Fate gave you FGH Dogwood.
[10:45]  Khamon Fate: here's a dogwood from my line as well so you can see the dialog box
[10:45]  Khamon Fate accepted your inventory offer.
[10:45]  Khamon Fate: oh thank you. does your bear look like an olthoi queen like your av does ha ha
[10:46]  You: lol yes a little, I tried to make it look like this av
[10:46]  Ethan Linden is Online
[10:46]  You: so have you had a chance to use the new voice beta?
[10:47]  Khamon Fate: i'm don't compute with sound very often. just turn on the speakers when i need them. so no
[10:47]  You: it will be interesting to see what sort of adoption we get on Voice
[10:48]  You: it's actually a very cool technology
[10:48]  Khamon Fate: it'll be very cool to see what people do with it too. users never seem to use the tech for what the designers intended but rather find their own uses
[10:48]  You: we use it a lot at work
[10:48]  You: that's true about users!
[10:48]  You: that's what makes this job so interesting :-)
[10:49]  Khamon Fate: it'll have to prove mandatory to my SL experience for me to turn it on. I generally keep audio and video muted now.
[10:49]  Khamon Fate: most of what people do with it is more distracting and a burden on my bandwidth and frame rate than it's worth
[10:49]  Khamon Fate: cool, but useless to me
[10:50]  You: yes, I can see that
[10:50]  Khamon Fate: i'm gonna run support Robin after dumping people on her
[10:50]  Khamon Fate: thanks for hosting
[10:50]  You: lol ok sounds good
[10:51]  You: sure thing, thanks for stopping by Khamon
[10:51]  You: watch for my post on sldev
[10:51]  Khamon Fate: i'll keep a watch and talk it up
[10:51]  Khamon Fate: have a great day
[10:51]  You: you too!
[10:51]  You: see ya
[10:51]  Ethan Linden is Offline
[10:53]  Torley Linden is Offline
[10:53]  Alynna Vixen: Script run-time error
[10:53]  Alynna Vixen: Stack-Heap Collision
[10:54]  You: hey Alynna
[10:54]  You: welcome back
[10:54]  Alynna Vixen: that was very annoying. 4 system freezes inna row.
[10:54]  You: wow that sucks
[10:54]  You: maybe it's all your pretty particles :-)
[10:55]  Alynna Vixen: *blushes* its more likely to be that I run my system slightly out of spec and .. well.. its hitting 80f in here.
[10:57]  Alynna Vixen: I was going to present my own questions related to Raven's but.. well.. i have other technical questions I can ask later, I know you close at 11..
[10:57]  Dan Linden is Offline
[10:57]  You: that's ok, you can go ahead and ask now if you'd like
[10:59]  Alynna Vixen: well, i wrote a linux updater for SL, but it has a GPL component (xdialog). So it was rejected. Was it reviewed enough for people to tell me whether it would be included if I made my own non-GPL xdialog clone?
[11:00]  You: oh wow, I think this it too technical of a question for me. have you talked to Rob Linden about this?
[11:02]  Alynna Vixen: nope, I dont know who to talk to. But I don't want to do all the work of making something do what xdialog does .. if it isn't already adequate for submission.
[11:03]  You: this is for the open source code right?
[11:03]  Alynna Vixen: well I submitted the entire thing into jira
[11:04]  Alynna Vixen: i don't know where it would go honestly, i hear they are trying to replace every non-GPL compatible component with GPL code.
[11:04]  Storrs Linden is Online
[11:04]  You: yes, this is definitely a question for Rob
[11:04]  You: he has office hours too
[11:04]  You: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mvktahmo6mjpvpkkkdnmabmghg%40group.calendar.google.com
[11:04]  Cornelius Linden is Online
[11:05]  You: this calendar lists everyone's office hours
[11:05]  Alynna Vixen: and they come here?
[11:05]  You: Rob is the guy in charge of our open source efforts
[11:05]  Alynna Vixen: ok. well thank you. :)
[11:05]  Blue Linden is Offline
[11:05]  You: he has office hours in his office
[11:05]  You: let me get another link for you
[11:06]  You: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_Hours
[11:06]  You: that has office hours and locations
[11:06]  Durl Linden is Offline
[11:06]  Durl Linden is Online
[11:07]  Alynna Vixen: i bookmarked it... thank you very much.
[11:07]  You: no problem. thanks for stopping by!