Display names/Improvements to the display names feature as a result of your feedback

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For the Viewer 2.3 Beta release, we've made a number of improvements to the display names feature based on Resident feedback during the beta testing period. Thanks so much for your help!

Here's a video overview:

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Better visibility of display names and usernames:

  • By default display names are shown over avatar heads - but where the display name and username do not match, we will default to show both. This behaviour can be changed in Preferences.
  • Username and display name can both be seen throughout the UI and in many places where display name is shown, username is too.
  • Both names are labelled more clearly in the Profile so that people can clearly see which is which.
  • The small people inspector also now shows the highlighted username as well as display name.
  • Chat history (Ctrl-h) can show both names on a line, so that chatlogs remain readable even if people are changing their names mid way through. It uses the Preference settings to decide whether to display both.
  • We show a system message in local chat when anyone present changes their display name. It now also shows a system message for your own display name changes.
  • We've added a Viewer Hint to explain to new residents that they have two names in their Profile and how they can change name behaviour.

Control over how you view display names:

  • The layout of the Preferences relating to display names has been improved to make those options easier to find.
  • There is a Preference option added that will show residents that are on your friends list with a different coloured name (green). So, regardless of their display name, you will know that you are friends. This now colours their group tag green too.
  • The Edit display names button now aligns to the display name in the Profile, making it more obvious what is being changed.

Defense against griefers:

  • We've added an instant Copy To Clipboard button to the Profile pane so that no matter how complex a display name is (and unicode can be hard to type), it is easy to grab the name for searching, abuse reporting, or adding to ban lists.
  • Display name changes are logged within our systems so that where there is misuse of the feature we can see that and take appropriate action.
  • The ability for a Resident to change their display name can be controlled by support staff - so that if someone abuses the feature we can elect to turn off the ability to change display name for that account and alts.

Backwards compatibility:

  • We improved the chat logging so we don't break Resident tools that expect plain text.

Setting and resetting your display name:

  • Resetting a display name to default (back to matching the username) is not throttled, so it is always possible at any time.
  • When changing display name, we ask for the new one to be entered twice, to prevent misspellings.
  • From launch we are only allowing display name to be changed once per week.
  • The entry of a new display name is now clamped to 31 characters. Previously it had allowed names that were too long but then failed to set it.
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