Update: Linden Lab has now confirmed through their own blog that the screen shots posted by Tateru will be VERY different from the actual viewer.
“What we ship later this year will be very different from what appeared in that post. We’ll share a sneak peek of the “real” Viewer 2009 later in the year, with plenty of time to receive and incorporate feedback before the final iteration ships.”
Tateru has posted screen shots of the “Second Life Web 2.0″ viewer, which has kicked off a flurry of comments both on Massively and elsewhere. Tateru DOES call it an “early build” but the phrase “not entirely set in stone” makes it sound like this is a few tweaks from complete.
I have to say - when I first saw them, my heart sank, my jaw dropped, and I felt like I was stuck in one of those animation freezes you sometimes get when the lag is bad.
I asked senior sources at the Lab, however, for comment, to confirm how close the interface design was to “final” and the response was as follows:
“That was an early version of ‘Viewer 2009′ and the project has progressed dramatically since then.”
So, I’m going to take it that this was more of a prototype/experiment than actual interface. The only good things I could see in the whole exercise was a bit of thought around renaming buttons, and a few neat ideas for tear off menus and maybe some different hierarchies.
Otherwise, if the new viewer comes anywhere close to what Tateru posted, then I’m building my own.
Yeah, I think we mostly saw a buzz and a flitter twitter about the intriguing aspects of the screenshots. People jumped in to discuss.
… the thought of the change to what tateru presented I think it where the hype is stemming from. I think its way to early to know anything.
“Otherwise, if the new viewer comes anywhere close to what Tateru posted, then I’m building my own.”
Sign me up.
I must sound incredibly snarky about this whole thing…I commented over on the Metaverse Journal, one of my favorite sites, as well….and maybe came across as a little defensive…
But really….as I comment there:
“I’m still shuddering in horror if this is anything like what the final release will look like. I suppose I am pleading or begging, in a way, to make this picture I now have of “SL 2.0″ go AWAY.
I’ve placed faith that Howard and M will help to solve some of the major riddles of the interface, the first hour, and other things… and if this is as far as they’ve gotten, my faith would frankly sink like a lead balloon.”
As near as I can tell, the build we got is the latest build. There’s no evidence to suggest that there was a newer one (actually there was one about 20 hours after we got the first one, but it did not differ in any substantive detail). What we do know is that the builds we obtained are “hot off the presses” from the internal development code — but perhaps not what someone actually is building on their desktop with code that hasn’t been checked in.
Tateru - Commented on Massively but 1) the Lab is sending mixed signals, perhaps scrambling, or perhaps purposefully sending out trial balloons and 2) ugh. Seriously, if this is anything like where they’re truly at after all this time, then I’ve been misplacing my faith that they can solve the devilish issues of the viewer, orientation, search and balancing the needs of residents with new users and enterprise.
Hey, worst case scenario, we can just switch to Hippo Viewer, which is very, very similar to the current SL viewer.
Hear that, LL? PLEASE do EXTENSIVE testing and tweaking, with LOTS of your current users, before forcing it on us, er I mean rolling it out.