Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The "Nicholaz Edition" of the Second Life Viewer

I have been using the Nicholaz viewer now for over a week, and must say I am very confident and happy about it. I don’t have more crashes, and when I crash, I can say that it is not due to this viewer.
What is the difference between the official Second Life viewer and the Nicholaz viewer?
The most important thing why I switched, was that I was not at all happy with the current big chat window. Your screen is almost filled, and if you have several IM’s you need to go from the left to the right side. And if you are lucky, you did not miss a message for a longer period of time, and your correspondent too, who is waiting for an answer.
The Nicholaz viewer gives your friends in a separate window, like it used to be in a previous Second Life viewer.
The IM window stays rather big, but I have the feeling that I can work easier with this viewer, than with the official one.

Here are a few details:

- new: detection for redmap situations (connection to sim lost)
plus option (ctrl+alt+s) to enable/disable warning
- new: option (ctrl+alt+s) to suppress window for friends going
online/offline
User Interface (saving screen space, reverting most of the voice
chatterbox):
- double click action for inventory items (wear, teleport)
- friend list as a separate window (and button in bottom toolbar)
- groups as a separate window as in pre-voice versions
- rearranged buttons in Group-IMs when is voice disabled (save
vertical space)
- allowing lesser minimum heights for IM view and chat history
- brought back the old "New IM" tab for the IM view
- "Near Me" hides chat entry when undocked and base-chat open
(optional)
- IM and active speakers hide voice controls when voice turned off
- rearranged Gestures box in "Near Me"
- swapped direction of "<<" and ">>" buttons for active speakers
- option to hide the "Release Keys" button (ctrl+alt+s)
- status buttons (stand up, release keys, etc.) and media buttons
(master volume, play audio streams, etc) arranged differently

Should you be interested, you can always have a look or download the "Nicholaz edition" here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Guess Nicholaz will have found himself another "client" hehehehe... will be trying it this very same day :)

Joonie said...

Thanks for sharing this, Looker! I will try it tonight.

Hope you're having fun! Loved the post about the you on the lonely poseball. Altho you weren't lonely for long! LOL

*hugs*
Joonie

Anonymous said...

Hey there Looker. Thankx for sharing this with us. That viewer "sounds" pretty good. Gonna try it myself :)