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Ann Otoole added a comment - 05/Feb/08 09:40 AM
release keys is an unnecessary GUI element blocking part of the screen that is more efficiently served by a menu command. perhaps it was useful at some point more than a year ago or maybe during the early days of SL. today we don't need it at all. times change. it clutters the screen. the code that automated the positioning of buttons is not good GUI design at all and needs to be removed. gui elements need to be in the same spot anytime the user enables the option to show that gui element. now we are detaching animation overrides (those things to get rid of the awful duck walk that needs to be fixed along with the horrid default avatars) because we think we received an IM. proof whoever is writing this code does not use secondlife much if at all.
A workaround for this is to remove the Release Keys stanza from the panel_overlaybar.xml (backing it up first, of course) file, next time you log in no Release Keys button anymore.
Thankyou Harleen... that works well.
To edit this on a Mac, Right Click the 1.19.0 client then choose Show Package Contents... navigate through... Contents|Resources|Skins|xui|EN_US then after backing it up right click panel_overlaybar.xml and choose Open With... Textedit.. and delete the section <button bottom="1" follows="left|bottom" font="SansSerif" halign="center" height="20" Save and Restart This one is simply driving me nuts - I keep detaching my AO and movement helpers thinking I have an IM waiting for me.
Please. Please please fix, pretty please. This is a killer.
The whole left-aligning thing is bad... the IM button should stand alone so you know when you got an IM. Interface elements should not be jumping around dynamically. I have a lot of complaints about the interface changes, but the release keys button is absolutely the worst. Thank god for the workaround, but please get this properly reverted/fixed quickly, along with the other interface changes that are currently driving people nuts. I'm ok for removing the Release Keys button.
Why don't move it in the Tools menu, under Stop All Animations ? This button doesn't need to be on screen. I never use Release Keys because it detaches things I don't want it to detach. What I'd prefer is a smaller >> style icon that pops up showing a list of attachments like HUDS and control stealing objects so that I could selectively "release keys" on certain objects rather than dumping everything.
But yes, the giant button in 1.19 is annoying, and interferes with chat. That really should be changed one way or the other. I have never had use for this button in my life, yet now it sits right on top of all the buttons I use the most. Silly. Please remove this annoying button, thank you.
Remove this button or moved it to the menu. One, the location is horrible increasing the errors of clicking the wrong button when clicking on the IM or chat. It happened to me 3 times within 15 mins of using the Viewer. I reverted to the current release for the first time since trying the new Windlight and Release Candidate for the last 3 months. This viewer, 1.19.0, is a HUGE STEP BACKWARD in User Interface usability.
I'm so cursing at the screen at the moment everytime I have to go and find my Mysti tool and AO everytime I hit it! Plus it covers the chat! Stupid place for it.
I vote to put in in a menu. There might be some people who use it, and they might like to have it.
In my opinion, the perfect place would be in the Edit Menu, right after "Detach Clothing." It could then have a flyout, so you can choose which keys to release, and it might then be useful. As it is, I'm having to reattach HUDs dozens of times a day, as I glance at the screen while working in Photoshop in Busy Mode, and think that someone has sent me an IM. Please fix this! The amount of time I am spending reattaching HUDs and AOs is undesirable to say the least. In addition, didn't the UI designers notice it actually covers chat???
If your NOT on a Mac
Go to this location, of course this is on my system but you get the idea then after backing it up right click panel_overlaybar.xml and choose Open With... notepad.. and delete the following section: <button bottom="1" follows="left|bottom" font="SansSerif" halign="center" height="20" Save and Restart I already created this issue, but this one seems to be more popular, so I'm closing mine and neatening this one a little.
Fixed the massive summary for a start <.< Thanx Phil, and others working with this issue also. : )
I use the release keys button all the time. Why? Because its in the worst possible location. A work around is fine for now by we should have to be modifying anything. Maybe some user have a need for a panic button. How about cutting the size of the Mini-Map and Map buttons down and sticking the pesky little fella down there.
buttons_a is how buttons are when chat bar is closed
buttons_b is jow buttons are when chat bar is open. buttons move between the two positions as you open and close the chat bar. no clear repro as it works normal for some time and then suddenly starts doing this. distance of buttons from chat bar may change randomly though tends to stay consistent. To add to Squirrels, at the same time, online/offline friend notifications take up more space as well (top of notice even with upper release keys/stand up button and spans to bottom of page
I got the vertically jumping buttons as well.
And removing or commenting out the release keys section in the XML file is the only way to stay sane. Why is this obscure option so damn important it has to be its own button? I think the idea of this being in a menu might be the best option. Is there a specific need for it to be a button? What is the history on "release keys?' In two years, I don't believe i've used it, but if there's a good functionality that requires it as a button, then that would be good to know too.
On the vertical jumping buttons: I've also seen the lower blue box (so and so logged in, etc.) end up higher than it typically should be. I've not been able to consistently reproduce it yet. if I can reproduce, I'll put it under another number. I suspect it might relate to the vertically jumping buttons. I have, on some occasions, seen the buttons not move above the chat bar, and get lost behind the chat screen. This includes the "IM Received," "Release Keys," and "Stand Up" buttons. I would suspect the "Mouselook" of the ame potential behavior. IMO, a really good idea for putting it on the menu was discussed at Benjamin Linden's office hours today, VWR-4699 was entered for it.
Please make the buttons stationary.
Thank you. Having the stand up button on screen is convenient, but leave it where it is. I'll be jumping up and down all the time with this dreadful new design.
I agree with others who question what the release button is doing taking up valuable screen space. It's a waste. If you proceed with moving it, attachments will be dropping everywhere. If it serves some arcane useful purpose, put it up in a menu. How do I delete my Chatbar.jpg screenshot? This is for a different issue. ty!
Hot hot issue! OK, I've got to get this to the right people – we've discussed several design options. For the short-term we may just move the buttons to where they used to be (let me get confirmation on that), longer-term we should have a better solution, e.g., an idea Ben proposed about having a compact icon with a flyout menu for Release Keys. STILL TENTATIVE, these 1.19 RC UI quirks NEED to be fixed...
"Release keys button etc slowly creeps up the screen on multiple uses of mouselook" was has a fix pending as DEV-10253, so watch for that soon. More news to come, I'll import this. Moving it to the tools menu would be a great short term solution, in lieu of the more complex flyout, specific attachment idea.
In any case, the leftmost space should be reserved for the IM Recieved button, and ONLY the IM recieved button. Everyone, ever, is used to clicking in exactly that spot to open the IM window. >For the short-term we may just move the buttons to where they used to be
I propose we put the buttons back where they used to be, and leave them there. There's really no reason to move the buttons around. Maybe eliminate release keys, but please leave "IM Received" and "Stand up" where they always have been, and stop the dynamic button repositioning thing. it's not just the place ment of the button, it also starts moving up the screen as you go in and out of mouse look and yes... the blue tap that shows who logs on and off does move up with the same hight as the moving buttons, So...can someone please fixs this buttons or just remove them all togater and place them in once of the menus
From Benjamin Linden's recent usability office hour: "It was unanimously agreed that Release Keys serves no useful purpose and should be moved to the menus, possibly enhanced by turning it into a flyout menu that displays all the objects controlling the avatar."
@ Deacon.
Those are issues being looked at too, the Friends Status Pop Up appears to be fixed in RC1, and perhaps the buttons moving up the screen, although I havn't checked that one personaly myself, there are also Jira issues on this. You can, if you want to, stop the status pop ups altogether by going to Prefrences and General un check the friends Status Box. @ Torley. I'm using the current Windlight version and ideally I would like to see all such buttons incorporated into the controls at the bottom of the screen, we don't really need a third layer of buttons taking up vertical space.
For example, the IM button could be incorporated into the Communicate button, causing it to glow if an instant message is received and the communicate window is not currently open, or is not focused on the relevant IM tab. Clicking Communicate would then open up the communicate window and switch focus to the first new IM tab. Release keys and stand-up could be added next to the media/voice controls, appearing only when needed and preferably as little icons such as a little keyboard icon (or a few keys from a keyboard since it'd be quite small) and an icon of a stick figure sitting on an object. This would be a HUGE improvement to having a load of ugly, obtrusive buttons taking up space. Especially when I might want to put a HUD where they appear. No, offense, Haravikk, but your suggestion would be a major pain in our areses. If IM notifications got moved within the Communicate button how would that work? Would it be a notification in what is now a tiny button that would have to be redesigned to show something different? The button already glows when it's open, so we'd have to get a different color glow to show we have an IM waiting for us. This seems to violate the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and force everyone to learn a new interface.
Yes, the Release Keys button should go to a menu, but please keep the other buttons (although in their old locations). I don't mind a third row of buttons, but then I only open the Chat bar when I actually need it. Moving the rest of the buttons would make me jump through hoops to do simple things, such as getting out of a chair in my store to assist a customer. Changing the buttons to icons may not work as well as you think it would. Did you immediately recognize the redesigned buttons at the top of the screen in the latest builds (RC and WL)? I know I had to take the time to hover the buttons several times to figure out what was what. Please don't ask us to have to go through another round of translations just to get rid of buttons that some of us use daily. You may hate that row of buttons, but do a majority of users agree with you? I think not, although I'll admit I may be wrong. @Nanci:
Sorry I shouldn't have said glow. I don't know if you've ever used/seen OS X's interface, but "default" buttons (that are selected when you hit enter/return) are highlighted and "pulse", fading from a normal button's appearance to turn blue then fade back again and repeat. This way the communicate button gets your attention, and clicking it will go straight to the item that is causing it to pulse, which IMO is a great way to put extra functionality into a button without cluttering it or having to make room for more buttons. For the other two, I certainly think icons would be fine for those, since they'll appear when something happens (you attach an item, or sit-down) and should hopefully be self-explanatory without taking up too much room. As it is now the buttons are huge, and they're a horrible waste of space that can't be hidden in any way. I originally considered putting release keys into a menu, but the thing is that it might not be obvious enough, as objects can take control of your keys and prevent them from doing anything, which really needs to be more obvious to users who don't know what's going on. While the current button is great for doing that, it's a pain for long-time users. How about if we took the buttons as they are now and made it into a little bar with a minimise button at the end? Press the minimise button and that bar joins the media/voice controls as a "mini-bar" with a little row of icons that appear as needed? I'd try to do a mock-up but my icon skills are pathetic. Actually I have seen how OSX does it, in fact I use the Mac4Lin Transformation Pack on my Ubuntu box. One problem is that may be fine for Mac users but not so much for most Windows or Linux users. Plus I personally hate the idea of having to add complexity to the button do indicate something else. Adding complexity makes more chances for something to break, which means more bugs requiring fixes.
I'm going to vote now against adding things to the media bar. I'm still not a fan of how they joined the controls. It used to have a nice visual indicator that showed if the media was playing or not (definitely needed if you're a Linux user) and now you have to look to see if the button is highlighted. Not the best solution, especially for people who have been using SL for any length of time. But even with a minimize button, that would just mean more steps to do something simple, just to get rid of a row of buttons that some people don't like. If they could add hotkeys to the buttons that could help (I've long wanted one for standing up) but would prefer they not mess with the third tier of buttons too much. Especially since Mozilla is already getting ready to force people to do things differently with Firefox 3 (which I've helped test for some time now). At some point the users are just going to say "the hell with all the change" and stick with what they know, and SL simply doesn't give us that option. A minimising bar would seem the better option in that case, since fans of the current behaviour can leave it open, while people who hate it can minimise it away somewhere unobtrusive. Options are good because I'd rather have the choice to change it now, rather than be stuck with how it is now, or was before. A minimise button is only a tiny extra since it's just a small icon, a little square or circular button (opposed the unusually big chat-bar hide/show button).
The fact is, the third-layer of buttons is a waste of space, and I've only barely tolerated up till now because they were nearer the middle, but with them now on the left it just highlights how pointlessly space-wasting they are. I like to have my HUDs on the left, but if I do that and wear the items my HUD is controlling, then I end up with a big ugly "Release Keys" button covering the bottom row of buttons on my HUD. If I move my HUD up then I end up with less space for keeping local-chat open, it's not a very good situation to be in, since moving things over the right is just plain wrong for usability. Also, to clarify with the "minimised" bar, I'm talking more along the lines of the voice bar, which only appears when needed, but in this case it would also only contain the relevant icons. So if I don't have any new IMs, or my keys aren't held by a script, then those icons wouldn't appear in the bar until active. This way it's still noticeable when something has changed. Personally, I would rather keep the row of buttons and add more buttons, even, if that's what it takes to get the communicate and chat keys back to normal and get rid of the communicate menu button.
Alternatively, take a page from Microsoft's book and put "history", "chat" and "communicate" into that iconic key in the corner behind a "start menu", with extra buttons pushing into the BOTTOM button bar when there's you're sitting on something, and so on. But the main issue for me is that the "IM" button (and possibly "stand") needs to have a stable position. How about this layout? (Mesg) [ chat bar ............................................. ] * |say| /media controls\
(Mesg) glows when there's a pending IM or message. Clicking it when glowing activates the communicate window to the IM tab, when not glowing it opens the chat or communicate window as appropriate.
[search bar] is the search bar moved from the upper right, with the text "search" in it. (Q) is the search icon to open the search window and (if text is entered) do the google appliance search. ^v cycles between buttons-only, buttons-and-chat, menu-button-only, and (possibly) chat-only. In chat-only mode the bar would look more like: (Mesg|) [ chat bar ] (say|) /media controls\ v^ With (Mesg|^) serving both as the message button and the menu popup. And finally, when you want to use all the screen space you can, you'd get this: (Mesg|) _______________________________________ < Where ____ is actually the bottom of the screen! I think it would be acceptable to make the build/fly/... buttons into the same icons as the top of the menu, without the ------------- Short of that kind of redesign, I'm all for putting them back where they were. Or maybe moving them all to consistent positions on the right like the Nicholaz client. I prefer the buttons they way they were. Moving them around all the time is crazy. I think I have a IM when I don't or click the wrong button becuse it moved around. Now you need to read every button and can't just glance and see if something is there and know what it is as they keep moving around. :/
Oh, I agree. I was just suggesting that IF they are going to be redesigned there needs to be something worth the effort and it needs to be something that doesn't need to be changed again and again. So I decided to kill N birds with one stone:
I don't see the point of leaving the button there. I think new users are much more likely to click it cluelessly than by accident, vs. using it as a "panic button". It took me a long time to even understand what it meant, and I'm sure that's a common experience... so having it constantly present doesn't seem too helpful.
I am working on this issue and I almost have it done. I have added a menu item (Edit->Release Keys) that does the
same thing as clicking the "Release Keys" button. I have also added a property to the Preferences "General" panel that allows you to default the "Release Keys" button to hidden/unhidden. Do you think doing this in the properties windows is the right place? One nice thing about using properties is that it persists. I was thinking I could have just done it as a "boolean" menu option such as "Enable Release Keys" but I am not sure if this gets persisted as well. Either way, which method do you prefer? A property in the General Properties window or a menu item to enable/disable? Teardrops The menu item sounds good.
Also, a persistent preference to hide it sounds like a good thing to me. What I do currently as standard procedure is to delete the relevant section of the xml file before the first launch of the viewer. don't mind about the preferences - as long as the menu part is there, just not really sure it's needed so would just be something else to go wrong - unless this is going to end up a general "button" tab to be able to show the ones you want to appear on your worktop. e.g I never use the fly or search buttons so would be nice for me to be able to hide these. A button to bring up region estate for me would be useful.
Thanks for working on this. I am updating the internal ID under which we are tracking this issue.
'Release Keys' is completely useless and annoying feature. Should be moved to menus. Creates unnecessary clutter on the screen and its easy to hit it during normal use. Results in detachment of AO and Mystitool and other hud attachments. Thanks god the workaround with XML file works great.
1. release keys is in a TERRIBLE place on the screen. 2. it rarely used by anyone. 3. EVERY single person i know has hit it accidentally many , many times. lindens labs, please listen to your customer base now and then. we arent all trolls
Torley commented on February 11th, where Benjamin Linden stated the button has no use...August 28th. It still exists. Por que?
The button is already moved into the menu instead of the bottom screen side in the 1.21 Viewer code. You won't see it anymore once that viewer gets its release candidate soon.
It's not "Fixed" until it gets into a regular viewer.
Resolving - Fix Pending.
LL Internal Branch: featurettes/featurettes-6 This issue duplicates VWR-3087 for which a patch was also provided a loooong time ago... Plus, v1.21RC fixes this issue as well.
I'm gonna Re open and Re Resolve this issue to Fix Pending again, as its Assigned and its LL INternal branch is featurettes/featurettes-6 it also has a lot more attention, will close the other issue as a dupe and point here. : )
@Meghan
I don't understand why you reopen this issue as: 1.- It's a duplicate of an older issue reported many months earlier. 2.- It has been resolved in the v1.21RC viewers. @ Henri
Because this issue is Assigned, and is being tracked, as said by Ramzi Linden who set this Issue to 'Fix Pending' and Milo Linden added an Internal Branch, there's also more votes and Comments, so it is logical to keep this issue open, as this is the one that is being tracked and was set as Fix Pending. This issue also focuses on the Release Keys button, yours doesn't. Its just logical : ) |
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New Feature
Resolved
Major
Hide the Release Keys button 
symbol. i don't like the icons and they need to be redesigned to be more distinct, but if they're consistent and with mouse-over as a reminder I don't think people would be confused for long.
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