This is just not progress. I do not understand how changes like this can be made without a fallback. There should be an option to set buttons to be locked to specific points instead of always shifting left.

I've set this to major as it's incredibly impacting upon the experience of SL. Especially when you keep pressing "Release Keys" thinking it's an IM, just to lose all your attachments and HUDs.

Also just noticed that the IM tabs don't even flash when you've got new IMs... Why do the Lindens do this? Are they deliberately trying to make it worse so we can just complain and get it put back so we can thank them again?

We'll get used to it pretty soon and I think the folks missing the old UI are just overreacting to the fact that new UI changes are not polished enough.

Also, I'm strongly against supporting the old UI - the additional complexity is not worth it.

• The status bar icons (no-build, no-script, no-fly, -no-push, etc) are very hard to distinguish from each others, especially on high resolution screens (1280x1024 and over). They are too dim and look too much alike between each others. The old icons were much better (just like the old mini-map avatar dots were easier to see and distinguish: does LL got any clue of what "accessibility" means ???).

• The volume controls cannot be hidden any more, even when you don't use parcel media: you must now live with these stupid and very large controls which also eat up half of the chat input line.

• The buttons (Release Keys and others) are misplaced in most cases.

• The toolbar uses cryptic icons and buttons with pull down menus, forcing you to use more clicks (what about bringing back the "Friends" button instead ?).

Really, LL should STOP ruining the UI (Dazzle makes me fear the worst: will they force it down our throat like they did with 1.18.1 and now 1.19 ?) and concentrate on true bugfixes !

Here is my proposal for the next generation UI: dump Dazzle and use the good old one nobody had issues about ! To see what I mean, try the Cool SL Viewer, for example: http://sldev.free.fr/

I think that the earlier comments about the "Release Keys" vs. "IM Received" was addressed in VWR-4541 and was fixed in the 1.19.0.5 Viewer.

To the other concerns: Our developers won't be pursuing a built-in option to revert the UI to a previous version. However, we do have a future roadmap for increasing the customizability of the UI in a project called Skinning: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning . I will be updating that roadmap in the coming weeks with a clearer sense of when certain goals of that project might be reached. However some of the work towards skinning began a while ago! – when most elements of the UI were converted to an XML definition saved in the SecondLife\skins\xui\en-us folder. This means that some parts of the UI can be changed on your own computer by editing the specific XML file which defines it. (Of course, these changes would not persist the next time you install a new version of Second Life, but that is another goal in the Skinning project.)

The structure of the XML is not well documented, but I plan to put up least some basic information about it in the wiki. I know that some Solution Providers make changes to these files with great skill.

• The Volume Controls are governed by file panel_media_controls.xml, so I edited that file to set the first <panel> element with hidden="true" (instead of false).
• The Media/Volume Controls are governed by file panel_voice_controls.xml, so I edited that file to set the first <panel> element with hidden="true" (instead of false).
• Both of these controls sit on top of a grey rectangle drawn by panel_bg_tab.xml. But so does the Chat Bar. So I made a duplicate copy of panel_bg_tab.xml and called it panel_bg_tab2.xml.
• I want to hide the grey rectangles in one case, so I edited panel_bg_tab.xml, adding the words hidden="true" inside the first <panel> element.
• But, I do still want the grey rectangle under the Chat bar, so I edited panel_chat_bar.xml in the third <panel> element to read filename="panel_bg_tab2.xml" (instead of panel_bg_tab.xml).

When I login to SL, those controls of the UI are gone! By similar experimentation, I suspect I could find a way to lengthen the Chat bar (which is panel_chat_bar.xml).

I realize this can be complicated, but this is the kind of customizing that future Skinning would allow people to do once and share the results with others who desired a different look. Again, I thank everyone for their comments and concerns on this issue!

> For example to Henri Beauchamp's comment: I was able to eliminate the Volume controls and the Voice Chat Controls that sit
> next to the chat bar by doing these steps. (NOTE: this is not supported by Linden Lab, so be sure to save a backup of the files
> you change, if you experiment such as I did! Otherwise you may need to un-install and re-install SL to bring them back.)
> .../...

The problem is not as much about the layout of the UI elements, than with their behaviour

I perfectly know how to eliminate an element by editing the corresponding xml file, but I don't want to suppress the volume controls: I want them to appear (and above the chat input line, NOT beside it) ONLY whenever they are needed (i.e. when I do play a parcel media: there is absolutely NO point in having these controls cluttering the screen when no media (no music, no video) is played !).

pre-v1.19 behaviour was precisely to hide and show the media controls individually depending on what media was playing. with v1.19, you must live with the huge media bar eating up your chat bar, even when you don't play any media: this BEHAVIOUR cannot be changed just by editing the XML files.

Moreover, even the layout of the UI elements cannot be fully customized: most panels/floaters got a post-build routine which is hard coded in C++ and which rearranges things (such as buttons size and spacing, for example). Try it yourself: edit the XML for the toolbar and try making the buttons smaller, for example: it will have ZERO effect, as these buttons are resized by the C++ routine just after the toolbar is drawn.

> I realize this can be complicated, but this is the kind of customizing that future Skinning would allow people to do once and
> share the results with others who desired a different look.

Dazzle is doomed to be a FAILURE, if you can't customize the behaviour and the number (adding floaters or removing some, or grouping others) of the various floaters and panels. In fact, you would need UI scripting, and not just skinning !

Fact is NOBODY asked for Dazzle (like nobody asked for voice !): We don't need a skinnable viewer, we simply need the good old, v1.18.0.6 UI !

> Again, I thank everyone for their comments and concerns on this issue!

Yeah, right... Closing this issue as "won't finish" shows indeed how much LL cares about their customers feeling about such poor, unwanted, unasked for, UI changes...

Do you think Micro$oft would do the same thing as you are doing, changing their UI every few weeks ?... Hell no !!! They know too well how much people get attached to a given UI and do NOT want to be IMPOSED a change to their habits: it's even so true that Micro$oft took great care to KEEP their old UI skins and behaviours in their more recent versions of Windows (you perfectly can switch back Windows XP to Windows NT's skin and behaviour, for example).

I don't like Micro$oft, but I have to admit they DO KNOW what to do to keep their customers. Something LL should really learn fast and soon !

We wouldn't mind all the forced (and in the case of the early chatterbox, seemingly ill-thought-out) UI changes if we just had more control over our UI experience. I'll give you a great (albeit basic) example. Firefox Beta 3 moved the home button to the bookmarks toolbar, which many people have hidden. Result? A lot of people were pissed off because their home button vanished (technically true, for them it did).

With firefox, though, there was already a system in place to where users could move their buttons around. The issue was conveniently negligible, since even if they didn't know how to already, a quick google search was all that was needed to move the home button back to where users were used to. Even though the default had changed, there was a system in place to keep people who didn't want that change happy.

Now, imagine if firefox removed your home button and even though you really liked it, you couldn't restore it. How upsetting that would feel, how frustrating. Imagine if they then went on to tell you they'll put the home button back in at some future date, but don't say when, or that the home button finally returns six months later only to be erased each time you apply a security update. How would you feel about that company or its product?

SL is far more than just a web browser (although with 1.19.1 it's now that too); it's a COMPLEX platform with a wide gamut of users. Its UI NEEDS to be MODULAR. Johnny Q Sim who spends his time hanging around scripting particles isn't going to use the UI the same way as Susie P Avatar, who spends all her time shopping and hanging out with her friends, or Ruth T McLagsalot, who hates voice and is offended she even has to see options for it. SL is a huge 3D world and one size WILL NOT fit all, or even close to all.

Without a flexible UI, the best you guys at LL can hope for right now is that people will get used to cumbersome interfaces enough to stop noticing them (which is pretty much what happens now, and is also one of the reasons people get so damn upset when the UI changes, I imagine. It's a lot easier to accept a feature you have the option of migrating to, rather than one you can't do anything about). Skinning is fine, keeping xml edits is good, and yes, SL really does need an option to change the UI back to previous versions. More than that, though, i needs an option to change the UI PERIOD.

See it in action in the Cool SL Viewer: http://sldev.free.fr/