|
|
|
Vote added for the need to provide both the new look and the original version when considering releasing this for real. I also prefer the dark low contrast look, and my desktop UI is always set this way. It's just easier on the eyes for prolonged use imho.
Most sincerely seconded.
I definitly do not want to have my UI overpowering the world - and with the current colorscheme, that's exactly the case. Lindes, please do understand that the look and feel of a computersystem is something that is determined by personal taste and choice, and that not everyone likes "shineythings". What i'd love to see is the possibility to control colour, brightness and transparency of the UI before you make Dazzle mandatory. Personally I find the Dazzle look to be much easier on my eyes, dark themes tend to make me have to squint to see things, so I'll be ok if they don't include the old theme in the final release. But I would very much like the idea of being able to easily swap themes from within SL.
I changed the title to something more specific so you can see what the issue's about from the issue list. Thanks for your feedback, we'll discuss this more internally and followup.
OH! And anyone who wants to talk live with our Resident Experience Team is welcome to attend Benjamin Linden's User Experience office hours... infact, one's happening right now as I type this.
I totally agree with the above residents. Specially since the new theme is hard on the eyes in transperant mode like the background of the inventory and other windows.
We were talking about skinning at Benjamin's office hours last week, and the introduction of a classic skin to complement dazzle. It seems LL is (very foolishly in my opinion) going to make Dazzle the default skin for some time, and introduce no options to easily change skins (again, obvious foolishness).
Creating a classic skin for Dazzle really isn't a problem. I've replaced the Dazzle build icons with those from the classic skin and have been using them for the past week, even. The problem is what happens when Dazzle hits release. Right now, I could make a classic skin for you, but the only way to change skins at the moment is to use an external installer to force the Dazzle UI out. This makes switching skins pretty difficult, and unintuitive. What needs to happen is LL needs to redo their file structure to support multiple installed skins (right now there is only one "skins" directory and the files that would be replaced by a new skin are scattered in various folders) and provide an easy, intuitive way to switch between various skins from the viewer so if you were to, say, install my classic skin and found you really did like Dazzle, you could switch back with as little pain as possible. Ah. Good news, McCabe.
So it IS possible to turn this disastrously over-bright monstrosity into something usable. A shame, however, that where it says "Your World. Your Imagination" appears to only be applicable if your last name happens to be Linden. Rather than duplicate my thoughts here, as it's a bit long, please see my comment on
I think we (myself included) often forget that the users who are involved in the development process – creating and commenting on JIRA issues, creating patches, and so on – don't represent the majority of SL users, with regards to technical skill.
So even though to me it seems like a simple matter to go to a wiki page, download a different skin, unzip it, place it in the correct directory, and edit an XML file to make SL recognize the new skin... the majority of SL users would find that quite challenging! Putting myself in their shoes (or at least, what I imagine their shoes to be), here's what the Dazzle update would be like: 1. I try to log in to SL to meet with my friends. If I – now wearing my own shoes again – had a magic wand, I'd wave it and do 3 things: 1. Port the "classic" (non-Dazzle) theme to work with the new system. Those 3 things are what I would consider the bare minimum for easing users through the transition. Allow them to use the new theme if they desire, but don't force it on them. In UI designer jargon: avoid surprise, promote discoverability, and allow for different user needs. After a day of staring at two monitors (my normal work day) the bright glare made me log out, feel frustrated, and after calming a bit install the standard client instead.
The only change that has had nearly this effect to date was when the system wouldn't save preferences if you skipped pop ups (until I knew I could not skip the pop ups and have prefs saved.) PLEASE if this goes live, package it with a handful of premade skins to choose from, one close to the darkness/look of the original. Is it the pollution is San Francisco that cause pink sunrises? I ask because i could never understand why Windlight wakes up every morning to pink sunrises, something i've never seen in RL - pale blue, clear sunrises I recognise, but maybe i live in the wrong hemisphere or something?
Is it the pollution in San Francisco that causes Lindens to want to make the UI of Second Life into this candy-coloured Fisher Price™ NIGHTMARE? PLEASE don't make us use this UI disaster. I can live with the new icons and widgets (even tho' they're mostly less readable at small sizes because they're too complex and too colourful) but the rest is truly appalling. It fails on nearly every one of its stated aims - old UI too hard to read, so white on charcoal menus get replaced with dark blue on light blue thereby REDUCING the contrast? Huh? Comparisons have been made to Apple's Aqua interface - if I was an Apple UI designer I'd sue! Apple have evolved their interface over the years, the more candy-coloured elements were removed years ago - yet Linden think they still deserve a place in a contemporary UI? Dazzle is the worst proposed interface overhaul I've ever seen, truly. Sorry Torley but I'm confiscating those crayons immediately! This should NEVER be made the only UI choice we have, it just CANNOT be implemented until it's possible to switch to other more useable and less aggravating colour schemes! Some fresh air might do you good Lindens, try to get out more...better yet, hire some proper UI designers. "Dazzle" (Yuck, that name alone is a slappable offense!) is an extremely cutesy and childish design. I find it vile. The pale blue-grey interface sticks out like a sore thumb, distracting and detracting from my in-world experience. Every window that uses white text on a pale background is visually painful. (Example: Statistics bar.) Please tell me there will be a "Use classic look" tick box when this thing goes to the main client. Or at the very least, make it tintable, so that it can be made whatever (darker, less painful) color the user wants.
The icons are better, the rest is worse.
It looks like a bad Windows XP clone, it's ugly and heavy. If you're gonna copy a style then choose one that's critically acclaimed, look at Mac OS X and its 3rd party applications (no OS war intended). If you're gonna reinvent the wheel you need to hire a much better designer. I don't completely dislike Dazzle. I think that's about the most positive thing I can say.
While I'm sure the architectural changes are nifty, and will allow easy skinning in future, I do NOT like the default theme. Dazzle MUST include a handful of themes to choose from so that we (the users) can decide what we want. My recommendation is a dark-grey take on the Dazzle viewer, with the old colour blue-buttons. So it's mostly the same as the current GUI, but with some shininess added. Light UI elements is BAD, they are distracting and take away focus from the actually world itself, which after all the work that went into Windlight seems like completely the wrong direction to take. I agree, Dazzle is very hard on my eyes, I absolutely hate it, it would make SL quite literally a painful thing, and cause me literal RL headaches due to my sensitive eyes. I would then have to limit my in time game in lieu of taking naps in dark rooms. gets on knees PLEASE please please I am begging you, do not force me to use the Dazzle interface! kisses a linden's boot, pleading
Please see https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning_HowTo/Revert_1.20_to_a_Classic_look
 if you want to revert back to the original look in the meantime. just wanted to link in that this goes deeper than the gui elements, there are actual 3d effects and other in world eyecandy elements which come with 'dazzle' and also should be tied in with the ability to choose 'shiny' vs 'classic'
Related problems in recent viewers:
Additional issues with Dazzle:
"Title bar icons too similar, to hard to distinguish."
I've been irritated by that one for a while, especially the way the "no scripting" icon doesn't say "no scripting" to me. Is there a JIRA on it? LL seems pretty reluctant to change any of their icons once they're made, for better or worse, but worth a shot. The old "no script" icon at least looked like the script icon from inventory, the new one(s) imply to me I'm not allowed to bring machinery with me onto the parcel =S
Completely agree with the sentiments posted above from the community. The Dazzle UI is completely intrusive and distracting. I need to focus on the in-world elements, not the shiny stupid buttons. The classic layout had its frustrating points, but the new UI is just plain awful.
With this UI, the UI itself stands out as the primary element... the world itself, Second Life itself, is almost secondary to the "must-look-like-web-2.0" sort of UI...
Yes, it is "dazzling", but honestly I could see it harming I know I will be saying exactly what others before have said but in a case like this it is better to have more voices speak out against what is not favoured.
I myself have sensitive eyes, and this current UI is killing me. I already work staring at a CRT monitor for 9 hours everyday. I come home and log onto sl, I cannot tolerate this UI for long. It kills my eyes and as such I log off. This new UI is just not cutting it. The other issue I have with it is that it does draw the attention away from In-world action. I can't help but keep noticing this loud, bright, shiny viewer. I log into SL to be in a different world, my world, Not to stare at some viewer. Anyway, right now that's all i can put together. But I have read everyones elses comments, and I pretty much agree with every single one of them that have been posted before mine. I think it would be awesome to either switch back or have an option to choose the UI you wish to use. Or to be able to choose the color combos. i find making a new color scheme/GUI style to be, by definition, a "change", without an "improvement", and i feel this MUST NOT be forced onto users. allow choosing the old GUI style somehow. be it a simple setting, be it the combination of completely custom GUI colors with a selectable scheme from the list for "classic". i do not want to get myself used to the new GUI, it is too bright and blue and annoying. the old style must look as close as possible to the real old style, not just "somewhat the same colors". i love the old GUI, very relaxing and comfortable and dark with subtle blue elements.
I think Jacek summed up the issue quite well. While I am technically savvy enough to find the 3rd party files and install them, many people out there are not.
There really needs to be an easy way to pick a different color scheme. While a lot of people seem to like the default Dazzle scheme, I find it is very hard on my eyes and gives me headaches in very short order. So far, my problem isn't with the functionality of the 1.20 viewer. My whole problem is with it's appearance. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and, to me, the default colors are simply unusable. I think that it would be adequate if the first release only allowed you to switch between two skins, Dazzle and Classic, and only by restarting SL.
The impression I got from Benjamin's office hours is that there's executive support for Dazzle, so it's not going away, and that LL believes that the current manual skinning mechanism is an adequate compromise. I thought the whole point of Dazzle was so that the client was skinable, what happened?
Any skinnable interface by definition has the ability to choose the skin, I had assumed (it looks like wrongly), that this current dazzle (deer in the headlights) skin was only a very first draft, not something that would make it to even RC level, but here we are... What is dazzle about? A skinnable interface, or dazzling us so that we can't see in-world? I would have to agree on a middle road option for the Dazzle client. While some people welcome the change the majority may not like the idea of having to switch to what would look like a brand new interface and having to learn things all over again.
So yeah. The option of changing skins would be the best way to go. It would make sense if the new shiny UI was optional from the traditional UI (which i prefer). Its too much in your face
Choice is good, especially when it comes to an interface. I'm also seeing a bit of the 'THIS IS HOW ITS GOING TO BE" attitude in the issue about the double-click run.
If you want to attract and retain customers, might more options be a better alternative to fewer? You know, it occurs to me that I spend almost as much time playing around with the settings of the viewer, trying to find an acceptable working environment, as I do actually working on anything.
Frankly, I don't consider that to be an acceptable state of affairs. It is difficult to notice any improvements in the performance of the viewer when I spend so much time attempting to tune it visually. I have to say, even since dazzle was released as a seperate prwview client, I've been dreading this day. I even went with it for a little while to see whether it would grow on me.
It has. Like a disease. It's ugly and slow. Especially the horrible little trailing effect when moving the camera in edit mode with a prim selected. What genius came up with that little perception-warping badhack of a "feature"? I hate Dazzle, and will do anything to never have to see it again; Redesign it, or add scheme switching tbh. If it doesn't happen, SL is going to lose a lot of members and nigh on all of them will be older, actually contributing citizens who're used to and prefer the old scheme. I personally will I ask that Find friends on the map be returned as well as he little network monitor was where the search bar is, when it was enabled, and that the Ctrl alt 1 Performance meters be made opaque and not "On Top" of other windows. I wish for that to go back to how it is in the normal SL viewer.
You can get rid of the search bar now, look at the "General" tab in "Preferences", down by the bottom.
Charr, see
im a professional RL graphic designer with 8 years experience, and what strikes me most is....ITS TOOO BLUE! you have blue backgrounds with blue text with blue buttons, no wonder you have readability issues. uh, that said, i think this new interface had some potential if you address a few things. the backgrounds would be so much better darker and a neutral color. using a dazzle for too long hurts my eyes, ans i work in sl close to 124 hours a day. its the brightness of the interface bgs. they draw your eye away from what you are trying to do inworld, so your eye is constantly being pulled from what you are trying to focus on.
additionally, the fact that the interface has such a prominent bg color, means that ones eye perceives the inworld colors differently. in graphic design, its good to work on retouching and design colors over a neutral background. if you are making color choices, you do not sit your deisgn on a bright blue background, it influences your eye, and frankly, make a lot of other colors look comparatively muddy and dull. this doesnt just apply to designers, i think the interface makes sl look poopy when you have to peer through a bright blue window. please dont release this as the only viewer skin choice. No way is LLs going to spend time and money on this and have it not come to fruition and its so bad even off topic on the main blog but i feel its coming and what can we do i guess i have to learn to be able to mod my own .xml i guess this sucks i pay good money for land and i and others have no say.. LLs fiction quote """who cares if they don't like it Oh well, put it in motion, were going through with it"""
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/02/19/dazzle/ I agree about this issue. As much as I'm sorry for the work of the people who built it, the new skin in 1.20 looks horrible
 Even if you let a way to change back to it, just please revert to the black one in 1.19 and don't take it off any more from now one. I could never imagine myself using these white menus that I can't see a thing of and plainly just look bad. In the future, I'd simply suggest a way to edit the colors manually from preferences, but in time. I agree, the dazzle UI is horrible as far as readability goes. I can barely make out the text in the chat windows, the UI itself is very bright.. My only hope is that one of the 3rd party viewers gives us the ability to revert to the old skin.
A suggestion might just be a preference to which you can choose which folder your skin is read from. That seems to me as if it would be a simple way of implementing skins for now. Thank you to everyone posting their feedback, suggestions, and votes to this issue.
We do plan to ship Viewer 1.20 with the lighter look and feel of Dazzle. It will become the default UI offered by Linden Lab (but not mandatory to upgrade to the viewer which has it). We believe this fits with our roadmap to make many improvements to the viewer and its User interface - documented at https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Roadmap But in the open nature of Second Life, we of course aim to improve the User Interface in ways which equally open the same customization to the Open Source community, Solution Providers, and any resident. In this regard Project Dazzle was an important pioneer of what was needed in the code in order to expose previously "hard-coded" settings and art. Previously, nothing could be changed easily without also affecting all sorts of other settings. It was very unintuitive, which prevents any innovation. We are actively tracking this Feature; its a key element of the Roadmap for skinning. The ongoing goal is to dramatically improve the widget language of the SL viewer, and make this possible from inside the viewer. This won't be ready in Version 1.20 however. We want to design this in the 'right' way so that it is compatible with the next obvious half-step: that we build a preferences/settings infrastructure that will support user-generated translations too. (Localizations are essentially a "skin" of text strings into another language.) We believe skins and localizations shouldn't just be limited to what Linden Lab provides, so these need to be saved in a place that persists across upgrades. As has been already pointed out in comments, there is a resident-created skin that modifies 1.20 to a nearly identical look & feel of 1.19.1. And there are derivative works which might be better than either one, as a matter of personal preference! Elle Pollack and SignpostMarv Martin have done the very smart thing to start organizing these: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Viewer_Skins I agree this isn't a replacement for being able to switch skins from within the viewer, so please know this issue is still open & tracked in our project roadmap. "the dazzle ui is horrible"
"the new skin in 1.20 looks horrible" "please dont release this as the only viewer skin choice" "I hate Dazzle, and will do anything to never have to see it again" "Its too much in your face" "the default colors are simply unusable" "i love the old GUI, very relaxing and comfortable" "its the grid that should be 'in your face', not the UI." "I absolutely hate it," "the new UI is just plain awful." "the bright glare made me log out" "don't make us use this UI disaster." "I find it vile" Response? "It will become the default UI offered by Linden Lab" Your "roadmap" seems to take months to incorporate even basic patches from the Jira. How long before Dazzle becomes skinable? A year? If it's "an important pioneer" then it should stay firmly in Release Candidate until the skinning issue is addressed. Above we have an admission that a "half-step" is about to become the official viewer. Gee thanks. Not. Dazzle should not be released at all without skinning and/or color sliders included from the start.
@ Ramzi
My main concern now is that whatever happens in the short term, in the long term LL must commit to maintaining at least one official dark skin and one light. You cannot rely just on third parties to do it for you it has to be there out of the box. If faced with Dazzle as a new user right now, personally I would not get as far as looking for third party skins as I would be logging out with a migraine after 15 minutes at most. It may be done by adopting a community contribution that proves popular (to paraphrase Ben "A sexy dark Dazzle skin would be great!"), but if so it must be maintained on an equal footing with the light skin, neither one given priority, and not allowed to atrophy as the client develops. As for the short term, unfortunately the original road-map was flawed. There is absolutely no reason the underlying changes to prepare for skinning could not have been done transparently, as McCabe's work shows. It amazes me that it wasn't identified as an avoidable PR risk at the planning stage, even before anyone started prototyping ideas for colour schemes. Unless when it was written calling it "Phase 0" was meant to mean it was only a preliminary pre-release stage not meant to go live until Phase 1 and that's been forgotten? I'm not in the habit of being antagonistic, I'm not doing this because I enjoy arguments, but as I said on SL-Dev this is all like watching a good friend walk off a cliff and I really really don't want to see Linden Lab do that again. A lot of time has been wasted tweaking one colour scheme, when the moment proper skinning is available there will be a multitude to choose from in a few weeks. You could even have run a competition for residents to vote on the two new official skins created by the community and saved an awful lot of man-hours. I applaud this suggestion...
Having options would be hugely beneficial to me, and here is my reasoning. As a builder, I could care less about shiny and color schemes. I'm not really bothered by what the UI looks like as long as it is easy to use, easy to read, and stays out of my face for the most part. Dazzle doesn't really fit that for me. I am trying to use the latest release a little more, and while the color tweaks are a little easier on my eyes the UI as a whole seems sluggish and bulky. Sure, it's shinier and gaudier but it's like trying to build with drunk goggles on. Add a few bugs that further hinder building and suddenly making a simple hat turns into a giant headache. The original UI was clean and crisp. The camera, object outlines, and beacons weren't squirrely. As far as I'm concerned much more utility friendly. I never had any issues with the original interface since I joined in 2005. I don't want to be Dazzled... I don't need to be. I just want to build! I'm not logging in every day because the client is pretty to look at... I'm here for content. As it is 1.20 makes creating content cumbersome. On the one hand: People that don't create content might not mind a prettier user interface with lackluster usability for building. One further thought, compared to the introduction of WindLight the evaluation of Dazzle seems to be be lacking in objective fact and largely based on feeling. if you make it optional you can use the existing anonymous statistical reporting system within the client to gather some real data about how effective it is by seeing what people actually choose to use, rather than just what the relative few of us that are aware enough to come here and comment are saying.
That may well be part of what the new A/B testing program is aimed at. but being restricted to new users will potentially limit its usefulness, as they have different needs and will use the system in a very different way to the experienced resident. My main concern here is this:
the 1.20 RC has bundled positive steps, (in-viewer anti-aliasing option, more up-front explanation of some features, more visual interface cues), with negative steps, such as a poorly colored UI and, for some reason, a series of severe graphics gltiches and stability issues. The net result is, you take one or two steps forward, then one or two steps backward. If this is the case, have you really taken any steps at all? And of course, to compound the unfortunate mixture of progress and regression, in order to get at the usefull nuggets of progress, many residents will be forced to suffer the burdens of your newly introduced and unpopular changes, until such a time as you deign to make it easier for us to fix what was broken. It smacks of disrespect, honestly. It gives the impression that checking off items on the roadmap is taking a priority over the needs of the users, and beleive us, we don't want to beleive that is the case any more than you wish it to appear to be. However, if we are disregarded in such a cavalier manner when we organize and say we dislike a change you make, there is really no other interpretation that can be made. In so doing, the message to the residents is either "you do not know what you want", or "we do not care, this is what we want". Neither is good, and I'm sure neither is intended, so please... don't act them out. Nobody knows the direction SL should go in better than the residents do. They are fairly outspoken on this issue. Respect that, please. I have looked at the phases for the Dazzle roll-out... I think LL should not enable the new Dazzle look until they have completed the ability of a user skin choice. I have a visual impairment and can not see certain colours very well. I "NEED" the choice of the current skin or I can not play SL !!! its that simple.
@Aimee. There was zero documentation when I started my skin (at the release of 1.20.0), and the current documentation is still pretty damn shoddy, so a large part of my skin was just me figuring out what does what and emailing back and forth between benjamin and ramzi, as well as learning all the xml files (still a bitch to edit, really). It's why my skin looked so crappy on first release but is pretty clean now (well, used to look clean; need to update my files with the latest RC changes).
On the whole, I'd say Dazzle is As for PR, it's sort of shocking to watch this process unfold. Releasing a new UI without some form of skin switching, no documentation, and no meaningful changes from the first look as a release candidate?! That should have raised some red flags with somebody, especially since it was assumed the community would be major contributors (none of our suggestions for FL Dazzle were included as far as I know). I'm a big fan of the skin, but damn. If there were ever a prime example of how NOT to update the UI, LL's provided one. It is nice to see some current skins popping up, though. There's already a black one I really like, and another that's fairly interesting. You can download a new skin for Dazzle at: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:Viewer_Skins More will pop up soon, especially since we've got such a great pool of talented artists here in SL. But yeah. There are a lot of tutorials I'd like to write, but I've been really pressed for time lately. Another reason why I hope 1.20 doesn't go gold soon, I guess. That and the obvious need for some form of skin switching. OK, I've attached a patch to provide skin switching.
This adds a new setting called ColorTheme, which gets stored in a global variable on startup. When loading the colors, the client first looks for a file in <SLAppDir>/themes/<colortheme>/colors.xml and uses that if found, else it uses the one in <SLAppDir>/app_settings/colors.xml Likewise when loading UI images it first looks in <SLAppDir>/themes/<colortheme>/textures/ for the file, then if not found tries <SLAppDir>/skins/textures/ This means that a directory for the default Dazzle theme under say <SLAppDir>/Themes/Dazzle would be empty (apart from the theme.xml file described below). The patch also adds a new panel to the preferences dialog called Skins. This will display a list of all the subdirectories under <SLAppDir>/themes/ which contain a theme.xml file. The theme.xml file has the following format <theme> The author and description are displayed in the preferences panel when you select a theme. Note that you have to restart the viewer for the new theme to take effect. The themes.zip file includes some of the themes from the wiki in a suitable form to be unzipped into the <SLAppDir> directory (it omits JB Kraft's dark skin purely due to the 10MB limit on jira attachments). Shouldn't it be putting user configuration in your profile (%Profile%\Application Data/SecondLife or ~/Library/Application Support/SecondLife) rather than the SL install directory?
This should also be used for any other XML files. So the themes directory should mirror the application directory: <profile>/themes/<colortheme>/app_settings/colors.xml And you could put Windlight settings and the like there as well. And in fact if you don't have a theme selected, it should still look in <profile>/themes/default... Nice work on the patch Matthew!
The persistence of themes though might be a more tricky path choice than you think. In Linux land the user persistent configs / logs etc get placed in ~/.secondlife/.... Which is hidden by default, so perhaps not the easiest place for people to get to. In Windows and Mac land? I have no idea how easy it is to get there! But... The ideal solution would seem to be a file path setting as we now have for the cache directory pointing at the root Skin dir. So for me "/SL/skins" (in theory) while my viewer is safely in "/SL/sl-1.19.05.Patched" Am guessing other people might want to keep the skins directory in "My Documents" or even on the desktop in Windows. Just a thought. Sorry it so obviously complicates the patch!!! @Fluf - under XP and Vista the user settings/logs etc. end up under a hidden directory, and is likewise difficult to get to...
@Argent - Well, I've been thinking of themes as being something primarily installed with the client (i.e. that LL should ship the viewer with multiple themes - either developed in house or via an OS contribution) - hence the choice of a subdirectory under the installation. Also, I would regard a third party theme as something an end user would install rather than configure, hence the positioning under the installation directory. At some point, it may be possible to allow the user to configure the theme (as opposed to just choosing one) - e.g. adjusting the hue of the colours? - and such overrides would belong in the user config but I'd still see the base theme as something installed. I suppose I am viewing a "theme pack" as being similar to a "language pack" which also (currently) gets installed under the application directory. (P.S. the ColorTheme setting indicating which theme to use, is stored under the user settings i.e. in ApplicationData/secondlife/user_settings/settings.xml of course). That's an awesome patch, Matthew! What about files in the skins\xui\language folders?
Cool to see a patch. I've imported it for more opinions on direction.
Right now I agree with the approach of this basically being a way to select between pre-installed themes - making user-installed themes easier to manage is another issue with less pressing demand. @McCabe,
Technically a similar approach could be used for the xui files but... colours and textures lend themselves to fairly simple fallback should you have a mismatch between the version a theme is intended for and the version of the viewer installed. In such cases one of two things would happen: a) there might be colours or textures in the theme not used by the viewer (i.e. an insignificant waste of disk space) With xui files there is significant risk that you would end up with invalid UI components for the viewer version, which could impact functionality (e.g. if a theme included a different xui file for the toolbar, and a new version of the viewer added a new button - someone installing that theme would loose that additional button etc.) There are also issues with maintainability - people doing third party language translations have found it difficult to update their work - it is often easier to start the translation of the xui files in a new release from scratch rather than try to work out which have changed, and merge the changes in. Similar problems would arise with themes which included their own xui files. There has been some talk of revising how the xui files work to try to solve this. One solution might be to add a version or timestamp to the contents of each xui file so that if the viewer has a choice better a theme supplied one and a default one, it knows which is the most up to date on and uses that. This might help with maintainability if this timestamp was only changed if the file was - although there is quite a lot of scope for human error unless this could be automated in some way! A better solution would be a complete reworking of the xui system so that there are in fact two file per UI component: one listing the contents (buttons, text boxes, scroll bars etc.) and another specifying the positioning with some clever algorithm to pull the two together and intelligently position items not covered in the latter file (I'm not entirely sure whether this would be technically feasible). Overall, there needs to be a lot more groundwork before the xui files can easily be accomodated in the skinning process, so I thought it better to concentrate in this patch on colours and textures (which I think is the priority at this stage in the Dazzle roadmap) The reason I ask is that in my skin uses modified xui files (the Classic in your pack). I know they're probably going to be a bitch to maintain across versions, but it's the only way to get certain portions of the UI to display correctly in the classic look (panel_media_controls.xml, for example); it'd mess up my skin if skin switching was implemented without detecting them. There are also other skins I want to do that keep the same artwork/color scheme but modify the xui files instead. I'd like users to be able to switch between those as well.
How about if in theme.xml we have a list of custom xui files to load? That way the original xui files aren't overwritten, and even if some prankster modifies the preferences panel to remove the option to switch back, the offending xui file could be deleted from themes.xml. Instead of a timestamp, it might work like colors.xml and colors_base.xml: whatever elements aren't overwritten with the new file will be displayed, reducing the chances of significant errors or feature loss. (It'd still be up to the skin creator to maintain compatibility, though). I'd love to see a reworking of the xui system, but I don't want my description to tell people "you can't switch to this skin. Go here to download it instead" and make them overwrite their files. Mmmm, looking at the lluictrlfactory code there it already implements merging of a customised xui file with a base xui file to cover the various issues in my last comment - basically merging the files found in the locations specified in skins/paths.xml
I've modded the code so that [ColorTheme] is a valid expanded variable in skins/paths.xml (in the same way that {Language] already is), and added the line themeselect_v2.patch.txt incorporates that mod. Zomg. I would vote again if I could for the addition of the patch, even sight unseen.
This is even more important because right now installing a client update overwrites any current skin files. > Mathew, just alerting you (since you included my "glass" skin file in your zip) that I found a bug in it the other day, hopefully I'll get around to fixing it soon. (some greyed-out text is unreadable) I do not like the changes to the user interface with Dazzle. I'm not sure what type of lighting system you have in your workplace, but if it means that you have had to resort to Dazzle in order to see the UI, then you need to call an electrician.
Dazzle is an UGLY EYESORE!!! I spit in the eye of Dazzle and stomp on it with both feet. OUT, OUT, BEGONE !!! I do not wish to have Dazzle IMPOSED on my User Experience of Second Life. I would like the option of retaining the current look and feel on my screen. Give me the option to select the current mode "Classic" rather than Dazzle. PLEASE DO NOT FOIST THIS UGLINESS UPON YOUR USERS!!!!!! DAZZLE IS A BAD IDEA AND TOTALLY DISTRACTING...
Dazzle is IDEED an UGLY EYESORE! OUT !!!! Dazzle should not be the default theme, it should be an OPTIONAL theme, OPT-IN, ideally NOT included with the viewer.
I like that Linden Labs is developing the viewer, and that its options continue to expand (except in the area of old jira feature suggestions ;3), a UI change can sometimes can be a good thing and it can sometimes be a bad thing. It seems as though the number of people who do comment dislike it, and the people who do like it do not. This is how most things go, so I say you should keep the Dazzle theme as the defacto on the new viewers but include a copy of the old theme so that people who do not enjoy the look of the Dazzle skin to revert back to the old one. But give us a option to change the login screens on aswell.
@Aeron: You can. The file you need to change is startup_logo.j2c
This is all well and good, but...
This isn't helping me any. Is there any place for me (the compleat idiot) that will tell me in a step-by step manner how to re-skin the viewer? Something along the lines of: 1. take this file (tab A), and put it here (slot B). So far, my level of expertise with the viewer extends to : Simply put, I don't have the knowledge, or the time to invest in gaining the requisite knowledge, to be able to re-skin this viewer effectively. A "re-skinning the RC viewer for dummies" would be most welcome. Well, dunno about a "re-skinning the RC viewer for dummies" but I've created: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning_How_To/Skin_the_viewer
Basically, it distills all the stuff you need to know to create a recolored version Dazzle. Parts of it are still incomplete, but let me know if that helps or not or anything's missing. You can find photoshop etc. tutorials on your own, but that should get you started. That helped a great deal, McCabe, thank you.
Also helped that I looked at the top of this entry, and downloaded and installed the "themes.zip" file. Fully agreed and voted for. Just in case this hasn't been suggested yet:
Why doesn't LL simply put a section in the Preferences area offering several pre-designed skins (including the old one)? Or if they're going to insist on Dazzle, at least allow foreground/background/text color preferences. The new system is gaudy, low-contrast and hard on the eyes. 160+ votes LL. Time to sniff and realize the garbage needs taken out. ; ) If they want to 'dazzle' me, un-dazzle the UI. This one gets my vote.
"Dazzle" forces the Second Life interface to jarringly resemble Microsoft Windows Vista, which resembles MacOSX. While Mac OSX is great if one has Mac OSX (I love Apple, sure, they are great), since I am using a Windows machine, and since others are using theLinux interface, and since the Dazzle/Vista/MacOSX "look" FORCES us to relearn using the SL interface, and get used to it, I will have to say I am quite happy with the way the Second Life interface looks right now. It is simple and elegant, and the Dazzle interface needs to be an optional skin, and not forced upon us Second Life users even when the day comes that all of us are forced to use Vista on our PCs because Windows XP becomes hopelessly out of date and technologically obsolete. Please Make the "Dazzle" Interface optional and DO NOT force it upon all of us Second Life users.
Quit blaming OS X for Vista or Dazzle. I'm using a Mac and I don't like Dazzle. Not only is it inappropriate for the context of a fairly dark world, but also the features of OS X that Vista and Dazzle most seem to be borrowing are features that have been removed (for example, the title bar of windows in OS X is no longer translucent) or downplayed (the current OS X theme is much flatter with much less 'jelly').
so, have we heard anything from the lindens on this? everyone ive talked to dazzle about, thinks its awful. are the lindens just ignoring all this? i mean its not that hard adding a new skin, how hard would it be to add a skin selector to the ui?
The only way you will convince the Lindens is if every time those people you talk to tell you they hate Dazzle you will ell them how to come to this web page and vote for this issue.(
dazzle is the 3rd worst thing ever to hit SL, the 1st being windows VISTA and the 2nd being windlight
Amazing... they where even given a patch so they won't even have to work and LL doesn't do anything about it. More then half of the SL community are screaming at them for months and yet today I download the FirstLook client and it still uses this horrible interface and no alternative to it. Honestly, do these people know what world they are on? Are they awake?
I finally decided to give the 1.20 a real try. I never bothered with the standard skin, since the screens look gruesome to me. I agree that some users may be very fond of the bright and gaudy design, but its definitely not me. I prefer darker shades and nice contrasts that are easy on my eyes and let me actually see things during nighttime in SL.
so I tried the dark scheme, which is pretty nice and goes well with my zune skin on XP (official from MS, very nice on the eyes mostly), but could be a little darker still, and with color accents (a nice, dark saturated blue for the buttons. I might just mod it at one point). though I noticed the standard folder items, and all I could think of was "god, what the christ did they do?" - the icons look bright and childlike, the folders have the most ugly shade of yellow. skins and folders arent distinguishable, or hardly are, and its all bright colors and shades. terrible. though the real problem I wanted to talk about, is that you at LL should adapt the simple philosophy of "when you do it, do it right!" same with dazzle. you rewrite the UI system to be better, flexible and easily skinable. but then you just stop working on it and plan to release it without ACTUAL integrated skin support, but rather let the user bang around on internal files. and lord, there was even a patch provided. I cant assess the quality of the code in it, maybe it was horrible, but jesus, people are even doing work for you already and you still just.. stop at the halfway mark. psistorm: I think they added the sculpt types to the GUI in a recent RC.
 psisitorm, I totally agree: "when you do it, do it right!" Or, in the words of another wise person: "Do, or do not; there is no "try"! " How your development team SHOULD be managing this project: Stage 1 - do all the back ground work in getting your code and folders and files and such technical stuff re-organised and ready for skinning. This type of development should be transparent to the end user - its your internal maintenance and as the end user, I should be oblivious to this internal change. Stage 2 - further enhancements to implement the full skinning solution for the end users. This is when the end users finally get to use and enjoy the full solution of all your efforts - 'wow, I can select a different skin for my UI - hmmm, which one will I choose today? ' Then, and ONLY then, will you truly "dazzle" me. I just don't want the dazzle interface there any more... we just want the old one back! Why do you still insist on keeping this one there if everyone clearly mentions that they DON'T LIKE IT? Why? Can't Linden listen just once to the community and stop making their updates while walking over it and ignoring what they want?
What can we actually do to make LL understand that half of this community that plays SL dislikes the dazzle skin and wants the old one back? Do we have to get into a plane with a giant banner attached saying "We hate dazzle!" and fly it around the city? Or have 1000 people come holding signs and protesting in front of LL's building? I mean honestly, people have been crying out loudly about it for months! Here, on the forums, in-world, everywhere they could. Do something already! Well, for anyone that visits CG's office hour, you'd know that LL' plan is to have switchable skins implemented before making dazzle the default viewer. I was explicitly told that from CG Linden. as for Lindens listening to the community, again I HIGHLY suggest attending office hours. The lindens do listen there, and often get better feedback and dialogs then from the jira alone.
That's good to know, It'd be great if CG could post here and close the issue if that's really the case. The problem with office hours is that, at least for most of us, they're during 'office hours'.
Agreed. There's not much point in having the JIRA if the Lindens don't actively follow it! They need to strike a balance between office hours and the JIRA, you can't just have office hours to the detriment of this issue tracker. I'm in the UK and I haven't made it to a single office hour I've been interested in yet because they're usually at times I simply can't make it. Meanwhile the JIRA people can just read at their leisure.
Many of the people who are most likely to be able to give good feedback, pretty much have to take time off work to get to office hours. And that's a lot to ask.
Cummere: Thank you very much for posting that to this tracker, I wonder if there's any chance of the folks who CAN get to the office hours posting transcripts? The notes from CG's office hours are true; as announced here: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/25/now-available-optional-release-candidate-viewer-120-rc11-dazzle-we-hear-you/
....we will be implementing this feature in the 1.20 Release Candidate! Please know we have been listening; and making evaluations of our engineering resources always takes a little time. Many of you asked for the Dazzle theme to be optional-- this issue is highly voted! We are glad to tell you we have rearranged our plans and resources to now work on just that. We had wanted to do theme switching originally, and we realize we don't want Residents to opt for the older viewer just to keep the classic look- when that viewer would continue to suffer from bugs that have been fixed in new viewer. Therefore, in the coming weeks please look for a couple other iterations of the Release Candidate. RC12 and RC13 may NOT YET have Great news, many thanks Ramzi
This is indeed great news. I was afrade I might have to give up SL when Dazzle came out.
Happy to hear this indeed, thanks for telling us. I was afraid they where most likely going to force it on us but if they'll add skinning support before that then all is awesome... feel more relieved now, glad to see they did listen and decided to take care of this
Thanks for making the dark skin available in 1.20. I haven't been in SL very long but one thing I like is the classy look of the interface. The dark colors allow it to fade into the background so I can concentrate on whats in the viewer window. The bright blue is just too distracting.
Ramzi...Five months. Over 130 days of Dazzle. More of us begged for Dazzle to die off, and eventually we broke down, because we knew it was going to be forced upon us anyways, and started begging for 'optional-skinning' as a compromise. If LL wanted to do 'theme-switching' originally, then they would've boasted in the first post, it was given one tiny sentence:
Torley: "But as a first step in that potential process, Dazzle paves the way for improvements to come." Which is vague at best. I can admit, Torley is a great salesperson. I mean, look at the post: Torley: "Dazzle, a "refresh" for the Second Life viewer's appearance which makes the UI (User Interface) more accessible and pleasing." Which LL has found out is horribly, horribly wrong. Torley: "Dazzle is especially beneficial if you're new to Second Life, but its increased legibility will also help veteran Residents enjoy extended inworld sessions with more fun, and less fatigue." Which LL found out, it has staggering decreased legibility, and made many (if not most) veteran Residents /hate/ Dazzle and SL, if they had to use it for extended periods of time. (Many finding it impossible to stay on for more then an hour or two, because of it's brightness was painful. Less fatigue, yes, but, less fun, and more eyestrain.) Torley: "Over the next stretch of weeks, we're giving you time to try Dazzle out and share your feedback with us, so we can improve it before it's included in the main viewer." We're five months in, we've tried dazzle, we've shared our feedback, it's not been improved (UI-wise). The best of all, ultimate question dodging: Torley: "What if I don't like Dazzle?" Torley cont.: "This is understandable, particularly because Second Life's UI has basically been the same for several years. Change can be hard if you're accustomed to the way things currently look and have been with us for awhile." But...What if I don't like it? O_o Torley: "We recommend trying Dazzle out and giving it at least a week to get used to -" Drum roll please! Torley: "Will I be able to revert to the older UI?" Torley cont.: "When Dazzle is in the main viewer, then no, you won't be able to revert easily. If you're so inclined, you can manually change the..." So...It wasn't originally intended to be switchable? Aside from semantics here, I'm reading "you won't be able to revert (to the good UI) easily". Maybe I'm just filling in too much information. Feel free to read (or re-read) the entire post. Ramzi, you too. Torley bashes on the good UI rather extensively (bashing, in the sense of passive-insults) to promote Dazzle (noting that it http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/02/19/dazzle/ Hopefully this post won't get deleted, and I realize it's just snippets, thus I've provided the link for anyone who wants to read the whole thing. All in all, I still stand by my saying most players don't like Dazzle, and I hope VERY much, that skinning is fast-tracked into RC12, or whatever number is next. I'd care to see the polls as well, to see residents-who-like vs. residents-who-don't-like. O.o I think we all do Hi Jessica, Did you read this blog? http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/06/25/now-available-optional-release-candidate-viewer-120-rc11-dazzle-we-hear-you/
posted Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 1:58 PM by: Ramzi Linden "Many of you asked for the Dazzle theme to be optional, and we are glad to tell you we have rearranged our plans and resources to now work on just that. We had wanted to do theme switching originally, but had been focused on stability. We realize now we don't want Residents to opt for the older viewer just to keep the classic look- where you would continue to suffer from bugs that have been fixed in the newer viewer. See the Update below!" "We would now like to direct more development on the first stages of the Skinning project (this is the UI flexibility that brought a new Dazzle look to the viewer). To start, we are now developing a solution to In fact I did my dear, I read almost all of the blog posts. I'm post #17, #47, and #50. Posted well over 4 months /after/ the original Dazzle blog post.
If you read the post carefully, you would notice Ramzi stated "we have rearranged our plans and resources to work on just that", which could imply multiple things. Such as: LL might have made a decision somewhere before Feb. 19th up to June 24th to make it optional, or simply rearranged plans away from more 'features', to come up with a slow-fix solution to people complaining about Dazzle. Of course, you probably know more then I do, I'm just speculating here. And as I read the post, I realize one of the last sentences which pretty much confirms what I've said, as long as Ramzi's words hold true: "To start, we are now developing a solution to To start developing. Which means, in my mind, LL had not worked on, and had not officially announced any plans to work on skinning Dazzle (it may have been internally discussed, but that doesn't help players). So more then 4 months worth of RC viewers and updates that had nothing to do with what was claimed to have originally been "thought of" (noting that thoughts are obviously not actions), and never spoken of or announced officially. I understand the time was dedicated to slowly fix bugs. Bugs which seems like they were generated by the Dazzle/RC series 1.20. O_o I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but in the scope of the game, players had to suffer either playing an outdated 1.19.4, that has many bugs and problems, or an incomplete, and painful-to-use Dazzle, or move to an outside viewer like Nicholaz (which I love personally). Skinning and skin switching was always in LL's plans for Dazzle; they just realized, after receiving so much feedback about Dazzle, that they needed to change their release strategy. Skinning improvements will be a long-term goal for a while yet, and Dazzle certainly isn't the end-all of the skinning project. See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning
and http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning_How_To/Hardcoded_limits_in_the_xml_files for stuff that's yet to be improved.
As always, I encourage everyone who is not happy with the Dazzle skin to create their own variant. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning_How_To/Skin_the_viewer So out of curiousity - how much of my patch made it into the code for RC13?
Matthew: I don't know the answer to your question but it's important to know that sometimes none of the code from an "accepted" patch will end up in the product but that doesn't diminish the value of the patch at all. Often the most valuable parts of a patch submissions are 1) that it shows that a solution is possible, 2) it indicates the scope of the solution (smaller is better), and 3) it points us directly at the key parts of our code involved. None of these things is trivial, and I always give credit for patch submissions that provide any of the above, regardless of whether any patch code ended up in the implementation.
The fix is pending, and publicly available in 1.20 RC13.
If you discover bugs in our implementation of swtiching between the Classic and dazzle look, please file them as new bugs in the Issue Tracker, with Affects Version = "1.20 Release Candidate". Thanks everyone! The current version of this fix in RC13 appears to not allow more than the 2 themes that come with SL. Is it possible now, or will it be possible to add 3rd party skins?
I'd like to try this...
unfortunately, it crashes to the desktop every time I try to launch it. Nice. I'm thinking this is just a first fix, to get around the problem and stop it holding up the release of 1.21 further, I hope so seeing as the two skin choices seem to be hard-coded into llpanelskins.cpp at the moment o.O
It's only been a couple of weeks since the decision to do this now was announced here which is an unusually quick turnaround. A full implementation of user skin switching would take a lot longer to develop and get through the QA process, I'd rather see this as a temporary fix and have a properly thought out and cleanly implemented system later, than have full skinning rushed and botched in now. Kevin Susenko: I just tested RC13 and the new ability to switch themes is nice. I don't think this is the place to talk about alternate skins.
I'm uploading an image file showing the new preferences window tab for switching between the dazzle and classic skin.
while this is great to be able to switch. Classic is not fully classic, the popups are still dazzle bright bright blue. :/ I feel like I need sunglasses every time a popup happens (which is often). Well at least this is a large improvment. Just needs a BIT more.
What popup? The popup dialogs have already been bright blue ever since long ago :O
The dialouge popup, and the online/offline popup. They have been blue but a darker blue. The these are BRIGHT "Dazzle" blue. If you have been using dazzle you may not notice. But if you use the current client then RC it is quite obvious.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
New Feature
Resolved
Critical
Dazzle: Ability to switch between new/old theme from within SL (Ability to Disable "Dazzle" Look-and-Feel)
Also, reset the timing for the chat bar so it takes less than forever to slide up and lock into position.