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OK, this is stupid. I often use the "Tools" menu to open the build tool in edit or focus mode, because when you click on the build button it opens in create mode.
So now the menu item I use to open the build tool is hidden unless I open the build tool first. If nothing else, tools should not autohide while Advanced is open. If the idea is to simplify the UI for new users, those of us who use the Advanced menu don't need it.
Work-around:
menu_viewer.xml for your language (xui/en-us folder for English) Change "false" to "true" for visible You'll get some nonsensical menu options ("Take copy" is always enabled even when nothing is selected), but that shouldn't confuse anyone who wants it back, and everything else seems to work just fine. I agree with this one, It's annoying not having the tools menu there.
This may be more appropriately marked a "bug" as I doubt if it would be on purpose. Consider options like "Stop All Animations," "Show Script Warning/Error Window," "Bug Reporting," and "Select Tool" on which having an object selected shouldn't have any bearing. Also the fact that none of the other top-level menu 'categories' seem suitable for those sorts of functions.
They moved "Stop all Animations" to World. and "Bug Reporting" to Help, so I don't think it was accidental.
If they did this to help newbies:
1.- Why didn't they say anything about it? I came to the JIRA to post it as a bug O.o 2.- Can you imagine the number of tutorials for newbies that start with "Go to your 'Tools' menu and..."? I can just see them as lost as Adam on Mothers' Day... As a teacher of Level One classes - this will totally mess up the new residents taking classes. Additionally I rely on it, to prevent me from removing/deleting objects set to group. This should be repaired/reinstated ASAP - I have had reports of the menu not being available even while building. This issue seriously affects all residents who create content and those who teach others to create things.
I guess this was done to reduce menu clutter, but the Tools menu is hardly clutter and requiring extra key strokes to bring it up is a craptacular idea. Also, the designer of this 'feature' doesn't appear to realize that the build button is greyed out if you're sitting in a no build area, but one often has the need to set Tools options regardless of the parcel settings. This is just another sign of poor systems engineering and the lack of user input in development.
Even if functionality has been moved off this particular menu dropdown, it is poor UI design to have menus changing. It is confusing to everyone to have menu contents modal.
It messes up muscle memory, too.
As a Builder, it is CRITICAL that I can be certain my selections will not inadvertently select other people's content. With the tools menu visible all the time, I can verify that easily, BEFORE I start any building efforts. Now, I have to activate the building tools palette, and then go up and check? This is an unnecessary extra step to the process.
Hiding the Tools menu was a bad idea when On Rez did it in their Viewer, and it remans a bad idea now. Please don't do this. This reminds me of that atrocious "feature" Windows used to have where it would hide menu items to try to make things easier. The end result was to make things much harder for most people, particularly tech support staff (and my heart went out to the poor people doing phone support). If something isn't applicable at the moment, dim it, but don't make it disappear entirely. When it's dim, you can see it's not available and, if it was something you wanted to do, figure out what you need to do first. When it's gone, you spent a few minutes hunting through menus trying to find the option you know should be there. Making things disappear makes things HARDER for newbies, not easier. It creates situations that are MORE confusing. The proper way to handle not overwhelming people is to use a "More>>>" feature. As long as the user is in control of when major sections of the UI appear or disappear, there's no confusion. It's when the program just shows or hides things without user input that it creates support nightmares. If you want a simplified menu bar, add an option to turn on or off the extra menus. But for the sake of all that's sane in UI design, don't do it via mysterious criteria behind the user's back.
Oh for crying out loud, I have to HAVE something ALREADY selected to make the Tools menu appear, but the options for what I can and can't select are ON that menu, inaccessible until I've already made a selection!
Modality makes sense in contextual menus like the pie menu but not in global menus, so the fact that this menu auto hides is bad UI to begin with.
But, as many have mentioned there are a number of options and a number of workflows where it does not make sense to have to open the build dialog before you can access the item on the Tools menu (not least of all the options to open the build dialog itself on the menu) or when you would normally access the item on the menu after closing the build dialog (not least of all because of the additional screen clutter having the build window permanently open causes). Whoever thought this was a good idea clearly does not do very much content creation in SL! Please revert this change or at least make it an option to keep the Tools menu sticky! I strongly agree with the preceding comments. What about the option to "Select only my objects" and similar. I need to use this BEFORE selecting anything, so it doesn't make sense to have the top-level Tools menu hidden until I have somethint selected. I also agree that in principle it is bad UI design to hide/unhide top-level menu items.
Please revert this change in the next version. I've pulled out some of the main problems mentioned in the comments into the description.
Please bring back the Tools menu as a default on the top menu bar!
The previous method of operating was perfectly fine and did not need any changes.... "if it ain't broke, DON'T STUFF IT UP!!!" Really, really NEGATIVE first experience with RC5 Yup, according to Benjamin Linden this was done to help new users. I still maintain it should not auto-hide with the Advanced menu open. Those of us who use the Advanced menu don't need an auto-hiding tools menu, and aren't helped by it.
Another interesting problem with this is that to open the tools menu from the menu, you have to select options.... in the tools menu. facepalm Honestly, thinking back to when I was a newbie, I wasn't overwhelmed by the amount of menus. I was overwhelmed by the amount in the menus and the apparent randomness of it. I'd much rather see a basic and advanced UI: a simple menu system for newbies to get accustomed to that can then be expanded into an advanced menu for more experienced users. There is a ton of menu items newbies now get that they don't need, such as:
and why is search in the EDIT menu, anyway? The more I think about it, the more pointless this move seems to be. Revert this change, and do some actual menu reorganization. The VIEW menu is absolutely atrocious. And to put my money where my mouth is, here's a reorganized toolbar:
Found even more inconsistencies brought about by this change, as well as menu items I didn't even know about. No wonder noobs are confused by the menus. The present ones are bloody random. Also with the new RC 9 the Tools menu is still auto-hiding.
It is really important for me to have it also when not being in creating mode. Please disable the auto hide at all or add at least an easy option to disable the auto hide. It doesnt make sense at all and just slows down working with Second Life. I really really hope this will be fixed in the next RC. Er, can someone point me to the JIRA number that details the user request to remove the Tools option from the Menu bar? I can't seem to find it.
How many votes did this request garner to get actioned so swiftly by the development team?? Is this the most important issue that needs to be "fixed"?? WHY, is the LL development team WASTING their time (and my monthly tier fees) on un-necessary busy-work, when there are many, many more severe and urgent issues logged here in JIRA that they need to work on? Problem...
The actual "Open Edit Panel" menu option.. is ON the Tools menu.. that is only visible when the Edit panel is already open! On no-build land, the there are only 2 ways to OPEN the "Edit" tool panel, is to access it via the Tools menu. On no-build land, even if you're "in the group" the "Build" button on the bottom becomes untouchable. Yes, you can still select "edit" from the pie menu. Yes the Ctrl-3 shortcut still works.. but the menu, where you can see the Ctrl-3 shortcut... isn't visible! But a lot of times, when you're on the go in the world, perhaps a script on one of your objects is throwing up an error.. the "Show script warning/error window option is ON the tools menu. Or perhaps you've got "select only my objects" turned on and need to turn it off. This menu should not "vanish/hide"... please return the previous "always on" functionality. ------------ Edit: Added link to I strongly support changing back to the non-hiding Tools menu. This auto-hiding behavior only creates confusion, reduces UI consistency, and reduces usability. These problems far overshadow any theoretical gain in approachability.
Yet another dumb move thats been implemented without any forward thinking on Linden Labs part, although we should be used to that by now. I always use the tools menu to "Restart scripts in selection" its the handiest way to do it.
LL Stop trying so hard to make things easier! When you do it gets worse for the people that dont need it SO easy! Now cost up the amount of time you have to spend to correct an obviously poor descision. You may find that its cost YOU! ... quite strange that a problem counted as "fixed" long ago pops up again and again...
Esp for me, working on bigger objects and trying to make my way with a lousy english knowledge something like that is a good reason to quit. ...How do I unlink objects now?... why is the reported bug still there that a script shows at error summary missing objects and such from totally other, partly long ago deleted objects? ... Questions questions and no answer... and most useless functions, but eve in advanced I cant find a control de re-enable toolbar Okay, today RC 14 got released and the tools menu is still auto hiding. Also this RC-series is about to get an official viewer. I really recommend changing the tools menu back to non-auto-hide or otherwise it will create a lot of confusion if more and more Residents will use this version, as it becomes an official viewer.
If there is any sense for an auto-hiding tools menu at all, then it should be changeable via the Debug Settings at least. But it should NOT be set as standard behavior, it will just confuse any Resident changing to this viewer. At the moment there are already 98 votes for this issue/new feature, but still i don't see any reaction by Linden Lab. Please care about this before changing it for the majority of the Second Life Residents. I agree with the preceding comment. If and when this version goes mainstream, I predict there will be an outcry from residents who will wonder what has happened to the Tools menu.
A compromise which was discussed in CG Linden's office hours is not to auto-hide Tools if a resident has the Advanced menu enabled. However, I personally am still of the view that it should remain visible at all times. Linden Lab, you should take note of the comments of the existing resident community before making changes that are supposedly (and dubiously) for the benefit of yet-to-be residents. I just want to update people watching this JIRA that this issue is under discussion around the Lab, and Lindens from Resident Experience to Viewer to busybodies (like me) are involved. We are taking into account both the comments on this JIRA and the shear number of votes it has received. Naturally, we will try to balance the need to simplify the new resident experience with the desires of veteran SLers.
The decision will be about what we do for the 1.21 viewer:
I expect we'll have a plan in a day or two, and I'll make sure it is communicated here. >>* Make the Tools menu work like Advanced (i.e. there is an option to keep it always up)
seems to be the perfect compromise. RE: Periapse Linden ...
WHY has it taken so long to have ANY Linden even show a glimmer of interest in this? The change has gotten a universally NEGATIVE response, and makes absolutely NO sense to anyone I have talked to. If you REALLY want to make the Tools menu, or any other menu, for that matter, something that can be hidden, then make it a USER CHOICE in the preferences! But I can tell you that the people who create the content that makes this world what it is will virtually ALL leave it visible 100% of the time. My own vote is "Revert the change and return the Tools menu to be always shown." A poor second choice, because it screws up almost every building tutorial in SL, would be "Make the Tools menu work like Advanced (i.e. there is an option to keep it always up)", with the stipulation that the DEFAULT behavior is for the Tools menu to be visible at all times, and the Preference option is for Tools to auto-hide. If your UI people really want to auto-hide stuff, how about hiding the mulimedia controls when the user has all multimedia MUTED in their preferences? If we tell you, in our preferences, that we DO NOT WANT TO USE a feature, then WHY do we need controls for that feature on our screen? I think the change makes sense IF the Tools menu gets sorted out:
If there's good evidence it helps noobs, the change should be kept. I stand by my previous comment that it should not autohide if the Advanced menu is open, though. I'm not convinced that top level menus should change dynamically - it tends to confuse rather than help users. Even Microsoft have moved away from dynamically changing top leve menus in the latest Office.
The menus do need a complete overhaul - as McCabe Maxsted observes above "The present ones are bloody random", and it is that which confuses new users, not the existence of build related items in the menus! This change should be reverted (it is a minor change as Kitty points out) and effort should be focused on re-structuring the menus - attempts at quick fixes such as this are counterproductive. @Ceera - they're busy
@Periapse - * Make the Tools menu work like Advanced (i.e. there is an option to keep it always up) - this makes the most sense for us (power users) and the most sense for you (worried about new people confused by so many menue's). So my vote is for making Tools like advanced, by default not shown, but a simple control+alt+something to make it shown perm for us power users. I think people need to take a step back and realize for SL to continue to grow, it must become more end user friendly. Not everyone needs to know about every option the moment they hit the ground and to streamline that so the landing is not so rough things will need to be trimmed. Compromise is required though. Drew,
I'm not convinced that reducing the number of top level menus from 6 to 5 would have a significant impact in making the client more user friendly - most users will be used to web browsers with more top level menus! On the other hand, hiding features and functionality (unless enabled via some setting buried deep in the preference dialog or some key stroke only disocverable by delving through the knowledge base articles), could be argued to make SL less user friendly! Rather than hiding the Tools menu it might be better to relabel it so that it is clearer to the user that the items in that menu relate to building, then users not interested in building know that there is nothing in that menu they need (until they, perhap, start becoming curious about how to build). The real problem with the menus at the moment is not how many there are, but that there layout has evolved over time and is inconsistent. What is really needed (and is the issue of a different jira) is an overhaul of the menu system so that there is a more logical grouping (e.g. a menu for stuff relating to an avatar's appearance, a menu for stuff relating to the appearance of the 3D world, a menu for stuff relating to the appearance of the 2D SL UI, a menu relating to manipulating the 3D environment etc.) so that the new user has a sporting chance of guessing which menu might be appropriate to what he/she wants to do. "I'm not convinced that reducing the number of top level menus from 6 to 5 would have a significant impact in making the client more user friendly"
Wild guess, but there's a new "Landmarks" top level menu planned so "Tools" may have been sacrified in light of that. "The real problem with the menus at the moment is not how many there are, but that there layout has evolved over time and is inconsistent." Although not widely announced, Malbers Linden had a "card sort" survey that involved reordering the SL menus in a way that made the most sense to you so that is being worked on apparantly. In the post on the VTeam blog he said he was processing the results and would seek out more feedback in the future as needed so keep an eye out for that They don't need a Landmarks top level menu. The region name in the title is the logical place to have a landmarks menu drop down from, with a 'Region Info...' item to open the region info window.
By all means, please return the TOOLS function to the menu.
But there is an alternative that addresses both concepts (that of advance use and newbie simplicity): Use sub-menus (menus within menus). I don't mean just additional menu options (such as the Advance system). But actual additional menus. Here's how it works: 1. You click a TOOLS button (which is recognized to be for advanced use). That could go a long way to eliminating top-bar clutter. However, if I may make a comment: it really doesn't matter at all how many buttons are on the top bar. You can change button colors: green for newbs, purple for advanced, or other similar concepts. Newbs likely won't be confused just because there's a bunch of buttons available. As computer users... we're kind of used to that. ; ) wayfinder: Please, no, not more exotic not-really-a-menu-bar menu bars. Not after Vista.
LOL Argent. I couldn't agree more. However, sub-menu systems have been used for decades now... and just for the purpose stated above: to unclutter the main screen. The main disadvantage to them is it's "yet another button to press". Honestly, I personally don't really see that the prior screen layout was all that cluttered or confusing. And I'm not totally against Linden Lab moving STOP ANIMATIONS to the World menu and relegating the TOOLS menu to the edit construct. I think what bugged me more than anything is that they changed the function of a primary menu without (to my memory) a mention in-world or even in a prominent location. And in that, they resemble Microslop very much... how many things did they change in Vista without so much as a word of documentation? Ugh.
Hmm. It didn't sound like you were just talking about submenus. It sounded like you were talking about actually changing the menu based on the state of the program... which is something Microsoft started doing in Office and which I have never liked. I much prefer leaving the options that aren't currently available visible but deselected. It helps muscle memory, and avoids confusion.
Oh... no no. Altering / alternating menus is bad. Like you say, just adds to the confusion. Here's more an idea of what I mean:
FILE EDIT VIEW WORLD TOOLS FILE EDIT VIEW WORLD TOOLS Then if they choose for example, AVATAR... FILE EDIT VIEW WORLD TOOLS (well, couldn't get it to all line up properly, but you get the idea). But yeah, I agree with you, having menus disappear / alternate / replace is just bad planning. But then, that pretty much much summarizes Vista in my view. (You know what I find wierd... is that a company the size of Micro$oft, with the resources of Micro$oft, and with the expert employees of Micro$oft... can manage to design an OS so totally and completely different than the vast majority of their customers prefer and need. How can they, with their nearly infinite skills, manage to release a major product that the majority of their customers really don't like and don't buy? It's like... what did they do, just have late night parties and design the package however THEY wanted it to be? Have they never heard of market research or customer feedback? I just have to shake my head in wonder. Sometimes corporations just get too big for their own good. OK done soapboxing now. I'm sorry, I'm completely confused. You sound like you're talking about ordinary submenus, but you're using too many words for that. My brain is not wrapping around your ideas.
Reducing menus helps. The fewer choices you give people, the easier things are to understand, and the menu bar is definitely cluttered (and will become even more so with the landmark/navigation project, and the work with notices).
An easy short term solution to satisfy people would be a debug setting, prolly placed in Advanced > UI under auto-pilot, but that doesn't address the problem of what should be the default. Is this helpful to noobs or not? That's what I want to know. Personally, I don't think a contextual menu is much of a problem in this case, even if the change clearly was not thought all the way through before being implemented (I hardly notice that it hides anymore). I just wish they'd either finish the change, or abandon it completely. This half-implementation is embarrassing. In my experience, with years of system administration and technical support under my belt, hiding menus and options hurts. If you have too many menus, then you need to re-evaluate the menu design... not try and use tricks to reduce the impact. The huge advantage of global menus is that they are discoverable. If you make them context-sensitive, then you should probably go back and re-evaluate the whole design shift from the original Xerox purely-contextual pop-up menus to the Apple global menu bar... not create a contextual menu bar.
I'm not sure that following the "file edit view" model is necessarily a good idea. How about this? Replace "File" with an "SL Logo" menu that has the global actions (including preferences), then having "Avatar", "World", "Navigate", "Windows", "Advanced". "Avatar" would have things like appearance, gestures, stop animations, everything to do with your avatar, and maybe money-related stuff. "World" would have some of the stuff in the world menu, as well as view settings. "Navigate" would have the world map, landmarks, mini-map, and so on. "Windows" would be a list of all windows... active ones, minimized/hidden, and not-yet-open. And an option to "hide" minimized windows so they just show up in this menu instead of taking up screen space. I think you'd really want to have more top level menus than there are now. Maybe the menu titles could all be minimized to icons (like the SL logo to replace the file menu). But I'd like to see this reverted and a REAL redesign instead of just trying a patch that makes it harder for people to figure out how to build! Thank you all for the continuing good discussion on the menu interface and how to (and how not to) make the experience easier for newbie residents. I'm going to make sure that our Resident Experience group is aware of the valuable input here. Note that Benjamin Linden holds an office hour every Thursday to discuss Resident Experience issues (see https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Benjamin_Linden
 ). If you want to discuss the top menu architecture in real time, this would be a good venue.
Meanwhile, it's been decided to revert the change completely. Qarl Linden has already done so, but it won't be until the maintenance branch is checked into release that this change will go out. I imagine the Tools menu will return to being always up in one of the early release candidate builds of 1.21. Argent, I came in here today to make a suggestion... and you'd already beat me to it.
I was thinking... there was no limit to simplification, until a person gets to "one". So if the menu bar is "cluttered" (I don't think it is, but I do agree it could be improved)... then how could it be simplified? And the same idea hit me that you posted above.
So... File, Edit, World, Avatar, Advanced. I think that would pretty much take care of everything... in only 5 buttons. (I'd have to give it further study to see if this is actually sufficient, but it seems so at first glance). Glad to hear LL is returning the Tools menu. In truth, earlier I may have spoken too early, out of frustration for not knowing how to find an essential option (that again, comes down to customer communciations and letting us know IN WORLD of major changes). I don't really mind the Tools menu popping up with the Build menu and now that I know Stop All Animations is in the World menu, it was easy to adapt. It's just a matter of knowing HOW and WHERE when a major change is made. Way to do that is to have a pop up "Important News" box when somone enters the world, containing essential user info such as this. That would go a long way toward keeping customers informed... especially if it could be exited and recalled later as time permits. As a teacher in SL - this is the most stupid thing I've seen done - to remove The TOOLS MENU "because it clutters the Menu bar" OMG
Is not the Tools Menu one of the most used for builders of any description There are thousands of classes for SL students out there that have to be rewritten - because the TOOLS MENU is no longer accessible directly. (specifically newbies) So I have to access the build menu to see light radius / select only my objects / Snap to grid - the list goes on Put it back please!!! After re-reading this thread - I see action is being taken BTW Hot Keys are not an answer due to the multiple platforms which all use different Hot Keys From the minds that brought you light grey text on a light grey-blue background for CHAT...
I feel bad because this annoyed me while I was using the RC, but I never voted for any JIRAs about it. I just learned to hit control-3 all the time. Added a note in the issue description that the Tools menu will no longer auto-hide in a future version. Hopefully that will be more visible than Peripapse's one comment in the sea of many.
I'd also recommend discussion about general menu reorganization should go to Yeah! we get tools back. As a "power user" I spend most of my time creating content. Not having it there was a massive irritation. Thanks for listening to us and bringing it back
i Well what could I say... yes, you should make it at least an Debug/Advanced option as some of the previous speakers have already proposed. But then again, this one additional menu won't make that huge change to newbies at all I think... whilst it might be kind of an unnecessary restriction to the advanced users needing to access some options quickly... In my opinion it's not necessary to hide this one more menu - there are so many other more obvious hurdles for newbies (many more than at the time I joined SL almost four years ago ^^) than this menu. I vote against this change.
UMMM What does Tools mean?
Tools you can use - or Tools in a Toolbox If I could take all my votes and place them into this issue - I would say yes - Keep the Tools Menu in the Menu Bar SL Builders say: "We want the Tools Menu Back"!
Periapse Linden already said here in the thread, that we will get the Tools Menu back. Read his post from 28/Jul/08 09:18 AM for details.
Also note that Status is already "Fix pending". Nothing more to say here, let's wait for the fix This does NOT make sense if it is to help new users
I live in a mainland region that has a high rate of visits by new users (over 60,000 a month - ive counted)... I have lost count of the number of new users who dance past my house, being stuck in an animation, because they left some club without clicking the dance ball again to stop dancing first. The "Stop All Animations" option on the Tools menu now cannot be accessed unless they get into build mode first. How is this helpful to them? Have you ever tried to explain to a new user how to build? or to ignore that menu that you just asked them to open? Its totally unnecessary when all you are trying to do is help them get out of that sruck animation!! For me personally, as a scripter, I should not have to go into build mode to "Reset Scripts In Selection" or set them Running or Not Running. Thats just an annoying unnecessary step, and a build window that I really DONT need cluttering my screen. Neither of these are mentioned in the description of this bug, nor do they have anything to do with whether or not the Advanced menu is shown. Tools is a necessary menu for New users and advanced users alike - Please bring it back!! Seriously, who ever approved this needs to look at what they are approving and consider ALL of the functionality that is being removed rather than just tick it off because it sounded like a good idea at the time. Voted! While I agree with the sentiment (obviously), I'd like to note:
1. Stop All Animations isn't in the tools menu any more. Oh, and... 3. They're bringing it back. Fixed in Second Life 1.21.0 (94534) Aug 15 2008 19:05:55 (Second Life Public Nightly)
I've been outworld for a couple of months now, and just upgraded to the new viewer recently, so this took me completely by surprise yesterday... and when I asked about it, several normally knowledgeable residents were also confused that it was gone. I see many, many points that I agree with which don't need to be reiterated, but I will add this...
When I realized it was gone, because I needed it, because I was trying to select something which wasn't mine and it was set to select only my objects, it took me looking for more than 2 hours, and even searching the knowledge base to find where it had gone to. I even found Torley's video tutorial on using the Tools menu (how confusing is that going to be for new folks), before I came to the JIRA and searched for it. (And how many new folks are going to know to do that!?!?) So, yeah... think this is a bad idea all around. Please put it back, ASAP! Tools is a very useful menu. Surely "Stop Animations" is a useful tool and it would be more logical to have it in the Tools menu, not in World? Newbies need things to be as easy to find as possible not hidden in less obvious places. Newbies are the future of Second Life. Help the newbies, please! |
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New Feature
Resolved
Major
Request for "Tools" menu to not auto-hide.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?