SL Legacy Profiles project viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

In February 2019, it was indicated in a Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting that an upgrade to the system powering user profiles seen in the viewer, on the web, together with the  feeds, etc., was in the pipeline (see 2019 SL User Groups 7/3: TPV Developer Meeting).

At the time of the announcement, it was indicated that the overall impact of the update on the feeds has a whole had yet to be determined. However, it was also made clear that the current web-based profile floater seen in the Lab’s viewer would in the coming months be replaced by a “legacy” style profile floater (e.g. the type seen within the Firestorm and Cool VL viewers).

On Wednesday, June 5th, the Lab took the first public step towards this by issuing the Second Life Legacy Profiles project viewer, version 6.2.3.527749. This viewer offers a first pass at the re-introduction of the “old” style profile floater to the official viewer, utilising code originally contributed by Kadah Coba of the Firestorm team.

The new Legacy Profiles project viewer replaces the current web-based profile panel (left), with an “old-style” profile floater panel (right)

With this viewer, it is important to note a couple of things:

  • This is an initial release of the viewer with the profile floater. As such, it may be refined / altered / fine tuned as the viewer progresses towards release.
  • There are a number of known issues with this initial release – see the release notes for a list of these.

As TPV user – notably (but not exclusively) Firestorm – I’ve always tended to find the legacy style of profile floater to be preferable: it tends to be faster loading, and (to me) has a more user-friendly means of navigation. As seen within the project viewer, the “new” floater is perhaps a little large in its default size, but adjusting it is easy enough – although having it a little smaller by default perhaps wouldn’t go amiss.

Those interested in trying this project viewer can do so via the Alternate Viewer page.

Published by Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

2 thoughts on “SL Legacy Profiles project viewer”

  1. I’m afraid with my eyesight, that viewer’s colour-scheme is useless to me. It makes so much of that Linden Lab do with their viewer to improve the UI into an irrelevance for me, and it’s a sign of some fundamental bad design in the viewer. I know there’s the Starlight package, but you have to know about it, find it, download it and install it. Meanwhile the viewer, and TPVs, are stuck with code that totally ignores operating-system settings for display fonts, the mouse pointer, and the colours used.

    It’s not the only program I have used which has the same arrogance about these features. But, even though some of these details can be changed (not the mouse pointer), I have to wonder if I would have stuck with SL if Viewer 1 hadn’t had some support for a set of alternative schemes. The default colour scheme for Windows, the out of the box settings everyone sees, are nearer to Starlight Silver than anything Linden Lab gives us. Instead, we get an environment that resembles pictures of the real world as seen by the colour-blind.

    It doesn’t surprise me that only about one in fifty accounts actually regularly use Second Life, and a lot of them are really old. What message does that colour scheme send to new users?

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