November 2024 SL Web User Group summary

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 6th, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

Table of Contents Meeting Overview General Update Gifting L$0 Items on the Marketplace General Marketplace Discussion Date of Next Meeting

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and / or text.
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

General Update

[Video: 1:22-10:14]

• Data Feeds: a re-cap on the new from the last meeting that the issues causing the breakages to the data feeds API metrics (number of users logged-in, etc), for use by external services, have been fixed.
• Marketplace UI  / Responsiveness Updates: defined as being in the “final stages”, with changes under review and subject to on-line feedback from users.
  • It was noted that a lot of what is visible to users is just “pieces” and a lot hasn’t been released as yet, with the intention that all the work is out by the end of 2024.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): as per the last meeting, is being extended across all of the Lab’s web properties to make them all consistent, so those opting-in to MFA will find at times that they may have to re-authenticate when accessing a wider range of Second Life web properties.
  • At the previous meeting the target for implementing this was within 4 (October – December 2024). In this meeting, less confidence was displayed that MFA would be deployed by the end of the year, and a more likely target is Q1 (January-March) 2025.
  • The reason for this appears to be competition for resources between the MFA work and another project.
• Web Properties Responsiveness and Appearance: as well as working on Marketplace responsiveness, the Web team is now looking at improving the responsiveness of other web properties, and bringing them more up to the look and feel of those web properties like the MP which have been undergoing an update.
  •  This is described as not being a large-scale overhaul of all web properties, but more an update to those which are looking particularly outdated.
  • Examples under consideration for this work include: Web log-in and Dashboard (secondlife.com), the Account pages, and the download page.
• Second Life Maps: improvements are to be made to:
  • Make web maps more usable on smaller screens, and refining the left-side Destination Guide bar so it does not intrude so much into the map display on smaller screens.
  • Ensure that when a destination in the Destination Guide on the left is clicked, the map scrolls to the destination and opens an information pop-up that provides actual information on the location, not just the “Welcome to Second Life” boilerplate, as seen below.

• “Stars” in MP product / store names: there have been complaints about the use of stars (e.g. via emojis / unicode, etc.) in the names of products / stores, which people feel are being used to give the false impression that the product / store is “star rated”. The web team is working on a means to prevent this.

Gifting L$0 Items on the Marketplace

[Video: 13:06-22:05]

• Being able to gift MP items at L$0 has been blocked for assorted reasons (trolling / griefing and the like).
• The Marketplace team is now confident that have the means to prevent this – but feedback is being sought on how gifting L$0 items should be managed.
• Ideas on the latter expressed at the meeting included:
  • Limiting the number of L$0 items which can be given in one go (one shopping cart load).
  • Make the receiving of L$0 items an opt-in for users, and whether from “friends” or “everyone”.
  • Limit the giving of L$0 items on the MP to friends only.
  • Making the receiving of L$0 items / gifts from the MP and opt-out choice.
• Feedback on this should be given via the Feedback portal.

General Marketplace Discussion

• [Video 22:34-26:30 and 30:54-34:34]  Marketplace images being distorted, notably in the Related Products section of listings  (see: this Canny report). This appears to be a clash between absolute image size and aspect ratio (the latter being quotes as 1:1 or 4:3 – when it is more 3:2). The 3:2 ratio also conflicts with viewer thumbnails being 1:1.
  • Alongside of this was a request to increase the (viewer thumbnail?) image size / aspect ratio (the latter might be subject to a Lab-raised Canny to allow the correct aspect ratio information to be stored with the textures to avoid the 1:1 default).
  • Concerning this the distorted images, Garfield Linden noted:

The fixes to images will be shipped after the next batch of fixes (which improves half of the issues with Related Items, as well as some weirdness when there is an error during product listing image upload fails) in our queue ships.

• • Preferences were also expressed for support custom image aspect ratios at upload and / or from a drop down of common aspect ratio options.
  • It was suggested that an overlay / crop tool might be provided to allow images to be suitably cropped to meet display requirements within MP listings.
• [Video: 26:34-30:30] Embedding videos in MP listings: rather than simply lining to videos on You Tube, the option to use You Tube’s Embed capability to embed videos in MP listings.
  • Seen as a good move, if it can be supported, with the suggestion that embedded videos should be restricted to a maximum length to avoid abuse (e.g. someone creating a listing and embedding an entire movie from You Tube).
  • An alternate suggestion was a video thumbnail image which, when clicked opens up the video on You Tube, etc., or within a dedicated tab / floater, if possible.
  • Embedding would be preferable to direct uploading and / or front-loading, as the latter requires LL storage and front-loading could slow down page loading responsiveness.
• [Video: 38:45-45:39] A discussion on further Marketplace categories / tagging.
• [Video: 45:56-50:09] General discussion (with interruption!) on multiple shopping carts (focus on on dedicated for gifting) and labelling the Buy Now button to indicate it means buying for yourself.

Next Meeting(s)

• Wednesday, December 4th, 2024.