March 2025 SL Web User Group: web site refreshes, Project Zero and Mobile

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday March 5th, 2025. These notes 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, with sections of this summary times stamped to the relevant points in the video for those wishing to refer to the audio. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.

Table of Contents Meeting Overview MFA Enabled across Web Property Log-ins What Next? Page Refresh Viewer Download Page Refresh Marketplace Project Zero and SL Mobile Project Zero SL Mobile In Brief 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), and the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and 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.

MFA Enabled across Web Property Log-ins

[Video: 2:56-3:14]

• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now enabled for all Second Life web properties.
• Those with MFA logging-in to the majority of SL web properties (e.g. the dashboard, Marketplace, Project Zero, the Destination Guide, etc.,), will be asked to supply a token from an appropriate authenticator the next time their current token expires.
• As with the viewer, tokens will generally be valid for 30 days, the exception being should you clear cookies from your browser, in which case you will also have to supply a new token on logging in.

• This work should harmonise logging-in across most of the popular SL websites.

What Next? Page Refresh

[Video: 3:15-3:38]

• The What Next page, accessible via the Dashboard menu has been refreshed.
• The new look include new tabbed sections, more relevant video, and the style in keeping with the overall web properties style refresh.
• However: at the time of writing, the Destination Guide – present under the drop-down previously available when hovering the mouse over the What Next? menu option – is absent from the page.
• This means that currently, the Guide can be accessed using its dedicated URL – https://secondlife.com/destinations.
• This prompted a discussion later in the meeting on where the Destination Guide should go – e.g. as its own menu item.

Viewer Download Page Refresh

[Video: 3:15-4:03]

• The viewer download page has been updated to the new Dark Theme, and includes a refreshed look which now includes links to the SL Mobile viewer pages on the Apple Store and Google play.

Marketplace

[Video: 4:09-7:25]

• Responsive product listing pages were enabled on Wednesday, March 5th, 2025.
  • This should mean product listings should be displayed in a responsive manner, depending on whether you are viewing them on a large monitor or Tablet / Mobile device.
  • Not all of the Marketplace is responsive as yet, so expect this to be an iterative implementation.
• The Marketplace legacy pay-out page has been “put back”, and work has been carried out some optimisations to the Account History page, with more to come.
• Coming Soon: Improvements to the Mobile / Tablet versions of MP Search, which are “pretty stripped down” at present.
  • This is being actively worked on, and the iteration of further responsive MP pages will come after this work has been completed.
  • The approach is to start making “small, incremental improvements to your Marketplace lives.”

Project Zero and SL Mobile

[Video: 28:00-46:13]

Note: Project Zero is the code name for the viewer-in-a-browser experience:

• Website: https://zero.secondlife.com/
• Information / background: Second Life in your browser: a new initiative from Linden Lab.

Project Zero

• Numbers able to access the service are still limited, with the priority (for want of a better term) being given to users signing-up to Second Life over existing users.
  • If the service is running at capacity, the “endlessly spinning” loading circle should now eventually time-out and display the message below.

• • Whilst the number of concurrent users able to use Zero is low, when combined with the session limit and the fact the service s available 24/7 it should still mean that “several thousand” users per day are be able to access it.
  • The ratio of slots for existing users and those for new users is also subject to adjustment up and down.
• LL are curious as to why existing people are using the viewer in a browser and the type of device being used. Those at the meeting responded in terms of:
  • Curiosity, better performance than on their own machines, testing (including trying it on different devices), logging-in via a tablet device to offer support to customers.
  • Devices used ranged from desktop PC through laptops to tablets + mobile devices(!).
• Feedback on experience varied in feedback:  avatar loading was seen as better; region crossings / teleports (and associated failures) were seen as about the same for some, improved in terms of success for others.
• The fact that many appear to be using Zero from a tablet seems to have surprised LL, with Sntax Linden (project lead) curious as to how people were managing sans and UI overlay (in my case, multi-channel wireless keyboard and trackball both switched to BT mode and linked to tablet).
• Feedback was also taken on whether people would prefer using Project Zero over the Desktop experience (screen resolution, etc., adjusted). Responses were varied.

SL Mobile

• The Lobby function has been extended to Premium Plus subscribers and to (some? iterative deployment?) Premium members.
  • Lobby appears to be included with iOS version 0.1.534 and Android version 2025.2.543.
• Requests have been made to be able to simultaneously log-in to SL Mobile whilst also being logged-in to the viewer (and vice-versa).
  • This is something for which LL has an awareness, and the Lobby function is seen as a possible first step towards it by allowing communications ,etc., to occur prior to the world loading-in.
  • However, overall, making it possible to be logged-in from both Mobile and the viewer simultaneously does have some significant technical challenges, due to the way client / simulator interactions are managed. For example, a client must have an avatar physically present in SL in order for chat, IMs, etc., to work, and the system doesn’t support having an avatar effectively in-world twice.
• Philip Rosedale asked for people’s preferences for SL Mobile, if they are only given a binary choice, either:
  • Have SL Mobile fully render the 3D world and use it to interact with the world through it much as they would with the viewer? Or:
  • Have it as a “communications companion” with chat, IMs, Groups, etc., prioritised and without the associated world rendering etc (e.g. pretty much as the iOS Mobile project had originally been initiated under Oz Linden)?
  • Those at the meeting, while a small sample, leaned towards the latter (rather ironically, given that during the development of the iOS Mobile option, there were multiple calls for it to offer world rendering as a priority in order to be useful).
• As an extension to the above conversation, some at the meeting indicated they’d actually prefer some means of chatting / responding to IMs via their account dashboard.
  • As per the notes regarding being simultaneously logged-in via Mobile and the viewer, whilst the Lab are aware of the desire for a web-to-in-world chat capability, it would require a substantial re-engineering effort given chat + IM communications are predicated on the avatar being logged-in to a location in SL.

In Brief

Please refer to the video for details on the following.

• [Video: 7:30-9:18] Marketplace Styles (aka variants):
  • Styles is the ability to list multiple versions of a single items in a single Marketplace Listing (e.g. different colour versions of the same sweater, together with a demo and any fatpack (if offered)).
  • As I’ve previously noted, this was reported as something planned for deployment at that start of 2023, but has since seemingly fallen off the table.
  • Kali Linden indicated that the Web Team still want to implement Styles, but the work essentially lost its management sponsor before it could be seen as completely ready for deployment.
  • Threfore more the subject is mentioned, the more likely it is to receive the necessary management support – this being the case: Brad, Grumpity, whomever! give us Styles on the MP! 😀 .
  • Also, if you would like to see the capability implemented on the MP, upvote the feature request.
• [Video 10:00-11:47] maps.secondlife.com:
  • Further requests for the service to be searchable by region name – described as having “a chance” of being elevated in priority.
  • The issue in using map data with tools like Mapbox was again raised – also see this issue.
• [Video: 15:42-20:20] A general discussion on on things like style cards, lists of items, etc., new starters can get to assist them in customising / clothing their avatars.
  • This included the idea of the Lab providing a “Starter Pack” that could include things like a basic AO, leading to a broader discussion on the use of AO, their availability and importance to news users, the weakness of the Senra wearable AO system, building the AO system into the viewer, etc.
  • No conclusions drawn.
• [Video: 20:34-25:56] General discussion on web properties and issues / possible updates, including:
  • The status of Place Pages (in short: a means to promote in-world locations user have created, introduced in 2017 as a “beta”,  then launched shortly thereafter – and basically left to wither on the vine.
  • (Again) aligning maps.secondlife.com functionality with that seen within the in-viewer World map.
  • Giving the dashboard page (and associated pages – transaction history, etc.) a broader facelift. Kali indicated this requires the input of two teams, and will likely be a longer-term top-to-toe redesign.
  • Reducing the amount of sub-menu nesting evident in some web properties.
• The last 15-ish minutes of the meeting (approx: 47:00 onwards) formed a more general conversation on MP reviews (particularly “bad” reviews), dashboard chat capabilities and what else might be possible, such as making notecards viewable without being logged-in – which led to mention of having Inventory accessible through the web), search the MP via date ranges, etc.
  • Kali notes that a feature request to add the date listed (/updated) added to an item’s listing has been accepted, and will likely be implemented (see also the Chrome Marketplace Enhancer extension).
  • Adding a tab to listing where creators can drop their log files / update notes into a listing.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025.