Day: February 6, 2026

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday February 4th 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.

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.

Updates

• The past month has largely been focused on planning and information gathering as the Web team works out priorities for the year ahead. As such, direction an initiatives may change as decision are made based on information gathered.
• Current work in progress:
  • Marketplace responsiveness work (i.e. making it more Mobile-friendly), particularly focused on the Marketplace home page and including things like category total to the site navigation sidebar, possibly making the Feature Items on the page high contrast.
  • Refresh of the viewer log-in splash screen, described as “same item, just a different arrangement”. This will b an iterative process within viewer releases as updates are made.
  • Possibly adding the long-requested ability to search by region on the web maps – although this is described a “complicated”. This work might also include some clean-up of other web maps issues that have been raised.
  • A clean-up of legacy codebases.
  • Upgrading the log-in infrastructure.
  • Release of the viewer log-in email modal, asking people to make sure they have a valid email address on file with LL.

In Brief

Also refer to the video.

Marketplace

• Question to attendees:  if you were a merchant, which Marketplace page would you like to have responsive and would be the most useful to you? currently, Search and listing pages are responsive.
  • This got side-tracked somewhat be a request for data on the number of Mobile users using the Marketplace and questioning why Mobile users would want to have access to the Marketplace, given “they can’t wear anything” (so what? I frequently brose the MP via my PC’s browser without having the viewer running; doesn’t stop me from buying stuff for later, even if I cannot wear it when using my browser; the same is likely true for established users on Mobile).
  • In terms of Mobile responsiveness and merchants – would a merchant use Mobile to manage their listings, etc., over logging-in via their desktop / laptop and managing their stores?
  • A broader preference was expressed for the consumer experience on on Mobile to be more responsive.
• The Variants / Style work – allowing one listing to have all the colour options for an item – which under Reed Linden’s time at the Lab was a focus to the point of being promised at the “first deployment” in 2023 – appeared to ultimately get swallowed by a black hole. There may be a (further) move to get it back onto the roadmap.
• A discussion on providing the cost of items in two currencies on MP listing – L$ and local currency (or USD), the idea being to put how much items in SL cost in real terms to help new users. There are complexities to this.
• Suggestions for the  “Related Items” in listings  should also have:
  • A “Quick Buy” button to add them to the shopping cart without having to open the actual listing and then add it.
  • A “Quick Demo” button to obtain the demo of an item (if the creator provides one) without having to go to the main listing and then click on the demo link and then add the demo to the shopping cart.
  • Both of these options could also be added to Search results as well, allowing people to click through a list of search returns and add the items they want to their cart.

General

• Question to attendees: which web property would you like to see all nicely polishing and “finished”? Maps was inevitably referenced (as was having the SL Map on the viewer splash screen – which is most certainly a non-trivia project to undertake, together with specific pages in the MP and web search.
  • My preference would be for the Second Life dashboard to be overhauled (elements made more directly accessible, navigation improved, use of drop-downs for things like Groups and Friends lists, options for better input from LL – such as “mini posts” offered as pop-ups within the dashboard, as was once the case, etc.). The dashboard is a core centre for information but looks terribly dated in layout.
• Canny often receives suggestion for new Canny categories. Should these be submitted individually or as a “group” of suggestions? Group them.
• It is unlikely that Web User Group meetings will move to a more frequent cadence than once a month as some have requested (ironically, they have also stated other meetings can be “dry” – possibly as a result of them being held too frequently, leaving some meetings with little to discuss).
• Several subjective opinions were expressed:
  • Banning gacha because “I don’t like them” (so don’t use them – and let those who do carry on).
  • No icons in MP category listings because “I hate them”. Well, they serve an accessibility purpose and are cross-language –  although subjectively, I’d personally like to see some of them made more relevant to their category – what has a figure apparently hanging by one hand from an invisible branch have to do with “Apparel”? Why not an icon an actual item of apparel – pants or a shirt or a dress? If people have to decode an icon by reading its label, then the point of the icon is lose.
  • The icons discussion led to a suggestion that LL should see if descriptions / definitions could be added to categories, so that a mouseover or click would display them.
• A general discussion on whether gacha items are “use items” or not (yes and no) and to whom the gacha market is aimed.
• Various discussions on payment methods and other topics in the last third of the meeting.
• Whilst not a topic for this meeting, it was suggested that the SL URL create.secondlife.com is confusing, suggesting it is for general content creation, whereas the actual portal to which it resolves is focused solely on SLua / LSL scripting(why not script.secondlife.com?).

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, March 4th, 2026.