User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-10-01

== Topic ==
User Experience Interest Group Discussion for October 01, 2009.
Topic: Open Topic: Skins.
== Summary ==
No summary is yet available for this meeting. Please edit this page to add one.
== Links ==
* Skinning_HowTo/Basics#Related_to_layout
* T Linden's SLCC Presentation
* - Create new inventory tab "Worn Items"
== Transcript ==
[15:14]	Jacek Antonelli: 	No topic today. Anybody have anything they wanna talk about?
[15:15]	Jacek Antonelli: 	(Also, happy October!)
[15:15]	Charlette Proto: 	morgaine will lament, she sinks into sits apparently since server 1.3
[15:15]	McCabe Maxsted: 	holy crap, it's october
[15:15]	Charlette Proto: 	haha Happpy Linden is a good one
[15:16]	Jacek's ZHAO-II MB2.0.9: OFF 	Jacek's ZHAO-II MB2.0.9: OFF
[15:16]	McCabe Maxsted stretches 	McCabe Maxsted stretches
[15:16]	Jacek's ZHAO-II MB2.0.9: ON 	Jacek's ZHAO-II MB2.0.9: ON
[15:17]	Charlette Proto: 	colour schemes for skins (cusom user settings)
[15:17]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Purple!
[15:17]	McCabe Maxsted grins 	McCabe Maxsted grins
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	one of the complaints (all too many others) I hear about Emerald is the skin colours
[15:18]	Forcing Ground Sit 	Forcing Ground Sit
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	pink would be the prettiesy
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	pretiest
[15:18]	Standing up 	Standing up
[15:18]	Forcing Ground Sit 	Forcing Ground Sit
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe actually could work since it is between blue and red
[15:19]	Charlette Proto: 	never looked into it, but cyan is the worse for a large group of people
[15:19]	Charlette Proto: 	and then there is the green/red problem in second place
[15:20]	Charlette Proto: 	I actually use the grey/blue skin as a preference
[15:21]	Charlette Proto: 	really one should be able to choose (edit) UI skin colours like in windows
[15:21]	Charlette Proto: 	really the term skin should be ditched
[15:21]	Geneko Nemeth: 	A color scheme would be better than specifying color of elements one by one.
[15:21]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam) 	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam)
[15:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	What?!
[15:22]	McCabe Maxsted blinks 	McCabe Maxsted blinks
[15:22]	Charlette Proto: 	yes more 'good' presets and a custom (save your own changes)
[15:22]	McCabe Maxsted: 	doesn't second life status update know it's not nice to shout?
[15:22]	McCabe Maxsted: 	(reminds me: fix clickable names for shoutey objects)
[15:23]	McCabe Maxsted: 	more skins would be nice
[15:24]	Charlette Proto: 	the 'shout' selection in UI is a bit odd the way it defaults to shout when you point at it
[15:24]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And then we would have skin packages, skin selector, skin properties, the works...
[15:24]	McCabe Maxsted: 	after imprudence 1.2 is released, I plan to finish my LCARs one (star trek ui) hehe
[15:24]	Mm Alder: 	Has anyone here tried playing with the colors.xml file?
[15:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	McCabe knows colors.xml like the back of his hand
[15:25]	Charlette Proto: 	yes i really think this is dependent on SL09 a lot but some of the concepts are just universal/general
[15:25]	Geneko Nemeth: 	If we really care about what they are doing with SL09, we might as well do nothing and wait.
[15:25]	McCabe Maxsted: 	s'a bitch to play with sometimes
[15:25]	Charlette Proto: 	isn't the XML very limited and most of it made from pics
[15:25]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Which is my plan exactly...
[15:26]	McCabe Maxsted: 	charlette: xml is layout and stuff like text colors and overlay colors
[15:26]	Charlette Proto: 	yes gen, true but sometimes responding to a new thing out is not as open as speculating what it could be
[15:26]	Jacek Antonelli: 	A lot of the UI elements are from images, though. Like the buttons and tabs.
[15:27]	McCabe Maxsted: 	for example, there's a setting you can change to set what color buttons are mixed with; thebuttons themselves have their own color in their .tga files though
[15:27]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Can't change their color very effectively via XML
[15:27]	Charlette Proto: 	ah so the 'highlight' shade is in XML - that is a good start
[15:28]	Charlette Proto: 	but the white glow of the buttons is precisely what Emerald users bitch about
[15:28]	Mm Alder: 	Is colors.xml just an override for colors_base.xml?
[15:28]	McCabe Maxsted: 	yup
[15:29]	Charlette Proto: 	to some people it seems a glow should be a distinct colour
[15:29]	McCabe Maxsted: 	it keeps colors_base.xml from getting screwed up, which preserves settings and keeps you from crashing
[15:29]	McCabe Maxsted: 	if you miss a tag
[15:29]	Mm Alder: 	Does a new floater pick up the new colors or do you have to relog?
[15:29]	McCabe Maxsted: 	gotta relog
[15:29]	Mm Alder: 	:-(
[15:29]	McCabe Maxsted: 	yeah
[15:30]	McCabe Maxsted: 	loca opensim is your friend :)
[15:30]	McCabe Maxsted: 	*local
[15:30]	Charlette Proto: 	what the colour cold crash you when editing (XML parsing error I suppose)
[15:30]	McCabe Maxsted: 	hm, well it could in 1.20; not sure if they ever fixed that
[15:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	If you removed a color from the list in colors_base.xml, it could cause trouble when the viewer tried to access that color
[15:31]	Mm Alder: 	I know the XUI XML allows errors. It just ignores the tag.
[15:32]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes, that's a great improvement over the old behavior for dealing with bad XML: crashing hard with no meaningful error message.
[15:32]	Charlette Proto: 	then maybe parsing invalid XML is safe now
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	really editing XML is naff, one should just have the attributes exposed in a form
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	even JavaScript parser could do it
[15:33]	Mm Alder: 	Code that accesses the GUI element that is missing may still crash.
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe nice
[15:34]	McCabe Maxsted: 	I once thought of being evil and creating a skin without any skin options, so when you loaded it you'd never be able to switch (unless you knew how to delete it manually)
[15:34]	Jacek Antonelli: 	heh. Evil McCabe!
[15:34]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe MaCabe skin we will call this
[15:35]	Charlette Proto: 	a special thing for the sight challenged users
[15:35]	McCabe Maxsted: 	if wanted to be truly evil, grep all the labels then rand
[15:36]	Jacek Antonelli: 	We should make so the menus are shuffled randomly every time you open them
[15:36]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Even shuffling items between different menus.
[15:36]	Charlette Proto: 	BTW there is so much in XML maybe there is a point in making a built-in object/attribute parser editor
[15:36]	McCabe Maxsted: 	ike the ipod! everyone loves the ipod, right?
[15:37]	Geneko Nemeth is going to be good and make a dynamic skin changer. It will not have the attribute 'name="Skin panel"'. Bwahaha!	Geneko Nemeth is going to be good and make a dynamic skin changer. It will not have the attribute 'name="Skin panel"'. Bwahaha!
[15:37]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I <3 my Meizu media player.
[15:37]	Charlette Proto: 	yep a random UI could yeald some nice surprises - WOW Advanced under Admin
[15:38]	Charlette Proto: 	most of it isn't dynamic (live) but needs a restart, or am I wrong?
[15:38]	Mm Alder: 	The patch I made for the Magical Scripted HUD makes XML editing much easier.
[15:39]	Mm Alder: 	With it you can tweak something and reload the XML.
[15:39]	Geneko Nemeth: 	(And probably also gathering user clickstream for analysis, too - I'm looking forward to that patch!)
[15:39]	Charlette Proto: 	I need to have a better look at it Mm
[15:39]	McCabe Maxsted votes for applying it tomorrow, eh jacek? 	McCabe Maxsted votes for applying it tomorrow, eh jacek?
[15:40]	Mm Alder: 	Geneko, it doesn't gather all UI events. That gets to be too much.
[15:41]	Charlette Proto: 	I really think the viewer could be a webpage with a 3D background
[15:41]	Mm Alder: 	You get scrolling events posted to a scrolling window which causes it to scroll more...
[15:41]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam) 	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam)
[15:41]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Not again.
[15:41]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Fudge, I was writing an email and lost track of time, sorry folks. And "Hi" to all :-)
[15:42]	Charlette Proto: 	actually there is a Japanese system like this - "3Di_OpenViewer_Sanwa"
[15:42]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, maybe only user-initiated events, and only some of them. This isn't meant to be a key-logger.
[15:42]	Charlette Proto: 	hi there blue kittie
[15:42]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And compress them before sending.
[15:43]	Morgaine Dinova waves at Charlette 	Morgaine Dinova waves at Charlette
[15:43]	Charlette Proto: 	look Morg I'm wearing the evil logo
[15:43]	Mm Alder: 	Yep, Geneko, I'm only logging events that should cause an action.
[15:44]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Charlette: you mean the MS flag thingie?
[15:44]	Charlette Proto: 	you mean login data Mm? hehe
[15:44]	Charlette Proto: 	yup, having a 'house party' to get a free licence
[15:44]	Morgaine Dinova: 	LOL, that was so funny
[15:44]	Charlette Proto: 	you in UK Morg so you would know House Party
[15:46]	Mm Alder: 	Right now I'm spending my time documenting the XUI parameters. Anyone care to help? :-)
[15:46]	Charlette Proto: 	this tag "Imprudent" makes me laugh, I always think of prudish grannies McCabe
[15:46]	McCabe Maxsted: 	how do you know I'm not one? ;)
[15:46]	Charlette Proto: 	good idea Mm is it for the Wiki?
[15:47]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I used to have a list of XUI parameters that aren't meant to be localized. But alas...
[15:47]	Charlette Proto: 	I'm sure you are McCabe - a 21 year old male granny
[15:47]	Mm Alder: 	Yes. Admiral Admiral and I have been at it for a while now, building on what was there already.
[15:47]	McCabe Maxsted: 	finishing up the skins documentation on the wiki?
[15:49]	Charlette Proto: 	tell you something about my experience with localised UI - can't help noobs even if you know the language because you don't know what they are looking for (word) if you are on the english version
[15:49]	Charlette Proto: 	what impact would SL09 have on this documentation Mm - guessing make it obsolete
[15:49]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Probably not.
[15:50]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Yet.
[15:50]	Mm Alder: 	See links at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Skinning_HowTo/Basics#Related_to_layout
[15:50]	Mm Alder: 	I don't think SL09 will change the widgets. They have too much invested.
[15:51]	Charlette Proto: 	ah good Mm, I've been editing the menu some time ago, but found it tedious looking for stuff and gave up
[15:51]	Mm Alder: 	I'm guessing SL09 changes the XML mostly.
[15:51]	Charlette Proto: 	really? I thought they were doing quite a bit more than cosmetic changes
[15:51]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I think maybe they would put the "message center" into motion?
[15:52]	Mm Alder: 	The XML does more than cosmetic changes. It defines everything about the UI structure.
[15:52]	Geneko Nemeth: 	That is cosmetic.
[15:52]	Charlette Proto: 	I meant under the hood code
[15:53]	Mm Alder: 	They may have changed how some of the callbacks work.
[15:53]	Charlette Proto: 	precisely Mm UI is cosmetic in my view
[15:53]	Mm Alder: 	There is some stuff that looks like a work in progress now in the code.
[15:53]	Charlette Proto: 	UI functions are another thing, but appearance of things is what we call 'cosmetic'
[15:54]	Charlette Proto: 	any idea on the release of the SL09 beta?
[15:54]	Charlette Proto: 	date?
[15:55]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I haven't seen the SLCC demonstration so I have no idea how complete it is now...
[15:55]	Mm Alder: 	You could probably find out more details about the Iranian nuclear program than SL09. :-)
[15:55]	Charlette Proto: 	thought so NDA drama
[15:55]	McCabe Maxsted: 	haha
[15:55]	Mm Alder: 	The SLCC demos are on-line somewhere.
[15:56]	Charlette Proto: 	google NDA drama and you find it
[15:56]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe
[15:57]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Google gives me a bunch about DNA drama.
[15:57]	Mm Alder: 	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7pGtebYy4&feature=PlayList&p=596031328E297454&index=18
[15:58]	Charlette Proto: 	thankies Mm
[15:59]	Charlette Proto: 	shit it looks like a web browser (blury pic but)
[16:00]	Charlette Proto: 	POWERFULL hehe
[16:00]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I'm skipping over the video, but I have to say voice first chat second? Bullshit~
[16:01]	Charlette Proto: 	wow the user defined tool collections seem to have gotten through to them
[16:02]	Charlette Proto: 	the vid keeps stattering here
[16:03]	Charlette Proto: 	paused to load it
[16:04]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Anyway, do you think the UX Lindens will resume office hours once SL-whenever gets a release?
[16:05]	McCabe Maxsted: 	I'd imagine so; there's going to be a *lot* of feedback
[16:06]	Mm Alder: 	They would have to be brave :-)
[16:06]	McCabe Maxsted: 	(not as good as ours, of course) :P
[16:06]	Charlette Proto: 	there will be a revolt against technology hehe
[16:07]	Mm Alder: 	It's been a long time since 1.23.4 went out. Usually a new RC follows right behind.
[16:07]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Snowglobe.
[16:07]	McCabe Maxsted: 	hmm... I have an installer for a 1.24
[16:07]	Geneko Nemeth: 	(I'm on it.)
[16:07]	McCabe Maxsted hasn't tried it yet though, forget where I found it 	McCabe Maxsted hasn't tried it yet though, forget where I found it
[16:08]	Mm Alder: 	No, SnowGlobe is just an alpha release.
[16:08]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Hmm. I would argue it's more like MediaWiki.
[16:09]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think SL09 is probably going to be the successor to 1.23
[16:09]	Geneko Nemeth: 	N, no.. wait... bad analogy. It's well, not really "alpha" as it's something that aims for day-to-day usage.
[16:09]	Mm Alder: 	day-to-day?
[16:10]	Charlette Proto: 	I'm lost with this are you using 1.24 gen or Snow (I'm on Snow 1.2)
[16:10]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Snow 1.2
[16:10]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Like, um, the releases supposed to be solid enough that you can use this viewer every day?
[16:11]	Mm Alder: 	Well, the HTTP textures still have a lot of problems. Lots of grey.
[16:11]	Charlette Proto: 	yes I've been on it all the time (last test build too) and it works well
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	yup agree the ppics sometimes don't rez
[16:12]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And OpenSim incompatibilities, and Vivox troubles, and sometimes even freezes loading images in a particular area...
[16:12]	Mm Alder: 	It will be a First Look for the new Media API.
[16:12]	McCabe Maxsted: 	(brb a sec)
[16:13]	Geneko Nemeth: 	SNOW-222, yeah...
[16:13]	Charlette Proto: 	Snow 2010
[16:14]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Now that's gonna be interesting.
[16:14]	Charlette Proto: 	BTW Morgaine you mentioned last week that Snow had the 'Worn' tab, what version was that?
[16:15]	Charlette Proto: 	blue kittie is asleep
[16:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Not quite. I said that it was being considered for committing.
[16:15]	Charlette Proto: 	ah OK
[16:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	It came up in Rob's Snowglobe OH
[16:15]	Mm Alder: 	I think that patch was accepted. No?
[16:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Didn't check, but everyone wants it, so probably :-)
[16:16]	Geneko Nemeth: 	https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SNOW-226 RESO FIXE
[16:17]	Geneko Nemeth finds himself tabbing away to TVTropes with increasing frequency. 	Geneko Nemeth finds himself tabbing away to TVTropes with increasing frequency.
[16:18]	Mm Alder: 	Yep. that Revision 2789 comment by lindenrobot means it was pulled in.
[16:19]	Charlette Proto: 	I'm on 2785 so it must be next up
[16:20]	McCabe Maxsted waves 	McCabe Maxsted waves
[16:21]	Mm Alder: 	Got to go. See you all next time.
[16:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	wb McCabe
[16:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Take care Mm
[16:21]	Charlette Proto: 	ah 2823 is out today - downloading now
[16:21]	McCabe Maxsted: 	take care MM :)
[16:21]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cya Mm
[16:21]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam) 	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam)
[16:22]	Morgaine Dinova: 	What's spamming that?
[16:22]	Charlette Proto: 	server morg
[16:23]	McCabe Maxsted: 	something owned by Michelle2 Zenovka
[16:23]	Charlette Proto: 	"Secondlife Grid status update shouts"
[16:24]	Charlette Proto: 	why is it HTML in chat
[16:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Because it's not programmed to handle errors very well.
[16:24]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Well why's it trying to connect toa Demon site?
[16:25]	Morgaine Dinova: 	46.105.177.80.in-addr.arpa. 28800 IN PTR hirst-magnetics.demon.co.uk.
[16:25]	Morgaine Dinova: 	How did you find the source object, McCabe?
[16:25]	McCabe Maxsted: 	it's lonely and needs a friend
[16:26]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe mccabe
[16:26]	McCabe Maxsted: 	I remembered emerald had already fixed the shout bug for me, so logged onto that insead. Need to apply that
[16:27]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Emerald is giving you the source of the shout?
[16:27]	McCabe Maxsted: 	just fixes it nto being clickable
[16:27]	Charlette Proto: 	personally I feel Emerald team has more drama than the NDA stuff at LL atm
[16:28]	McCabe Maxsted wouldn't know 	McCabe Maxsted wouldn't know
[16:28]	Morgaine Dinova: 	How did you know the object belongs to Michelle2 Zenovka then?
[16:29]	Charlette Proto: 	welcome areas are just awash with all kinds of claims about the evil banned folk on the emerald team
[16:30]	McCabe Maxsted: 	you can get the owner profile
[16:30]	Morgaine Dinova: 	How did you know the owner?
[16:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	McCabe likes to not explain himself. :P
[16:30]	Charlette Proto: 	the object name I think Morg
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Hmm~
[16:31]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yeah, it's like getting blood out of a stone :-)
[16:31]	Charlette Proto: 	use the sword Morg
[16:31]	Charlette Proto: 	swords cut stone like butter
[16:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There's a feature that makes object names in chat clickable, like user names are. SL has it, but only for things that IM you. When you click on the name (hyperlinked), it opens a little window with the object name, location, and owner
[16:32]	McCabe Maxsted: 	in emerald, apparently it just shows you the owner's profile rather than the extra info
[16:32]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ah
[16:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yeah we know the name of the shouting object. But short of looking everywhere for an object of that name (and that still wouldn't tell you because any number could have same name), you can't get the owner that way.
[16:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Ah, ok
[16:33]	Morgaine Dinova: 	That's a very necessary patch then.
[16:33]	McCabe Maxsted: 	it's in Imprudence. Just not the shout bit, like I mentioned
[16:33]	Morgaine Dinova: 	kk
[16:35]	Charlette Proto: 	is current Imp download updated?
[16:35]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Imp 1.2 beta was released earlier this week
[16:36]	Charlette Proto: 	ah must have a look, you kept it secret from the group hehe
[16:37]	Geneko Nemeth: 	You guys just aren't subscribed to ImpDev.
[16:37]	Charlette Proto: 	any progress on the audio (soundcard) problems?
[16:37]	Charlette Proto: 	ah ImpDev very geek
[16:38]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Heh. It was announced on the blogs, forums, ImpDev, and even Massively.com had the story
[16:39]	McCabe Maxsted: 	I put a sign up on my front door, but I don't think anyone saw it
[16:39]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I saw it. On Google Earth!
[16:39]	McCabe Maxsted: 	:O
[16:39]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe McCabe
[16:39]	McCabe Maxsted: 	ignore that missile silo looking building next door...
[16:40]	Charlette Proto: 	looking at streetview on McCabe's house and can't see it
[16:40]	Charlette Proto: 	kidding
[16:41]	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam) 	Secondlife Grid status update shouts: (spam)
[16:41]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I'm gonna head out, I think
[16:42]	McCabe Maxsted: 	okay
[16:42]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Take care, everyone. See you next week
[16:42]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cyu Jacek, tc :-)
[16:42]	Charlette Proto: 	OK I'll log myself, install new Snow and Imprudence later
[16:43]	Charlette Proto: 	byee jacek