User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-05-28

== Topic & Summary ==
User Experience Interest Group Discussion for May 28, 2009.
Topic: Inventory (Tabs and Misc. Features).
We started the meeting discussing new tabs in the inventory, to augment the current tabs (Recent Items, Worn Items, etc.). The conversation drifted into other inventory-related ideas as the meeting progressed.
Some ideas that came up were:
* Filters for more item properties (creator, permissions, dates, etc.).
* Custom tabs to hold certain items for quick access. Items would be dragged-and-dropped from another tab/window.
* Tagging items with keywords or labels, and filtering/searching by tags. The tags could be stored on the user's computer, or perhaps in the object description ("tags: cute, red, dress").
* A tab to list objects that are rezzed in-world. () (This would be quite difficult to implement, unfortunately.)
* Batch operations (delete, move, rename, etc.) on selected items or search/filter results.
* Custom tabs to display the contents of a specific folder (and sub-folders)
* Move the Linden's Library folder to its own tab.
* Alternatively, maybe the Library folders could be distributed in the regular folders, e.g. the Script Library would appear in the user's Scripts folder. The user could choose to hide them if desired.
Late in the meeting, we discussed ideas for using special notecards to emulate certain inventory features which would otherwise require direct support from Linden Lab:
* Aliases (shortcuts / links) for items. The notecard would contain the path or inventory UUID of the item it is an alias of.
* Outfits. The notecard would contain a list of the items that are part of the outfit.
* Tags. The notecard would contain a list of tags or other descriptive info for other items in the folder. The idea here is that content creators could distribute the notecard with their products.
Of course, real server-side support for those features would be better than using notecards as ad-hoc solutions. But, there is little chance of Linden Lab implementing these things in the foreseeable future.
=== Links ===
* - Rezzed Objects Menu
== Transcript ==
[15:09]	Azwaldo Villota checks wiki for tonight's topic... 	Azwaldo Villota checks wiki for tonight's topic...
[15:09]	Azwaldo Villota: 	...or latest requests
[15:10]	Charlette Proto: 	hi Merov
[15:10]	Merov Linden: 	hello
[15:10]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Heya Merov!
[15:10]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	Hello!
[15:10]	Merov Linden: 	hi
[15:11]	Charlette Proto: 	nice to see LL onboard
[15:11]	Merov Linden: 	is that ok if I attend this meeting?
[15:11]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Hi Merov , hi Squirrel :)
[15:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Sure, Merov
[15:11]	Charlette Proto: 	warmly welcomed Merov, we luv Lindens
[15:11]	Merov Linden: 	I'm was curious as to which UX issue would surface most
[15:12]	Merov Linden: 	thanks Charlette, I don't hear that very often :)
[15:12]	Charlette Proto: 	hehe I like Lindens when being griefed
[15:12]	Jacek Antonelli: 	We don't have a set topic today, so anyone have anything they'd like to talk about?
[15:13]	Armin Weatherwax: 	maybe opera face gestures again :D
[15:14]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hahaha
[15:14]	Jacek Antonelli licks her screen to create a landmark 	Jacek Antonelli licks her screen to create a landmark
[15:14]	Charlette Proto: 	inventory object attributes eg the context of further expanding tabs like Imprudence does
[15:15]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Interesting topic Charlette. Any attributes you had in mind?
[15:16]	Charlette Proto: 	I think the 'worn' tab is a great start and the inventory is a great pace to make a difference, so exposing more productivity related attributes would be nice
[15:17]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe tab solution could be a way to include more
[15:18]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Okay. So maybe stuff like permissions, or creator, or better control over dates?
[15:18]	Armin Weatherwax: 	what attributes are available ?
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	eg combining a user selected tab with a dropbox or something
[15:18]	Armin Weatherwax: 	(in theory)
[15:19]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Armin: in theory, anything you can see in the Properties window
[15:19]	Armin Weatherwax: 	anything additional
[15:19]	Armin Weatherwax: 	?
[15:19]	Charlette Proto: 	besides the meriad of small and big changes we have previously discussed eg doubleclick attachments to wear, dates, categories, search
[15:20]	Jacek Antonelli: 	However, it may be that some of those have to be deliberately fetched from the server, which could lead to a lot of server load and bandwidth usage if you have 10s of thousands of inventory items
[15:20]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	What about opportunuty to add several tabs and collect contents manually?
[15:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	That's a good idea, Ari. So you could have a "Work Stuff" tab, and drag things into that tab to make them appear there?
[15:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	(Or a "Favorite Outfits", or "Fun Stuff", or whatever)
[15:21]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	along with generated ones (worn)
[15:21]	Charlette Proto: 	coulda user tab (warn by default) have a dropbox or even have multiple tabs
[15:22]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	exactly
[15:22]	Charlette Proto: 	yeah tagging of objects has always benn my favourite
[15:23]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Tagging / labelling is another old favorite of this discussion group, hehe.
[15:23]	Charlette Proto: 	even small steps in this direction count, the 'Worn' tab is a very good example
[15:23]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There's no way (yet) to save tags on the server, but in theory the viewer could save a tags file on your computer
[15:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	It wouldn't be as good as server-side tags, though. For instance, content creators couldn't tag their products, and have those tags transfer to customers
[15:24]	Armin Weatherwax: 	well-you could safe information in the name of an object
[15:24]	Charlette Proto: 	most new fileststems have tags but I understand that this would most likely be a server related issue
[15:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	You could, Armin, but that could be asking for trouble :\
[15:25]	Armin Weatherwax: 	like cnot creating an "object" but an "object <where> <when>"
[15:25]	Armin Weatherwax: 	well, truem, jacek
[15:25]	Jacek Antonelli: 	The names are only allowed to be so long (256 chars or something?), and some items already use all that.
[15:26]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Plus you can't rename no-mod items
[15:26]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Although...
[15:26]	Charlette Proto: 	even if tags are a bit ambitious there is room for user conveniences from the data we already have
[15:27]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Perhaps there could be a convention to put "tags: clothes, red, dress, cute" in the description of items. Content creators would be the ones to do that, generally, but users could also.
[15:27]	Jacek Antonelli: 	And then the viewer could read the descriptions to find tags
[15:28]	Charlette Proto: 	providing some conveniences in dealing with object attributes would need some UI changes
[15:28]	Armin Weatherwax likes the cute tag 	Armin Weatherwax likes the cute tag
[15:28]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehe
[15:29]	Jacek Antonelli: 	What other sorts of tab behavior could the inventory have? We've talked about other attributes, dragging stuff to custom tabs, and tags.
[15:29]	Jacek Antonelli: 	(Am I forgetting anything?)
[15:29]	Charlette Proto: 	we could focus on the 'worn' tab example for a start
[15:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Okay
[15:30]	Charlette Proto: 	eg a dropbox approach
[15:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Explain more?
[15:31]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	What about collecting by types. Sometimes it's useful. Notecrd, textures...
[15:32]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep, that's an idea. The viewer has support for that (in Inventory window File menu > Show Filters), and also Imprudence has a nice "Quick Filter" drop-down list
[15:32]	Jacek Antonelli: 	It wouldn't be too hard to have different tabs for different types
[15:33]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Since each tab stores its settings (like search and filters), the hardest part of that would be adding the ability to make new tabs easily
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	yes the quick filter is also interesting, the filters are powerfulll, but little understood or not easily integrated into the user routine
[15:33]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hm... also for rezzed objects ?
[15:34]	Jacek Antonelli: 	How do you mean, Armin?
[15:34]	Armin Weatherwax: 	(not exactly inventory though)
[15:35]	Charlette Proto: 	the rezzed (inworld) objects is an interesting paradigm, but not a obvious as the 'worn'
[15:35]	Armin Weatherwax: 	well, its a little off topic but otherwise not, having a place to find what is rezzed would be great, and the inventory has the closest relation to that objects
[15:35]	Armin Weatherwax: 	just like worn
[15:36]	Charlette Proto: 	exactly
[15:36]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ahhhh. A list of all the objects you have rezzed in world? That might be tricky, but useful
[15:36]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	I miss the option badly!
[15:37]	Jacek Antonelli: 	It would be nice to have server support for that. I'd love to know where I left my dance balls!
[15:37]	Charlette Proto: 	yes especially all the different sandboxes etc the stuff could be in, but limiting it to ones parcel may be a start
[15:37]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	Keeping coordinates would be fantastic!
[15:37]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes, that would be super
[15:38]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Does anyone know what the default time period is for the Recent Items filter?
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hehe firs jira i created ... VWR-5667
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	1 vote
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	:)
[15:38]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehehe
[15:38]	Jacek Antonelli adds her vote 	Jacek Antonelli adds her vote
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	lol
[15:39]	Armin Weatherwax: 	but indeed difficult to do
[15:40]	Armin Weatherwax: 	the emerald beta has a floater which comes (or is intended to) close to that
[15:40]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe revealing the filters UI would be a good approach
[15:41]	Jacek Antonelli: 	What's that floater like, Armin?
[15:42]	Charlette Proto: 	the practicality of filters is lost atm since they are hidden
[15:42]	Armin Weatherwax: 	well, very beta or rather alpha, you can search for the attributes
[15:42]	Armin Weatherwax: 	and get a beacon to find your object
[15:43]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ah. Is it a radar type thing..?
[15:43]	Jacek Antonelli needs to try out the Emerald viewer soon	Jacek Antonelli needs to try out the Emerald viewer soon
[15:43]	Armin Weatherwax: 	but get it in edit mode directly would be better
[15:43]	Merov Linden needs to get to a scheduled call... 	Merov Linden needs to get to a scheduled call...
[15:43]	Merov Linden: 	bye folks
[15:43]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Take care, Merov! Thanks for coming
[15:43]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	bye
[15:43]	Armin Weatherwax: 	or (delete for spam objects)
[15:44]	Armin Weatherwax: 	bye merov
[15:44]	Charlette Proto: 	another good thing woule be user operations like 'delete' on found objects
[15:45]	Arilyka Tyrellium nods 	Arilyka Tyrellium nods
[15:45]	Charlette Proto: 	or move, rename, but haven't thought about it enough
[15:46]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep
[15:46]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Inventory could also use batch rename and batch permission editing
[15:46]	Charlette Proto: 	delete duplicates, that sort of thing
[15:47]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	sowe came to remote building... :)
[15:47]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Remote building?
[15:47]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	change coordinates, size (for objects)...
[15:48]	Charlette Proto: 	one of my favourites is also aliases (shortcuts) which could be hidden with a filter like user interaction
[15:48]	Armin Weatherwax: 	like blender plugin for <SL-viewer> ?
[15:49]	Charlette Proto: 	ineresting Arilyka, but these attributes are quite apart from inventory exposed stuff
[15:50]	Azwaldo Villota: 	i'm off to another event
[15:50]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	I see.
[15:50]	Azwaldo Villota: 	cheers All
[15:50]	Charlette Proto: 	byee azwaldo
[15:50]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	buy
[15:50]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	bye
[15:50]	Armin Weatherwax: 	bye
[15:51]	Charlette Proto: 	could 'inworld' attributes of objects be related to the source item in the inventory
[15:51]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm, I'm not sure.
[15:53]	Charlette Proto: 	I'm sure the info exists but atm I can't how this would work besides opening the edit floater
[15:54]	Charlette Proto: 	the no perm objects technically remain our property, so the info must be stored somewhere
[15:55]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to find out which object an inventory item belongs to, though.
[15:55]	Charlette Proto: 	is it possible the data is related to the object, eg when you take or return it goes back to where it came from in the inv
[15:55]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm, true, that must be stored somewhere
[15:56]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe a 'show rezzed' items (ghoasts) in the inventory is the way to tackle this
[15:58]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	about no perm objects: they can be blocked in inv, if they have been rezzed...
[15:58]	Charlette Proto: 	the permissions of rezzed objects caused a lot of strife with recent upgrades so there should be plenty of documentation now
[15:59]	Armin Weatherwax: 	plenty of documentation? have a link ?
[15:59]	Charlette Proto: 	but when no perm obcect is rezzed its place in the inventory is retained and the same would apply to full perm inworld copies
[16:00]	Charlette Proto: 	shitload of JIRA on rezzed stuff having probs with changed permissions etc, so some of it must make sense
[16:01]	Charlette Proto: 	these problems must be related to what we are thinking of
[16:02]	Charlette Proto: 	wishes she understood the asset server data a bit more
[16:02]	McCabe Maxsted: 	ahoy!
[16:02]	McCabe Maxsted: 	sorry for being late
[16:02]	Charlette Proto: 	hi there McCabe
[16:02]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hey McCabe!
[16:02]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi :)
[16:02]	McCabe Maxsted shakes his fist at r :) 	McCabe Maxsted shakes his fist at r :)
[16:02]	Arilyka Tyrellium: 	Hi
[16:02]	McCabe Maxsted: 	hey there arilyka :)
[16:02]	McCabe Maxsted: 	(what's the topic?)
[16:03]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Inventory tabs. Sort of. We've kinda drifted into "all things inventory-related"
[16:03]	Jacek Antonelli: 	We were talking about stuff like -- a tab for objects you own which are rezzed in-world
[16:04]	Charlette Proto: 	user control over tabs and filters ala 'worn' in the Imprudence
[16:04]	McCabe Maxsted: 	ooh, nifty!
[16:04]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Also more options for custom tabs, like making a tab and dragging items into it to make them show up in that tab
[16:05]	McCabe Maxsted has wanted that one for ages :) 	McCabe Maxsted has wanted that one for ages :)
[16:05]	McCabe Maxsted: 	is it possible to create aliases for no copy objects, too, do you think?
[16:05]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I don't think we mentioned this one, but it's a long-time request I just remember -- making a new tab that shows the contents of a certain folder
[16:05]	McCabe Maxsted: 	wb armin!
[16:06]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I'm not sure, McCabe. In the past, I would have said no -- not without server side support.
[16:06]	Armin Weatherwax: 	sorry, crash
[16:06]	Jacek Antonelli: 	But lately I've been thinking about ways to hackily create new inventory types, as notecards that the viewer interprets in a special way
[16:07]	Charlette Proto: 	eep some people crash on the 1.23 gen but I havent crashed since it was in ver 1.23.0
[16:07]	Jacek Antonelli: 	So, you could have a notecard called "My Favorite Skirt.alias", and the contents would be "My Inventory/Clothes/My Favorite Skirt" (the path to the original item), or perhaps the inventory UUID of the original item.
[16:08]	Charlette Proto: 	there is a point Jacek, notecards may be a way to store info without explicit asset server support
[16:08]	McCabe Maxsted: 	I'd love to see a proof of concept of that
[16:08]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep
[16:09]	Charlette Proto: 	each time a notecard is saved a new entry is made in the database so the system while slow would be capable of holding any amount of ah hock data
[16:09]	Jacek Antonelli: 	The idea for seriously considering using notecards as a new inventory type came to me when I was thinking about outfits. There should be an inventory item which describes all the clothes and items you are wearing, instead of having to make a new folder for it
[16:10]	McCabe Maxsted: 	SERIOUSLY
[16:10]	Charlette Proto: 	even the way inventory objects are organised by the user could be parsed out of notecards instead of thousands of server calls
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	True, Charlette
[16:11]	Charlette Proto: 	the tags, ratings etc
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yep!
[16:11]	McCabe Maxsted: 	yeah
[16:11]	Charlette Proto: 	this could so much more efficient
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	And maybe content creators could distribute notecards containing the tags for the items in that folder
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	precisely and notecards can contain textures and links
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	there may be more potential in that too
[16:13]	Jacek Antonelli: 	(For McCabe's benefit: We also discussed having the viewer read item descriptions for tags, e.g. a clothes maker could set the description for a skirt to "tags: cute, red, dress")
[16:13]	Charlette Proto: 	eg whole catalogues of objects could be available for preview etc
[16:13]	McCabe Maxsted: 	oooh!
[16:14]	McCabe Maxsted: 	want!
[16:14]	Charlette Proto: 	this presents a lot of opportunity for clientside convenienceswithout serverside load
[16:15]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes
[16:16]	Charlette Proto: 	after all this paradigm is similar to that of object inventories and would be easier to implement regardless of what LL think of it
[16:17]	McCabe Maxsted: 	did you guys talk about the library at all?
[16:17]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Nope
[16:17]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Something about the library you wanted to discuss, McCabe?
[16:17]	Charlette Proto: 	people understand (accept) the parsing of notecards as a means of dealing with stuff
[16:18]	McCabe Maxsted: 	there's been some talk about people having issues finding/using it on sl-ux
[16:18]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ah, yeah
[16:18]	Charlette Proto: 	I'd like to HIDE the library at all times, especially searches
[16:18]	Jacek Antonelli: 	It might be worthwhile to have a separate tab for the Library
[16:18]	Charlette Proto: 	yup I agree
[16:18]	McCabe Maxsted: 	what I was thinking too :)
[16:19]	Charlette Proto: 	that would be consistent with the warn tab we have
[16:19]	McCabe Maxsted: 	or interspersed between the regular folders adn deletable, if we could pull that off
[16:19]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrmmm
[16:20]	Charlette Proto: 	McCabe we were also thinking of a dropdown based 'user' tab, any thoughts
[16:20]	McCabe Maxsted: 	disagree?
[16:20]	McCabe Maxsted: 	how so charlette?
[16:20]	Charlette Proto: 	not sure what you mean McCabe
[16:20]	Jacek Antonelli: 	McCabe: I wouldn't personally find that useful or desirable, but that's not any reason to rule it out as an option
[16:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	The library is pretty useless to me, so I don't think I'd want it cluttering up my regular inventory folders
[16:21]	Charlette Proto: 	I've been thinking of tabs like worn as a way of exposing filters