Wow, we have a new release of the Firestorm Viewer. Just last July 26 I downloaded my then newly released update.

As the Firestorm Development Team explains, they have a new development cycle in place and expect to have new releases out every 6 to 8 weeks, so every other month. It has been 8 weeks since I grabbed the previous update. So, they are pretty much on schedule.

What is a bit unusual, is they released this update on a Friday. Typically, Friday releases are avoided. The reason the team gave long ago was that if there were a major glitch, there would be few Lindens at work to get them server-side information for diagnosing the problem.

As usual, Inara has done her review of the new release. You’ll find that here: Firestorm 6.6.3. I see no point in duplicating her work or you reading similar reviews. So, I’ll write about the things that interested me or I didn’t find in Inara’s coverage.

Warning

Another new update… there is a revised beta version of Firestorm that should be hitting the grid 9/19 or 9/20. A new griefing attack is being or was mounted and all viewers are suspectable to it. The Lab has released a fix and the fix is winding its way through implementation and QA testing.

You can turn off Media on a Prim and close that particular exploit. Turning it off causes problems with some body and head HUDs. Experiment to see if you are affected.

This is a scary LOOKING attack. There is little real danger. Don’t panic. If you see viewer panels opening and things happening, TP to another region.

Note Card Fonts

One of those things is being able to change the font (style) in note cards. Unfortunately, this is not a server-side supported feature. I’ll explain what this means.

When you use MS Word or another word processor, the font, size, color, and other appearance information is embedded in the document. In SL none of that information is in the note card. It is a simple text file.

So where is this font, and size info for note cards kept? In the viewer. So, these are personal settings. Only you see them. Also, unlike a word processor where you can make one word red and another blue that is NOT the case in note cards. All the text changes.

You can see this by opening any note card. Then in Preferences->User Interface (left tabs)->Font (top tabs) make a change, close preferences, and look at the note card.

If you are wondering what others will see… they will see whatever they have set their viewer to show. So, for advertising and other writing where you may want to add emphasis this feature is useless. I don’t expect it to be used much nor to be popular.

More to come…