Firestorm

Firestorm Viewer Release 4.6.5-40833

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Firestorm Update 2014-20
Firestorm Update 2014-20

A new Firestorm viewer is out. I gather it was released this weekend while I was off doing Mother’s Day stuff. See the announcement: Firestorm Viewer Release 4.6.5-40833. Also, Inara has a nice review of this release up here: Firestorm 4.6.5: steady as she goes.

This release addresses a number of the complaints that users of the prevision have made. Mac users get benefits from this update too. So, if you use Firestorm and have been having problems, you will want to update to this version.

Some Mac users are complaining about typing in chat. That can still be v e r y   s l o w. Others are pointing out that an update to a new OS fixes the problem… I’m not sure what the complete story is. As I’m not a Mac user, I can’t research it.

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Firestorm Q&A 2014-15

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There was a Firestorm Q&A on Saturday afternoon. Inara Pey has a synopsis and index for the video (2hr 37min) and link to the video on her site: April 12th Firestorm meeting: video, transcript and notes. The points that interest me follow.

The 64-bit Firestorm download was offline for a short time while the FS Team got a certificate problem resolved.

The Dynamic User Interface (DUI) that was the center of the April Fool’s Joke is put into some more perspective. It is real. It is possible to build a viewer that allows the panels to be moved outside the viewer window. The current version of the DUI viewer is broken. It is only a proof of concept viewer. So, while the moving the panels works it is not for everyday use… or any use, other than to see the panels move. 

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Second Life and the Mac WebKit Problem

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Me... a Protester?
Me… a Protester?

 My readers will know Mac users have a problem. There is no near term solution to the problem for several reasons. Even more confusing is there are multiple problems. And today a group approached me hoping to put together a movement to show Linden Lab the extent of the problem and the interest in getting it fixed.

So, I’m scratching my head wondering if the Lab is in a position to fix the problem… and which problem are we talking about? Since I’m not a Mac user, I’m probably not the best one to write this, but no one else seems to be covering it.

I’ve touched on Mac issues in the past; Second Life News 2013-11, Firestorm Viewer News 2014-7, Viewer Release Pipeline Update, and others. The SL Viewer and Third Party Viewers are moving to support Apple’s Cocoa frame work or may be I should say did so move in 2013. But, that has left Apple users on older operating systems behind. SL apparently has problems running in the older Apple OS’s. This has resulted in Apple users staying with older viewer versions.

As we near another release of the Firestorm Viewer those issues are coming to a crisis point for some users. The recent blocking of Firestorm 4.4.0 is bringing home the point of the team only allowing 3 versions to run on the SL grid and blocking older versions. People are getting the idea the team is actually blocking older viewers. 

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Firestorm Viewer 4.4.0 To Be Blocked

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

 You may remember a time when there were something like 1600 different versions of viewers in Second Life on any given day. The problem with that is it so dilutes crash stats developers are hampered. There isn’t enough data on any single version to provide a developer good information for tracking down a bug.

The Firestorm Team decided they would do something to help their developers. The decision was to limit the number of versions of Firestorm on the grid at any one time to 3. They block their old viewers and prevent users from logging into Second Life with old viewers. I’m not sure if that blocking includes use on other grids.

In this case ‘old’ means not one of the current three newest versions. Currently version 4.4.0 is the fourth running version. The team is announcing that on Thursday they will block that version. There are about 5500 people using that version. They are encouraged to update now rather than wait until they’re blocked on Thursday.

See: Blocking Version 4.4.0 – 33720.

Firestorm: A Joke… Not So Much

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

 The Firestorm Viewer Team is thinking. Their recent April Fool’s Joke about the Dynamic User Interface (DUI), the detachable control panels, has been the goal of many developers for some time. Now Firestorm Team member Nicky Dasmijn has built a proof of concept version of the viewer with those detachable panels. In this version window and panel layouts can be saved for later use.

There is no release version of this viewer, beta or otherwise. But the team is releasing the code some other developers can work on the project. The Firestorm Team is hoping the code will inspire developers to come up with new innovations for the Second Life viewer.

See the official announcement here: The real joke… DUI is no joke!

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