This is my collection of articles about the Second Life Viewer (SLV) 2 & 3. In 2013 I started to include information about the viewer in some Second Life News articles. You’ll see those articles mixed in with articles solely about the viewer.
Many residents detested the 2.x version viewers (V2) released by Linden Lab. As best I find out, sometime in 2009 the Lab decided a new viewer was needed to improve user retention. An outside consult was used to create it. Apparently the Lab wrote the specification for the viewer and the software house created the viewer. Unfortunately the programmers had no clue what SL was or how the viewer was used. This resulted in a user interface that existing residents found unusable. The change failed to improve new user retention rates.
The current viewer 3 (V3) is a revised version of the V2 viewer developed after the V2 release by Linden Lab. After the rejection of the 2.0 viewer in mid 2010 the Lab took over viewer development. The SnowStorm Project was the Lab’s project in 2010 and 2011 to fix the viewer and reshape the user interface.
The Second Life Viewer has been undergoing continuous change since the start of Project SnowStorm with 4 significant versions released in 2010. Ending the year with version 2.4. In the Rod Humble as CEO era viewer development advanced at a rapid pace. Oz Linden, a pro open source manager at the Lab, over saw the change to a parallel Release Candidate style of development. We now see almost one new release of the Second Life Viewer per month.
As of February 7, 2014 we are on release: 3.6.13-285995.