I cannot shake the taste of blood in my mouth

There's a very eloquent (and generally accurate) rant about opposition to Viewer 2. By and large, I agree with every point made. I am not the technological innovator that I could be. I do not adopt new things easily--which is sad, considering I live easily a third of each day in one or more virtual environments.

But from my small and stunted position, looking out at coming glories, why don't I just give in under all those excellent points and start using Viewer 2?

Because I am who I am. And it's not 2.x viewers I really mind; it's how those viewers arrange the features I want. And therein lies the problem, both in viewer 2 adoption, and in the entire third-party viewer community at large.

Everyone needs something different. Everyone wants something different. I'm clearly part of the herd in this--I see viewer 2 as the consequence of where the Labs are going, but where I differ is this:

I can cope with my formerly small and quiet inventory taking up half the screen. Especially as, with the new coding, Inventory can be detached and moved elsewhere. This is a plus for me.

I can cope with local chat being inseparable from personal IMs and group IMs. I can cope with never knowing exactly how much is in my inventory at any given time. I can cope with the skin, the lack of perfect transparency, the size of the mini-map, the size of the IM bar. I can cope with all of that. And, though I was scarred by the earliest iteration of viewer 2 having all media, by default, on--and on full volume--I'm even working on getting past that.

The problems that will just not go away, no matter how I try: chiclets and toasts.

I am small and insignificant and broken--in the larger scheme of things, my opinion doesn't matter in the least. Save that a lot of folks seem to share it in this (and a couple other) areas.

But that has meant innovation on SL, as Andromeda mentions, stuttering to a halt. They've tried--they've been steadily improving viewer 2 coding since the introduction. It pains me to even type these words, but for me--with my OCD fixation on some things being in the same places for my brain not to fall out--it's almost usable.

Save for chiclets and toasts. I hate them. I see them and I close them. Then I lose group notices, I lose group IMs, I lose notecards, I lose textures and individual IMs. But that's my small, broken, atavistic response--flashing things in the lower right-hand corner mean danger, mean system alert, mean something I need to attend to right now, which causes panic--and then when I realize it's not Windows trying to get my attention, I get angry and close everything in a huff, and only then realize, in my chagrin, that I've done it again.

Think on that, though--how many people out there are dying for purely cosmetic changes? Everything else in the same places as v2 structures them, because the coding wants things to go there, backported behind some--not all--of the v1 UI?

And then, update by update, slowly restructure those items, until those of us so deadset against it find ourselves, slowly but seamlessly, integrated into viewer 2 proper?

Why isn't anyone doing this? Why are all the third-party viewer coders adding in excess baggage that no one really needs, like--showing who's looking at you? (Seriously. Who the hell cares?) Or the ability to change your selection beam into a rainbow star? (Again. Get real. Builders don't care, and in this, at least, that's all that should matter.) Or any one of a double dozen other things, that's just screen or code clutter, absolutely immaterial to the job at hand.

Why isn't that the focus? Integration? Finding out why we hate viewer 2 and fixing it for us in ways we find we can adapt to it? (And don't tell me v2 Basic is my goal, because screw you, I need the Advanced tool set!)

I'm currently using the Singularity viewer, because it promises v2 functionality, as soon as it can access the code changes (and they're doing better than Imprudence or Phoenix at that), but the look of viewer v1.

Why is that important to me? It's not because v1 was a triumph of design. It's clunky, it's antiquated, and it's just as anti-intuitive in its own way as v1. Even I have to admit--especially with the recent advances--v2 is a better viewer, now, than v1 is, and it's the only viewer that's capable of viewing mesh imports.

But...those chiclets. Those toasts.

Firestorm crashes me instantly. Kirsten's viewer is built for systems much, much faster than mine. Imprudence is starting to creak around the edges. Right now, without officially moving to viewer 2, Singularity is just about the only viewer that keeps the things my brain thinks it needs, while updating to v2 code in the background.

But my solution won't be everyone's, and--when mesh comes along--everyone is going to need to be using v2 code. So this is your official heads up, third-party viewer coders: Update your viewers, keep updating your viewers, get something that your clients can use without hating it, and then keep going. Second Life is not going to slow down much longer for the rest of us to catch up.

Now, because I show off so many bad or confusing avatars on this, on occasion I do want to mention successes I find. This lady was one:

(from the Avatars album)

Unfortunately, I don't know much about her. But considering she was wearing mostly prims, not actual clothing layers, she had things excellently adjusted.

album)

(from the Avatars

Another intriguing thing--and this one actually pulled me to check out the shoe store in question: her feet are entirely prim. I'd heard of bare prim feet before, but all the demos I'd tried, or seen on other people, were flat 'sandal'-style feet, not dancer's arched toes.

(from the Avatars album)

Even more impressive--the skin was so close to a perfect match that, until I cammed in, I thought her AO was somehow arching her feet! Or she had invisible shoes, or something. Really, really well done.

(from the Avatars album)

Unfortunately, much as I want to identify her, I can't--I've taken to traveling without my Mystitool of late, because it literally adds nearly 500 to my script count. I know she's a member of Curious Kitties (the sim we were in) and I know her first name starts with an S. Beyond that--and that she's Russian--I have no idea who she is.

Her bare prim feet were made by N-Core; her outfit, with the swirling curves and ivy leaves, is sold by Illusions. I'd highly recommend going to either establishment and tracking bits of the look down, if you're inclined at all.