Give Preview a spin if you haven't yet! Some Resis wonder about having a more hands-on experience about the future of Second Life. This is exactly what it is. If there's things you don't like, be sure to post them in the Version 1.7 Feature Feedback forum too! And besides going straightahead, there-it-is-again, if you're havin' login probs on the Main Grid, it's a good go to see if you can't get into Preview either, as they are separate Gridverses. Kinda like a Twilight Zone episode. Related to that, a thing you can do in this parallel place is to find some classic SL landmarks?hinthint, Natoma?and have some fun with them.

Continuing on, I've been reporting a lotta bugs. I like to find what's wrong and do my little part in helping get it fixed. And in addition to the technical bugs, I've made some suggestions for things like the User Interface. IM tabs are still unwholesomely large (think of it as the GUI version of Dr. Atkins's nightmare), so I'm hoping there'll be more options to pick and choose.

Infact, I'm blogging this live and direct from the Preview grid. I notice how quickly "Force Sunset"?which should still be "Force Sunrise"?works now. And if you go into Mouse Moves Sun, the locally-displayed time of day changes almost instantly, which is fantastically responsive, but alas, it means less a chance of odd solar effects like I've captured before.

~looks around~ Lord only knows why the Library folder has some antiquated schtuff. I'm gonna go ahead and bug report the "Community Standards (April 2004)" notecard right now.

Some tips on how to file a good bug report, as written by Brent Linden.

So here it is. Nothing fancy, just functional fun to point the Bug Hunters to what needs to be eradicated. The little blue squre with an arrow pointer and even smaller gray square is the underrated object picker. If a specific object is buggy, click on that square to highlight, and then click on the object and it should include Name: and Owner: proper.

"Inventory" is the category for this, because the outdated CS file is within the Inventory window. Easy enough. And I ticked "Include screenshot" to show what I see. BTW, if you see a little red menu bar in there, it's to denote that the release is a Preview one. Some people kinda get confuzzled going back and forth between gridverses, so dat's a handy visual cue.

In my bug reports, I like to include some humorous lines, nothing too cloggy but I have a good time with it. I sent this off, got the autoreply saying this is #129903, and then go on to what I was doing last, which was blogging.

I view my involvement in SL Previews as follows: the first Preview I was heavily into was 1.6's. I even got my (albeit mispelled) Resident name into the credits of the About box, which was spiffy! I enjoy previewing because I like to see what's ahead, and more than just words, this is Second Life after all. I live it. I'm also of the school of thot that prefers that problems get recognized and fixed sooner or later. Some Resis will unfortunately gripe of things gone wrong when 1.7 replaces 1.6 for good, and to them, I say, the next time?and there will be one?please consider playing a more active part in what's going on. Even if you're not that tech-savvy, you can gain a lot out of it. I surely do! Previews are sorely underutilized and we can all help each other.