Another benefit of open registration is…

Posted on: July 3, 2006

… I was able to nail, at last, some really inconvenient bugs that were junking up what we call the "new user experience". How? I signed up for new alts and ran them through their paces. Yah, there were internal ways to circumvent this before open reg., but I keep my nose to the ground.

One of these bugs happened to be the ol' stinker of "All default Gestures get deactivated upon first relog". As in, you sign up for Second Life (yay you!), login for the first time, and go through the Orientation Island to learn basic skills. Then, you may even play around a bit with Gestures after a newfound friend goes, "Hey, type '/clap'!" You're satisfied. So you take a break, and log back into SL, and try it again, and are utterly stumped… it doesn't… work… as… you… remember! Maddening.

So what happened here?

After your first relog during your stay in Second Life, Gestures get deactivated. As in, when you look at them in your Inventory, they're unbolded and don't have the word "(active)" next to them anymore. What's correct? They should stay on. BTW, there's no obvious way to make a Gesture active—once you know, you can right-click one and select "Activate". But only then.

Tateru Nino and I mused about this one before open reg. and I was reminded of twinsie's words the other days. Good shot it came back to haunt me so at last, we know for sure what happens "through the eyes of a newcomer".

Problems like these are particularly important because they're stumbled through en masse, but in the midst of the compound confusion involving all the info a new Resi must digest about Second Life, a newcomer isn't in the best position to describe the mechanics of what's happening. So communication is needed. Not a lot of it, but good communication, yes.

If you're wondering why I'm writing this today, I was caught by "holiday surprise". I didn't know July 3 was a holiday… here I was, looking at my Employee Handbook—well, in any case, I'll be in Second Life today anyway. I always am. :)

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