Better bookmarking of your inworld favorites
Posted on: April 10, 2007A substantial amount of what I do comes out of desperation (not the Stephen King book) and/or necessity. Aside from one-offs, such as clicking an embedded one in a notecard or visiting a location that was sent to my inventory, I don't use Second Life landmarks a lot because they're difficult to manage.
For example, when you open up the World Map to view your landmarks, they aren't displayed in sub-folders, even if you've organized them that way in in your inventory's Landmarks main folder. And it doesn't show just the landmarks from there, either — it displays every single one, duplicates and all, which leads to repetitive searching your inv for dupes and clearing them out after you've gone on a shopping trip. Why? Because many content creators include a landmark to their store, and if you buy numerous outfits, that adds up.
For awhile, I've wished that landmarks behaved more like web browser bookmarks/favorites.
Eventually, I thought: well, why not just use my web browser? While there's no easy way to export large tracts of landmarks, once you get things setup, you may feel a lot happier, as I currently do. I prefer Firefox, and I go about this by using SLURLs like this:
secondlife://[REGION NAME]/[COORDINATES]
So if you wanted to get to:
Banior Bahoozamoth (184, 198, 85)
then you'd use this:
secondlife://banior%20bahoozamoth/185/192/85
with "%20" for spaces. Note that region name isn't case-sensitive. OR:
which you can quickly make:
- Double-click a landmark to open it.
- Click "Show on Map".
- Click "Copy SLURL to clipboard".
Then, you can paste that SLURL into your web browser.
What's the difference between these two forms? The latter "http://slurl.com…" one is useful for people who don't yet have Second Life, and tells them to download it so they can visit inworld. The "secondlife://" one is direct and pops open your World Map if you open it, or if SL is closed, it launches it so you login at that location.
To make use of this in Firefox:
- Bookmarks menu > Organize Bookmarks.
- Click "New Bookmark".
- Enter a memorable name, paste the SLURL, and click "OK".
Now, you've got quick access to that landmark. Repeat as necessary!
Of course, these bookmarks are "blind", meaning they trust that Second Life will interpret them correctly, and you lose the visual context that the map gives you. But that may be no big loss, because the map tiles don't update as frequently as it used to (they used to refresh daily), and the webmap from SLURL.com has also been removed because it had some hideously clunky ~1 MB of JavaScript which you had to download each time, slowing down the whole works.
Another caveat is, this technique isn't good if you run Second Life in full-screen mode, because it takes some time to change between applications. I prefer windowed mode, due to my need to run many apps concurrently with SL.
Once I had some choice bookmarks for landmarks setup, it was a lot easier to "trigger" them than scrounging around in my inventory. I've also found it useful to quick-launch Second Life, as a supplement to my desktop shortcut. And if you make a folder of these "landbookmarks" on your Bookmarks Toolbar, you gain easy access, and great sortability — here, you can make use of sub-folders!
Give it a spin and let me know how it works for you in the comments.
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April 11th, 2007 at 1:07 AM PDT
Hmmm ….. will surely give that a try. When I started to drown in Landmarks and other Inventory items, I created a folder called 'All That I Need' and a subfolder in it that I called 'Favorites' (how original, haha!). All the new Landmarks still automagically go to the designated Folder and I simply drag them into the Favorites when I want to keep them close to me.
The Laws of the Alphabet put the 'All That I Need' folder on top, which saves much scrolling. That is to say: until I open it, for my ongoing Quest for Garments (being a decent upstanding Citizen has its Price) is starting to bring forth a Wagonload of Fruit, so to speak.
makes mental note to empty trashcan
April 11th, 2007 at 4:10 AM PDT
What a good idea! I never thought of that. Particularly when combined with a desktop searching thing such as my favourite, Quicksilver (though Google Desktop, say, would work too I imagine).
On a tangent I wonder if secondlife:// links work in the in-world browser - one could put a large number of them in one's web profile and go to them directly from SL. Perhaps.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:55 AM PDT
Why not use del.icio.us for this and then they're with you whereever and can be shared using the secondlife tag or create a secondlifeLM tag?
April 12th, 2007 at 9:20 AM PDT
And isn't it convenient how when viewing someone's "Picks" you can take a slurl with you, but not a landmark. I ended up starting a notecard for slurl's. Your solution really beats that, for sure (:
I really prefer the landmark system, though (given that I don't use the world map often). Also, I am deeply into the habit of doing inventory searches, lately.
April 15th, 2007 at 11:10 AM PDT
@Hexx: I did something similar, 'cept since my topmost folder didn't begin with "A", I surrounded it with "::" as in ":: INBOX ::".
@Ordinal: How I wish QuickSilver was available for PCs. I use Launchy, which can startup Firefox bookmarks too — oh now you've given me an idea. And yes, you can use secondlife:// URLs in the Profile > Web tab. It's precisely what I do.
@Corwin: Because that's still slower than a local file. I used del.icio.us for awhile but couldn't be bothered to keep up, I didn't find it a very useful tool (and its rather bland appearance was hard for me to get used to, let alone introduce others to, too). To its credit, it's added thumbnails of sites, but that still wouldn't show me what's at a SLURL. Visual social sharing of SL locations is kewl, as I've been doing mine on Flickr. I'm always up for using new 3rd-party tools in conjunction with Second Life, so if you've got more recommendations, please share!
@Day: Yeah, funny story behind that, there used to be a button in Profiles and Search (when it was called Find) that let you add landmarks before teleporting somewhere. That was removed when the map coordinate system changed, and it's non-trivial to add back (outclassed in priority by a number of other things). Altho it was a personal fave of mine.
April 16th, 2007 at 12:11 AM PDT
The new protocol sedcondlife:// should be registered by the Second Life client installation in the browsers as a known one, so that it would become automatically highlighted. Or maybe through a firefox extension?
It is the case with Skype for example that it registers the skype:// protocol, and the more generic callto:// protocol which you can bind to other voip clients as well (I bind it to Gizmo, for example.).
April 18th, 2007 at 2:46 AM PDT
This would be really useful - unfortunately SLURLs don't work for Linux users, that is the operating system I use. They will start another instance of the client, if you open them when SL is running.
I agree with David and I think that setting up the secondlife:// protocol is a bit too difficult for some users.
here are some info about registering secondlife://protocol in Firefox:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Register_protocol
http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=896382
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:53 AM PDT
@David: How do you mean, "highlighted"? It should automatically be registered. I know some instances in which "secondlife://" became disassociated with launching Second Life, but uninstalling and reinstalling SL did the trick.
@Opensource: I didn't know that about Linux, that sounds like it's buggy behavior (I'd put it in the issue tracker @ http://jira.secondlife.com ).
October 19th, 2007 at 5:46 PM PDT
Hm, interesting concepts. I have to say that I never use landmarks on the Map however. I use the Map to find a sim and just tp in to 128 / 128/ 0, then climb out of the wall or tree and walk or fly from there.
Otherwise I use my Inventory landmarks which, being slightly anal, I have organised into 6 or 7 separate folders (Clubs, Fun places, Education & Help, that sort of thing). I can never quite get my head round teleporting in SL from an outside app.
October 27th, 2007 at 11:42 AM PDT
@Tid: I like learning how other people navigate; thanks for sharing how you do it. Are you familiar with HUD gadgets that help you organize landmarks too? I wonder if any of them would be good for you.
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