I've isolated some things I'd like to see refined. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. My blog uses HTMLArea for "WYSIWYG" editing, which is by no means the best, or even nearly the best editor of its kind, but it's serviceable. It has numerous quirks like not outputting the cleanest HTML (I think) and not always saving changes within the scope of the Blog-City interface. I'm disappointed I can't have styles for autoformatting text either; it'd save me a lot of time cumulatively. I've looked into ways of automating this but've not found anything reliable so far.

Second, in line with the little annoyances that get to you, I've improved my SL experience over time by practicing with the scroll wheel. (My opinion, this disclaimer doesn't need to be stated redundantly.) A mouse with one button isn't enough, nor is a mouse with two buttons. I feel better having at least 5 buttons, including the one in the scroll wheel on top. The wheel has proven invaluable to me in SL, because it allows for such quick zooming without holding down Alt and clicking. I use a very standard mouse?which is relatively inexpensive and pays for itself in productivity. Assign extra buttons like I have to Inventory, IM, and History windows and you'll be set.

Furthermore, I've remapped keys with a macro package in SL to better things. I know it sounds like a crazy idea but Ctrl-T for Instant Messages strikes me as a nimble, fickle move. So, I've changed that to Ctrl-Space, MUCH easier to mash on when flipping between main viewport and greyspace (as I sometimes call it). This is backed up by the extra mouse button also set to IMs. However, I don't use this much on a practical basis so I'm going to have to find another commonly-used function to take its place.

On an aesthetic note, I want to be able to recolor the SL UI in the future. The white-on-gray contrast isn't the easiest to read, and I'd prefer to blacken it further. I'd also like menu highlights to be something like hot pink, so they really stand out. It helps the experience be more immersive for me.

A big boon about ROAM, as I've stated before, is that you can IM while getting around. This also saves time. You may have noticed the thread title, which is woefully?and thankfully?currently out of the time. TPs are incredibly stable for me, relatively fast, and they consciously make me think more about scripted attachments being loaded as they're counted. I have a lot of gratitude to Lindens for this. And look forward to many more improvements.

Appearance has been noted as being unintuitive, with a sliders way of deformation but what about alternatives, like someone who wants to click and drag on their avatar like they do a prim? Granted, the structure of an av is much more complex, but like graphics tablets greatly facilitate computer art, perhaps the pressure sensitivity could be put to use here. If that's too vertical, again, a scroll wheel can provide different degrees of magnitude, and conceivably use your mouse buttons to confirm changes. An av should be sculptable like clay, moldable and accomodating to your vision.

Next entry will be a casual Toreview of Jeffrey Ventrella's site.