The Web evolved into an amazing platform for experience and application delivery by offering sandboxed experiences within a client applications under the control of remote services. I'm writing this email in a client implemented entirely in a Web browser, where the experience is entirely dictated by a server.
Anyone else remember when background colors were introduced on Web pages? Oh, the horror, taking us away from our pristine, TeX-like austerity! Allowing the server to dictate the visual experience was a radical thought - and of course, most of them did it pretty poorly. There is still a special place in my heart black text on a dark purple background - in Times Roman, of course. The amount of control that Web browsers grant to site creators over the visual experience today is stunning. Communities froth at the mouth over browsers that score less than 100% on Acid3 because that means the user isn't getting the ideal server-desired appearance. (And let's not get started discussing client side code execution.) Yet a sane, sensible model has evolved, albeit painfully. Sites can build professional UI by limiting capturing clicks and overriding text selection, yet can't read the user's private data via the clipboard or write to local files except via Cookies. Popups are available but limited to avoid annoyance and framed to prevent spoofing. Users can override stylesheets with custom styles, primarily for accessibility purposes. Practically speaking, those are used infrequently; clients offer zooming and other tools, and sites strive for maximum usability, and alternative clients are available for specific accessibility needs. The Web is pretty darn amazing and useful. I'd like to think that SL can learn from how the Web did things. On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Maggie Leber (sl: Maggie Darwin) <mag...@matrisync.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Kelly Linden <ke...@lindenlab.com> wrote: >> Windlight settings should be a part of the build and not something >> you have to opt into or be bugged with a dialog to see.* > > Well, then how about automatic applications of animations to your > avatar, because a "content creator" thought it would be arty or cool? > Or malicious Windlight settings that blind you, because it's > "artistic" and "part of the shared experience"? > > The enhancement request as it stands calls for a permissions opt-in > for having your viewer settings changed, and I support it in that > form. > _______________________________________________ > Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: > http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev > Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges > _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
