UPDATE: Since Viewer 2 is now no longer available, Basic Mode is no longer an issue (unless you’re using a very old viewer install, in which case it’s time to update!)

OK, peeps. I’m seeing a lot of search terms on the blog from people who are completely bamboozled as to where their inventory is on the new Viewer 2 for Second Life.

This is just a handful of the search terms I’m seeing:

– viewer 2 how do i look at inventory?
– access inventory sl viewer 2
– new viewer 2 no inventory
– how to go to inventory in sl
– opening inventory in viewer 2 sl
– second life 2 new inventory
– where is inventory in viewer 2
– sl new viewer inventory
– viewer 2 inventory
– inventory in viewer 2
– access inventory in sl viewer 2?
– inventory viewer 2
– inventory in sl
– viewer 2 inventory window
– access inventory with second life viewer 2
– sl viewer 2 no inventory

OK, I’m going to shout a bit here, in the hope of being heard. Non-Linden peeps might want to cover their ears…

LINDEN LAB, YOU HAVE A BIG PROBLEM HERE! BASIC MODE IS CONFUSING RESIDENTS!

Phew. Okay, now that’s over, here’s what’s happened and why you can’t access your inventory in the new Viewer 2. This new viewer starts you off in a mode called BASIC, by default. You have to change this, manually, in order to get to ADVANCED, which is where you can access your inventory.

Fire up your viewer and look near the bottom, where you log in. You’ll see this:

This shows you are in BASIC mode. Basic mode is pretty much nothing more than a glorified, visual chatroom. You are very limited in what you can do, and you cannot access your inventory. What you need to do is switch to ADVANCED mode. You do this by clicking that little arrow beside ‘Basic’ and selecting ‘Advanced’ from the dropdown menu, like this:

Now you have to re-start your viewer, so close it down and fire it up again. Check that little button. If it still says ‘Advanced’ then you’re good to go. You can log in and be able to access both inventory and all program preferences.

I realise that this is something of a reiteration of my post The Absolute Basics – Beginners – Preferences of the other day, but this is OLDER residents being confused, not just newbies! Older residents probably won’t even think to check a blog post that is aimed primarily at newbies, hence I’ve re-stated this section of that post on its own, here.

An open letter to Linden Lab

You really need to make things like this more clear, LL. We’re not just talking about newbies having problems; older residents are being completely confused by this new default Basic Mode – especially since it’s enabled by default and many people on updating their viewer would expect it to work as closely as possible to their old viewer. A change as big as this one MUST be highlighted visibly in the viewer!

For me to receive so many search terms for the same thing, in just a few weeks… well, I’ve been blogging for over three years and helping new and old alike for the same time, and I have never seen so many search terms for one thing. You clearly have a BIG problem here, and it needs to be addressed swiftly. It shouldn’t be up to bloggers like me to help newbies understand a big change you’ve made to your viewer, when you have the ability to highlight that change right there in the viewer so that they can check it. Also, not everybody reads blogs and forums – official or not – so there are a lot of people in the dark over this.

Also, calling it ‘Advanced Mode’ is a BAD idea. ‘Advanced’ makes people think it’s difficult, that maybe they need to know techy or dev. stuff in order to access it. By calling it ‘Advanced’ you could be scaring off some people who will never venture beyond Basic to find out the world’s true potential. Why didn’t you call the two modes ‘Beginner’ and ‘Experienced’, or even ‘Basic World’ and ‘Full World’?

Regards,

Mar