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SLBR’s techies get their brains around the new Firestorm updates, recently announced on their site.  They include some of the following.

Breakdown by Sachiko Cheng

An about land floater: Floaters are menus that when opened shrink to their smallest size. This saves space and saves screen real estate, but it also means you are not able to resize the window. This is already in place for features such as the environment and sun settings.

The ability to save and store custom camera positions. This is useful if you are a photographer or machinimographer, With this you can setup and store camera positions for easy and fast switching without needing an external object or HUD (which can help if you are working in high lag areas).

Crouch to toggle feature: This is possibly an addition simliar to being able to toggle flying and running on and off possibly through the button panel.

Dyslexia font: addition of the “dyslexia” font that makes things easier to read for people with dyslexia (more info here: http://dyslexicfonts.com/).

“Autoresponse Sent” IM: sends a message confirmation when your autoresponse message is delivered to someone.

Customized voice/sound alerts for friends going on/offline. A good addition if you like notification sounds in your IM clients. You can also assign custom sounds to certain friends and family.

A visual depiction of voice. If someone is using voice inappropriately or when they shouldn’t you can see exactly where they are coming from and ask them to stop. This could also open up a fun game of marco polo!

The ability to exclude group owned objects during selection: When looking at nearby objects to find something or do a prim count, this will help you exclude group owned objects which would just give you unnecessary information.

Analysis by Cyberstar Xanthu

Phoenix Viewer is currently preparing for a release of their Firestorm Viewer Version 4.3.0, which is billed as a major release.  In the update, several components will be added and several bug fixes will be addressed that will have some focus on the Rendering and Crash problems that have some affect on the Viewer.

Last reported by the Firestorm team was an issue that claimed that Linden Labs had honored them by informing them that they are the most used and yet most bug-free Viewer. Phoenix seems to desire to further concrete this goal by adding several bug fixes to ensure their position at the top of the chain.

Using the Issue & Project Tracking System “Atlassian JIRA,” there is live and open tracking available to the rest of the community.  Through this method, bugs and improvements can be reported and then fixed by the approved members of the team.  However, anyone can contribute through these channels.

It is stated on their webpage that the reason why there is so much time between releases that they want their releases to have a significant impact on the user experience and small releases are an insult to their Viewer and as such a new release will be desirable by everyone that is a user of this browser as you can be assured that you will very much see the tangible difference from version to version.

The integration of the Phototools in this version will give builders a way to remarkably improve the overall look of different objects they build with a very easy to use system. Viewing the video that can be accessed within the Paperwork Shows Blog: Phototools Information -> Quick Video Demo tab will allow you to see this incredible beauty for yourselves.

As with any project, new changes tend to result in unnoticed security holes and other bugs that may be catastrophic to the system. Pheonix Viewer has an incredible history of immediate patches to resolve these issues when they are discovered. Currently they are sealing up the software and the 67 Unresolved Bugs that have been reported before they release the software for everyone to use.

Phoenix Viewer Project’s drive is to improve user experience by allowing anyone with the time and experience to cooperate in the project by submitting work in what they refer to as contributions.  They can always use more contributors to further their efforts in making the finest Viewer in Second Life. If there is something that you think that you can do to help them then get down to their project tracker and lend a hand.