One of the major issues with Second Life is that oftentimes when you crash or disconnect, you lose your stats, or script settings. The effect is a roll-back to the last-saved state. Very unpleasant.

At one time I was getting lots of IMs asking about why when they log (back) in, their need to run setup again, or the HUD doesn’t recognize their owners any more, or they are no longer locked.

I had to quickly implement a workaround – waiting for Lindens to fix a problem is as good as waiting for world peace, Jira or no Jira. Ergo the clunky countdowns and “save your settings” messages that I must admit I’m not particularly proud of.

So I devoted some long nights to streamlining the whole user experience. I’ve scripted new solutions, scrapped them, designed something new. Thought I could do it before the weekend, but looks like it’s not likely. So here’s just a preview.

Command HUD 4.10, due out soon, will see major improvements. Some highlights:

• a simple and unobtrusive save-notification system
• ability to detach HUD temporarily without automatically detaching your toys – for “saves” as well as smart resets.
• you don’t have to relog to save even if you’re locked (except maybe if you’re using the RL Viewer)

Help has been greatly boosted. Generally there is a tighter coupling between the online help and the in-world HUD.

• new large “HELP!” button that gives the different help options (online, faq, group, bug reports etc).
• new context-sensitive “**help**” buttons with detailed hand-holding.
• quick HUD button that points to online searchable help (http://help.lululudovico.com)

Look out for upcoming Release Candidates, soon.

In the meantime, you can ignore the “save” messages if you want, after all, if you don’t expect to crash, you can save yourself some extra work. That said, if you’ve just finished a setup, you’re better off detaching your HUD, just in case, unless you don’t mind re-setting up again should you crash. Remember, when (not if) you crash, you revert to the previous save (which is the last logout or last detach).

Luv, Lulu Ludovico