Meeting a very close RL colleague of the main avatar’s in-world tonight has given me an inspiration to start a very basic guide book for avatars that are real newcomers to SL.
cyboryac Jolles, who is the newbie avatar of a highly talented, as well as acclaimed artist in RL, will in time doubtless become an avatar amongst avatars. But tonight I saw him struggle. So, seeing someone as endowed with intelligence and intuition as he is becoming thoroughly confused by Second Life’s steep learning curve is making me think that there may indeed be a real need for something along the lines of what I have in mind for this page.
This page will cover very basic know-how related to the Second Life interface, mainly explained through screenshots. How to communicate, how to create a profile, how to search for things, how to join groups, how to accept inventory gifts as well as how to give them, how to use your inventory, how to change your appearance, how to modify your preferences, how to look into other’s profiles (and what might be learned by that), how to inspect objects… And maybe also some very very basic building tips.
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Important! Learning the SL interface is no different from any other software interface. My advice would be to login to SL with this page open. Go to a quiet area where you will not be distracted and spend time clicking on all the buttons, opening up all the palettes and pop-ups – just really familiarize yourself with the interface with the help of what is written below. Put in the time. You need to be absolutely familiar with all of the options and capabilities of what is there before you venture out into the social scene, knowing exactly what to do and how to do it. So, practice practice practice!!! Trust me on this – you really need to.
Bottomline: Do not try to run before you can walk…
All interface shots posted here will have larger version on Flickr that you can access by clicking on the image. Sadly, since I am not allowed to have a pro Flickr account for the moment, some of the shots there are reduced from their original sizes to a width of 1024 pixels. Consequently they have lost quite a bit of their crispness and are only there to give you a rough idea of where things are.
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The Second Life Interface
Consists of a top row and a bottom row, one at the very top edge of the interface, the other at the very bottom.
Please continue to the An Overview of the SL Interface page from here >>>
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Your preferences
These will all need to be personalized. To access the preferences pop-up palette go to the Edit menu from the top of the page…
Please continue to the Configure Preferences page from here >>>.
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Communicating in SL
The bottom left hand corner of the SL interface holds all the buttons that will access pop-up palettes related to communication. The long white line is where you enter your local chat, after which you press enter. However, that is only the beginning:
Please continue to the Communication in SL page from here >>>
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Search utilities in Second Life
The Search palette (upper image) and the Second Life world map (image below) can be accessed by clicking on the so named buttons found on the bottom menu. These are the two in-world search utilities that you will need to thoroughly familiarize yourself with.
Please continue to the Search utilities page from here >>>
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Creating a good SL Profile
Right clicking on yourself will reveal the link to your own profile at 3 o’clock on the pie menu (01). Clicking on this will pop open your profile (02). And believe me, people do look at this and come to conclusions about you, just as you do with theirs.
Please continue to the Creating a a good SL Profile page from here >>>
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The Appearance Palette
The trickiest, but also the most fun of the pop up palettes, this one needs judicious handling.
Please continue to the The Appearance Palette page from here >>>
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The Top Menu
While many of the features contained in various top menu drop down menus, there are still quite a number that are to be found only up here. Not everything related to the menu can be covered in a short tutorial such as the one undertaken on these pages. It will be left to you to go through all of the various menus and sub-menus, some of which contain fairly advanced commands, and figure this out at your time. What I will try to mention are the things that you really do need to be aware of when using SL.
Please continue to the The Top Menu page from here >>>
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Making purchases in Second Life
Please continue to the Making purchases in SL page from here >>>
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Very basic building and prim adjustments
Please continue to the Basic building and prim adjustments page from here >>>
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Your Second Life
Please continue to the Your Second Life page from here >>>
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2 Comments
What was actually confusing is that my sound/voice was (and still) not functioning correctly, also I was getting some generous help from two individuals at the same time. Any way, when we were left to work alone I could concentrate and make real progress.
All that said,your idea of a book/guide for new comers is fantastic and will be appreciated by all users. Meanwhile I like to take this opportunity to thank you for the session yesterday it was quite informative and I did learn a great deal.Many thanks, cyboryac
It was my absolute pleasure…
But as I am already saying above voice should really not be your priority cyboryac. Voice is something that is used very rarely in Second Life. One obvious reason is that voice makes the concealment of gender pretty much impossible and there are, after all, a lot of transgender avatars in Second Life. The second one is that voice tends to create a huge disturbance for all the people around you and that are not associated with you. So, unless you use voice in a private call it tends to be problematic in that way. Another reason why voice seems to be unpopular is that it would be very difficult to keep the chat logs.
Voice is good when you are getting a tutorial from somebody/or giving one, since explaining things with voice does tend to be faster.
so, ı would say that the priority lies in learning how to communicate with type chat.
I will keep on posting to these pages and it seems to be going quite fast. I would advise you to what I am suggesting at the beginning of the main page all this: Go to a quiet place, all by yourself. Open these tutorials and slowly go over the interface testing out everything one by one. Over and over again, until you have it all down perfectly…
:-)
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