That's right! It's finally here, and while we’re calling ita beta it could easily pass as an official release! We certainly feel it's ready for broad public usage. This public beta hasdemonstrated itself to be very stable in testing and comes with heaps morefeatures than our Preview 2 did. We've also designed it specifically to notinterfere with other viewer installations on your system so you can feelconfident in giving it a try without any worries.
First, what is the Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer all about? Firestormis the next generation viewer produced by us; it is based off of Linden Lab’sV2 code base but with a focus on making it V1 familiar. It’s focus is toprovide you with a smaller learning curve and an easier transition from V1 toV2. However, while that has been our focus it is important to mention that itstill does have a learning curve, it is not exactly the same as V1 or thePhoenix Viewer. Because of this we have gone to great lengths to provide youwith tutorial videos and extensive documentation which we HIGHLY encourage youto have a look at. It will take some getting used to, but if you give it achance you’ll find it will quickly feel very comfortable for full time use.
You can see our
tutorial video’s here
You can find our
support and usage documentation here
We'll be hosting Firestorm Classes starting in the next week or two, keep an eye on our
classes wiki for schedule
Firestorm Public Beta comes with a huge list of features farbeyond what the standard V2 viewer provides. Some of the most prominent featuresyou will notice is that we made you a new PIE’ menu! We’ve provided you with nearlyfully functional Radar, a newly written, secure bridge which extends theabilities of the viewer into in world interactivity, like the ability to doubleclick teleport in regions that have landing points, improved radar accuracy andmuch more to come. We have big plans for bridge in the future. There is a brandnew written from scratch built in AO which just works every time and couldn’tbe easier to use. Plus many more features you’re used to from the Phoenix viewer. There are however a few features we are hesitant to add because of their controversial nature like True online status in profiles, friendship dissolved messages, who's removed you from seeing their online status etc. In the coming days we will be making another blog post here with a link to a poll. We want to know what you think we should do with these features. But for now, a
complete list of features can be found here.
But perhaps most important of all is the UI changes andcustomization options we’ve provided you. Close to V1, almost everything cannow be customized to your liking. Undocking/docking windows, closingthem/reopening them, moving them, resizing them or just eliminating them fromyour view forever are all things you can do with this new viewer. We’ve provided you with various skins as well,from V1 looking skins to skins that look just like the original V2. Options! It’sall up to you.
Thousands of man hours have gone into this viewer so far,and there is yet still so much more on our planning board to do. So many morefeatures and options we want to bring over from Phoenix and many of our own unique featureswe plan to create. As with any viewer, this is a continual work in progressviewer, it is in perpetual motion. With each release we promise to have moreand more features, options and bug fixes in place. We only wish we could doeverything at once, faster! Speaking of doing it faster!...
Firestorm is a community project, what that means is that wevery much welcome people from outside our team to help us make it better. Ourprimary goal is to improve the user experience, there are no egos involvedhere. We’ve already accepted a lot of code from people who are not on our teamand highly encourage anyone to become a contributor to this very promisingviewer project. If you contribute enough we’ll be happy to make you a member ofthe team! In fact several of our best developers started out as contributorsthemselves. Contributing is easy if you can code!
You can grab our source code from
http://hg.phoenixviewer.com/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl/. Have a peek through our
JIRA to find things that interest you. Contribute byproviding us patches but please remember all code must be LGPL. You will be properly credited for any and all contributions. Our support members are not developers and may not be able to help you with compile issues, if you need help with compiling or coding feel free to contact one of our developers. Their names can be found
here or Email us at
dev at phoenixviewer dot com
Support
It is important to note that while we are providing supportfor this release, our support people aren’t much more experienced withFirestorm than you are and may have trouble finding you solutions to difficult problems for the first little while. This is a transition for all of us. Also that half of our support team will still be running the Phoenix viewer so they can continue to support Phoenix and may not be able to help with Firestorm issues in this case. Please understand that our support team,just like all of us, work on a volunteer basis. While they are not required tohelp you, they try their best all of the time and do a fantastic job. Please don’t be abusive towardsthem. Before contacting support please have a look at our
Firestorm wiki first, chances are you will find your answers there faster. If you don't find your answers you can reach support either by IM directly, or through one of our official support groups. Members and groups can be found from our
Support page on this website.
With this Phoenix-Firestorm Public Beta comes a new future and directionfor The Phoenix Viewer Project which we are very excited about! At some pointin the near future the Phoenix Viewer along with all other V1 viewers will beginto stop working as LL starts turning off server side support for them. WhileFirestorm is optional right now, we must all accept that we willneed to transition over to a V2 based viewer at some point soon. Beyond Firestormthere are other options as well, many other Third Party Viewer Projects havestarted their own V2 based viewers, some have been established for some timealready. We encourage you to give them a try as well.
You can download firestorm from our
downloads page.
Note: If you've previously installed any of the Firestorm Preview Builds that you perform a full clean installation for this public beta. Much has changed since preview 2 and you will likely get settings corruption if you don't.
Instructions can be found here
We are looking forward to providing you with progressively better versions with each release, and are really looking forward to seeing you on the new Phoenix-Firestorm Viewer! See you in world!
Sincerely,
The Phoenix Viewer Project, Inc.
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Firestorm Public Beta has arrived!
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