Hello everyone. Someone in my Tiny Empires realm asked me to put together a list of the preferences and settings I use in Viewer 2.1.1 (Hi Sterling!) so that’s what I’m going to do here. Keep in mind these are my preferences and that your preferences might (and probably should) be different. That’s why they are called preferences, right?
You can call up the preferences tab from the menu (Me -> Preferences) or you can hit ctrl-p. I prefer to use shortcuts if and where I can but again… that’s a preference.
The General Preferences Tab
On the General preferences tab, I set my content ratings to General, Moderate and Adult because, honestly, I don’t want my filth to be that clean. I like dirty filth! I set my start location to where ever I was before I crashed… I mean, logged off… and I make the choice visible at login. I set my Away timeout to “never,” because I want to choose when I go away… unless I crash first.
The Graphics Preferences Tab
On the Graphics tab, I’m just showing off here. Yeah, I gots da gear to run on ultra.
*/me flexes*
How you like me now?
The Privacy Preference Tab
I think by default all of these things are checked but note that I have changed the chat log directory to something I can easily access. There’s a secondary reason for doing this: when you uninstall Viewer 2.x, it has a nasty habit of taking the chat logs if they are stored in the default location. I really don’t like that.
The Sound & Media Preferences Tab
The most important change I make on the Sound and Media tab is to the “Allow Media to auto-play” option. You’ll want to disable this too if you don’t want your ears blasted every time you TP to a new location. One other change I make is to mute the “Ambient” sounds. SL can seem empty enough at times without the sound of wind rushing by. Cue the tumble weeds.
The Chat Preferences Tab
Here on the Chat tab, I have enabled plain text IM and chat history. The “un-plain” versions take up extra space and can sometimes make it difficult to accurately select for copy. You can turn on Version 1.23-style IMs by selecting “tabs” at the bottom there. However, I’ve learned to take advantage of Version 2′s group/IM “chicklets” at the bottom right hand of the screen to select and move between chat sessions. It’s not perfect, but I prefer it to the old sliding tabs… particularly when I have ten or more chat sessions open. Oh and… please… in the name of all that isn’t Holy, disable “Play typing animation when chatting.” This is 2010.
The Notifications Preferences Tab
I didn’t change a thing from the defaults on the notifications panel. Included for completeness. Items move from the upper to the lower pane as you tell notifications not to notify you anymore. I let this happen over time as they come up.
The Setup Preferences Page
I increased the “Maximum bandwidth” setting here because, at least for me, I find it smoother to have my ISP throttle my throughput than to have my computer do it. Basically I want SL to have all the bandwidth it can have. I have changed the “Cache location” from the default because I use another Version 2-compatible viewer and I’d like it to benefit from any textures I might have already downloaded. On my desktop, I point the SL cache to a striped RAID volume. (If you don’t know what that is, never mind.)
Also: use your own browser for webpages… You know, the browser you’ve set AdBlock and all the other goodies on, right? Cookies all in one place.
The Advanced Preferences Tab
Finally, on the Advanced tab, I de-select “Automatic position for: Sidebar” so that the sidebar “slides over” the world rather than “squishing it.” That’s just how I roll… er… slide. I also set a function key for my voice mic toggle.
I’ll do another blog tomorrow about some tweaks I make to the user interface to make it easier to manage. Until then… happy preferencing!
