LL killed AjaxLife

September 27th, 2007Development

[20:29 BST] And now it doesn’t exist at all. Hoping they’re doing something other than ignoring it… :(
[20:03 BST] It’s not fixed. The file now exists, but doesn’t have any region names. So it’ll still crash out. Boo LL people.

[20:00 BST] Apparently it’s fixed, at least for now. Yay LL people! :D
LL seem to have pulled the MapAPI (yes, I know that’s a 404. That’s the problem.) without any form of announcement. So much for their blog.

Some research indicates that they have intended to do so for a while, and were going to make a wide announcement before doing so. Breaking it does not count as a wide announcement.

As such, AjaxLife (which was heavily dependent on the API for the map functions, among others) will no longer function. Furthermore, the replacement lacks an important function to make it work, is still in beta, still has assorted voice-map related things hardcoded in.

Additionally, I don’t want “Powered by Google” stuck in the corner of AjaxLife. Especially since nothing was wrong with the old one - well, at least, not my fixed version of the old one (now also broken due to loss of its data source).

So, Linden Lab. Until you do something about this, AjaxLife is dead.

18 Responses to “LL killed AjaxLife”

  1. sidharta Philo Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 6:36 pm

    What a pity! AjaxLife is really a piece of work, I hope it will be back soon, well done, Katharine.

  2. Smiley Barry Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    Argh! Linden Lab, will you PLEASE take the “Apple route” of production instead of the “Microsoft route”? (For non-techies, I mean, don’t throw away stuff, and if so, notify 6 months ahead of doing it, and do extensive testing before rolling out new features/replacing old features with new ones…). They tell everyone “Go! Go! Go! Use our open-source codes, APIs, and stuff!”, yet they later on add a * saying “LL holds the right to trash away open-source stuff, and to treat customers like crap”.

    Really annoys me. Way to go, Linden.

  3. Alyx Sands Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    Arrrr no! All your brilliant hard work…..

  4. Stefano Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    Ciao Katharine, the map apis are back right now:
    http://secondlife.com/apps/mapapi/

    Yes you did not dream thou, i saw them 404 down too!

    time to get ajaxlife back to… life!

  5. Katharine Berry Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    They put the code back up, but didn’t put the useful bit back - i.e. the list of sim names.

    What they have now is more or less what I had before. It’s not at all useful.

  6. Linden Lab Killed AjaxLife at Daikon Forge Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm

    [...] it seems that LL killed AjaxLife by closing down or breaking the MapAPI part of their site that allowed third-party developers to [...]

  7. Stefano Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 8:25 pm

    grrrrr. let’s be hopeful. maybe they are just rolling a new version and doing it the ‘hard way’. Put it down then slowly back.
    In any case I dropped them an email (mapapi@secondlife.com), we’ll see… finger crossed. and thanks for your work.

  8. Philll Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 10:54 pm

    http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MapAPI

    SL Maps API is changed, see above

    Is this relevant to your problem maybe ?

  9. Ezhar Fairlight Says:
    September 27th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    Actually to me it looks like the generator that creates that script (to include the sim names/coordinates) simply broke. Most likely due to the number of sim names exceeding what the generator can handle.

  10. Katharine Berry Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 6:30 am

    Philll, I’m aware it changed. I found that after searching JIRA a bit, and also found that they would make a “wide announcement” before killing the old one. However, since the new one fails to include the sim names, it’s not very helpful to me. And, as I said, I refuse to have “Powered by Google” in the corner of my map.

    It seems possible that it’s broken. But it’d be nice if LL actually told someone that.

  11. Melodee McMillan Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 6:52 am

    Never ceases to amaze me how communicating can be so hard for companies like LL.

    Thumbs up, Katharine! Hope you’ll be able to revive AjaxLife.

  12. Alister Harrington Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

    Argh. Fix it! >_>
    Or….get LL to fix it…..or……….something?

    *dies of SL withdrawal during vacation*

  13. Katharine's Second Life Says:
    September 28th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

    AjaxLife revived…

    No thanks to Linden Lab, I’ve fixed AjaxLife. It no longer relies on the map API - it instead builds up the missing data based on MapBlocks. It was already doing this to fix capitalisation, but was also assuming that sims already existed in the m…

  14. Nat Mandelbrot of Cruxy Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:27 am

    Yeah, announcements would be nice… our Music Map (http://cruxy.com/sl/map) has been down for days without us noticing and WITH us sending clients, users, etc to check out, well… nothing but an empty map. That’s no fun.

    Heading over to wiki for new API info…

  15. Nat Mandelbrot of Cruxy Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 am

    So, they seemed to have removed the SLPoint region name resolution support. Its boldly NOT IMPLEMENTED anymore, and it used to be. I hate when features disappear.

  16. Nat Mandelbrot of Cruxy Says:
    October 2nd, 2007 at 2:14 am

    Okay, so I’ve created a hack for the lack of SLPoint support using a region lookup service Linden provides. You only get resolution to the region, but its better than nothing.

    function addRegionMarker (regionName, storeImage, popupCode)
    {
    var SLMap = this;

    // Add a dynamic script to get this region position, and then add a market and popup there
    var varName = “slRegionPos_result”;
    var scriptURL = “https://cap.secondlife.com/cap/0/d661249b-2b5a-4436-966a-3d3b8d7a574f?var=” + varName + “&sim_name=” + encodeURIComponent(regionName);

    // Once the script has loaded, we use the result to center the map on the position
    var onLoadHandler = function ()
    {
    if (slRegionPos_result.error)
    {
    //alert(”The region name ‘” + regionName + “‘ was not recognised.”);
    }
    else
    {
    var x = slRegionPos_result.x;
    var y = slRegionPos_result.y;

    var pos = new XYPoint(x, y);
    yellow_dot_image = new Img(storeImage,60,45);
    yellow_icon = new Icon(yellow_dot_image);
    all_images = [yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon];
    marker = new Marker(all_images, pos);
    mapWindow = new MapWindow(popupCode);
    mapInstance.addMarker(marker,mapWindow);
    }
    };

    slAddDynamicScript(scriptURL, onLoadHandler);
    }

  17. Thraxis Epsilon Says:
    October 3rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    This should work to allow you to specify position in the region:

    function addRegionMarker (regionName, rx,ry, storeImage, popupCode)
    {
    var SLMap = this;

    // Add a dynamic script to get this region position, and then add a market and popup there
    var varName = “slRegionPos_result”;
    var scriptURL = “https://cap.secondlife.com/cap/0/d661249b-2b5a-4436-966a-3d3b8d7a574f?var=” + varName + “&sim_name=” + encodeURIComponent(regionName);

    // Once the script has loaded, we use the result to center the map on the position
    var onLoadHandler = function ()
    {
    if (slRegionPos_result.error)
    {
    //alert(”The region name ‘” + regionName + “‘ was not recognised.”);
    }
    else
    {
    var x = slRegionPos_result.x + (rx/256.0);
    var y = slRegionPos_result.y + (ry/256.0);

    var pos = new XYPoint(x, y);
    yellow_dot_image = new Img(storeImage,60,45);
    yellow_icon = new Icon(yellow_dot_image);
    all_images = [yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon, yellow_icon];
    marker = new Marker(all_images, pos);
    mapWindow = new MapWindow(popupCode);
    mapInstance.addMarker(marker,mapWindow);
    }
    };

    slAddDynamicScript(scriptURL, onLoadHandler);
    }

  18. Nat Mandelbrot of Cruxy Says:
    October 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Thank. That worked great!

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