AjaxLife Blog

AjaxLife will (well, should) now function from behind a corporate (or, indeed, any other) proxy, even under IE6. This does, of course, assume that the proxy is not blocking AjaxLife or something.

This was a very common issue, but it should now be fixed. Hooray!

AjaxLife 0.3.0 is up now. Yay!

Here are some release notes:

• Inventory window is fifty pixels wider by default
• Inventory has a context menu
• Inventory items can be renamed (but folders can’t)
• Inventory folders and items can be moved to trash and/or purged
• The trash can be emptied
• Folders can be created
• Properties window for inventory items (read-only for now)
• “Copy UUID” option on inventory items (if you have full permissions) - copies directly to clipboard in IE, opens a dialog with the UUID pre-selected in everything else.
• Inventory items show their permissions on mouseover
• Addition of keyboard shortcuts (same as those used in SL):
  • Ctrl-Q logs you out
  • Ctrl-T opens the IM window
  • Ctrl-I opens inventory
  • Ctrl-H opens the chat window
  • Ctrl-M opens the map
  • Ctrl-Shift-1 opens the stats window
  • Ctrl and Command/Apple are interchangeable under Safari
• When used in Fluid with Growl installed, Growl notifications are shown for certain events
• Bugfix: friend lists will no longer display a list of nulls or blanks
• Bugfix: The map window’s “Focus on target” button now actually focuses the target, not your position as of inital login

You can see some screenshots of the new inventory stuff in my earlier post.

I hope you like it.

[01:33 GMT] Open again!

[01:26 GMT] Running the startup scripts. AjaxLife will reopen itself when the script has finished (in about ten minutes).

[01:06 GMT] Problem resolved. Deploying new server. Going to get a drink as well; this script takes a while.

[00:42 GMT] Hit a problem in testing that didn’t (and continues to refuse to) appear in the preview environment.

[00:27 GMT] Logins are disabled.

AjaxLife will be down for an upgrade to version 0.3 shortly. Please be patient. And such.

[22:44 GMT] We’re back!

Release notes:

• Hebrew and Japanese translations added in llDialog and llRequestPermissions dialogs
• IMs scroll down when someone’s typing to show the “Some Person is typing…” message
• Login and application are now on the same webpage (”Loading subsystems” no longer exists)
• Login screen can be translated, pending translations of the new text
• Changing the language in the drop down box immediately changes the language in use.

Old status announcements

Here are some nice screenshots from the 0.1.2 release:

See screenshots

This is the version I put out earlier this morning. Highlights include inventory item giving, the lack of constant rotation, and the beginnings of inventory organisation. Here are the release notes:

• Non-functioning grids removed from grid list (note that we still crash OSGrid sims on login)
• iPhone stuff removed for now
• Overlapping login box problem lessened somewhat
• Updated ExtJS to 1.1.1
• Added support for llDialog
• Added support for llRequestPermissions
• Fixed region down map overlays - down regions now once again tint red
• Folded the MapAPI into the libraries, increasing loading consistency
• Added some debug stuff - try enabling Firebug or Safari’s debug console
• Notecards and scripts report errors on failed loads instead of loading indefinitely
• Attempts to reconnect after message queue failure (commonly referred to as AjaxLife “crashing”)
• Only rotate once after login and teleport - no constant rotation
• Changed inventory item icons
• Inventory folders now pick up appropriate icons
• Minimap no longer shows a green indicator for yourself (only the yellow dot is shown)
• Allows moving of individual inventory items and folders within your inventory
• Allows transferring inventory to others via drag/drop into their profile
• Fixed bug in NameCache that prevented recovery from a friend list of nulls or blanks

Known issues:

• Inventory sometimes gives every folder a texture icon. This does no harm other than looking odd.
• Eyes and similar are given clothing icons.

I hope you enjoy the new features! Please file any issues in the issue tracker (requires a Google Account), or just email me. Or leave a sufficiently detailed comment here.

- Katharine

Having left AjaxLife for about a week, I came back to it last night and added person search, partial profile viewing, and arbitrary IMs. Yay.

Known issues

• Session IDs, while now more consistent than before, are still not consistent enough to actually prevent conflicts resulting in “Lost IM” messages. On the plus side, they don’t crash it any more.
• The image in the profile tends not to load. There are a range of issues causing that, which will hopefully be fixed at some point.
• The server still dies under load.

Here’s a nice screenshot!

It’s in revision 13 on the Google Code project.

Due to some combination of boredom, wanting to talk to people in SL, and inspiration from a vague memory of something Interfect Sonic did, I decided to start work on an AJAX based SL client.

It’s still under heavy development, but the result so far is an application/page/site called AjaxLife.

Post updated for r13

Post not updated past r13. See the AjaxLife category for up-to-date information.

Features

• Basic map
• Teleports
• Accepting/declining teleport offers
• Local chat, instant messages (now fully supported)
• Inventory received notifications
• Friend on/offline notifications
• Balance change notifications, etc.
• Person search
• Partial profile viewing

It also correctly logs you in and out, and notifies you if you were disconnected for any reason.

Known issues

• If you’re on the TG and you zoom out too far, the top half gets chopped off.
• Both grids can see each-other on the map. (Is that an issue?)
• Sometimes SL sends the teleport messages in the wrong order, resulting in the modal teleport wait dialog never leaving.
• Teleports sometimes complete without notification that they ever started.
• IE tends to screw up with dragging the map

Obligitary snapshots

Known supported browsers

• Firefox 1.5+
• Safari 3 (and the latest WebKit nightly as well)

Browsers with minor issues

• Internet Explorer 6/7 (background image tends to flicker, odd script error)
• Opera 9 (annoying keyboard focus issues)
• Wii Browser (works fine, but the layout is slightly off)
• Safari 2 (Buttons are positioned all over the place)

If you want to use it, and trust that I won’t look at your password (which I can’t, and nothing that this does is logged, but you should always be careful and stuff), you can test it at https://ajaxlife.net/.

If there’s enough interest I’ll make a version that you can run on your own machine to connect to, once it’s further developed (e.g. starting IMs, profile viewing, possibly inventory management, etc.)

Please leave any comments you may have.