So, a short form of the 6 services:
Metaverse Exchange:
My top choice, as the services are currently, semi tied with apez. Beats out meta-life because that excluded itself from being useful to me. Beats out apez (somewhat) because it has somewhat better bulk listing. Listing itself is weird and takes a lot of getting used to, may in fact be harder to list individual items than any other service, so it's not super awesome.
apez.biz:
Semi ties with MVX, in fact I'm still waffling as to which of these two I prefer. MVX has easier and more interesting bulk listings (which I like...but also kinda don't like, because you can't SEE everything at once easily), but apez has some semi decent bulk listing features, so long as you never, ever, EVER change your mind. I would say it's easier set up than MVX for singles, LOVE the collections way of grouping items.
meta-life:
Mostly a pretty damn great service. Pretty damn near totally useless for me because of the image thing. Wish it would have website image uploads, and apez's collections- with a few very minor interface tweaks on top of that meta would quite possibly be my perfect service.
slapt.me:
Of the four I could get up and running, slapt was the most lackluster. No bulk features, just about as clunky listing wise as xstreet (and if I have to choose something else, I'm choosing something with BETTER features), and interface problems that make it almost unusable for me because I have problems figuring out what things say at all.
vitty:
Suffers from the "if I need to move, I should move to something that makes my life easier" problem- listing looks similarly clunky, about on par with xstreet. Geared towards the Japanese market, _and_ has a deal on commissions for low priced items, so, as a consumer, this is quite possibly a hidden gem full of holy crap that's amazing and I need it right now. It's just not something I'd use for selling on, currently.
Cariama:
Not yet open (the website itself only launched at all the beginning of last month), so out of the running.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
xstreet alternatives- cariama & vitty
Test drive 5: Cariama
Not actually open yet! So. That was fast. Somehow someone has listed 1 item (maybe a test item in some manner?) but otherwise, this isn't running yet.
Test drive 6: vitty
I am guessing vitty's having issues with the influx of people, I'm incapable of getting a box delivered to me to try a listing. However, looking through the help docs, there is no bulk listing feature at all, so that kinda excludes it as an option for me. Additionally, I'm not fluent in Japanese (and not even barely literate), so as it's a Japanese site, I would be excluding most of the audience by being unable to list in Japanese. The website itself is set up well for English speakers though, and for people looking to expand into the Japanese market, I think this would bear looking into just for that.
Additionally, there's no commission at all on any item under 51L, so it would be a great market for cheap promos. (Standard 5% on 51L and up)
Not actually open yet! So. That was fast. Somehow someone has listed 1 item (maybe a test item in some manner?) but otherwise, this isn't running yet.
Test drive 6: vitty
I am guessing vitty's having issues with the influx of people, I'm incapable of getting a box delivered to me to try a listing. However, looking through the help docs, there is no bulk listing feature at all, so that kinda excludes it as an option for me. Additionally, I'm not fluent in Japanese (and not even barely literate), so as it's a Japanese site, I would be excluding most of the audience by being unable to list in Japanese. The website itself is set up well for English speakers though, and for people looking to expand into the Japanese market, I think this would bear looking into just for that.
Additionally, there's no commission at all on any item under 51L, so it would be a great market for cheap promos. (Standard 5% on 51L and up)
xstreet alternative- metaverse exchange
Test drive 4: Metaverse Exchange
We may have a winner, for me. It's strange, and not 100% ideal, and reinvents the wheel. But, it might be my best option.
Also, you'll see that my evaluation is coloured by previous things- meta-life plus proper image integration is currently what I'm measuring things against (in other words, I want to see them get close to that, _or_ similar convenience in another package- this approaches the second). I'm also more concerned with cursory listings and will work on more of the extras later, while skimming through each to get the overview.
For convenience (and my wrist's) sake, I'm going to be referring to this as MVX because I can barely _remember_ the full name, aside from it being long. The info from digging around the website looked interesting- a "listing here is weird, but that's because we actually let you group alternates". And listing IS weird.
Signup's a little strange because this is an "integrate all your virtual worlds into one account" thing (as well as multiple SL accounts, from the looks of it)- there's currently one other world (Legends Online? or something like that. I've heard of it, never been), set up an account, integrate it to your SL account second, and they actually USE your email address in sign up...so it makes sense to ask (maybe that's why the whole email signup process on slapt was weird to me? I don't know). Box gets sent, you don't have to leave the privacy of your skybox while wearing awesome but wacky demos and other neat things people send you while you're standing around. p.s. I'm also a fan of convenience.
Good Things:
Multiple options of the same item (like colour alts) collapse into one really easily. One listing, dropdown for all the items on that listing. Totally different system than any of the others, and a nice one- cuts down on the dreaded clutter that omg is the reason the sky is falling and we have to fuck with you. Editing the batch is also pretty quick and reasonably simple...once you know what you're doing, which is not easy.
Image uploading with multiple options, including the ability to grab previously uploaded images fairly easily. Also, you can assign a crapton of images to any single thing (I threw in all 30 alts of the shirt, just to see if I could- it doesn't have a scrollbar, so it's rather useless beyond the first 5 or so, but it DID let me), though it doesn't tell you in the thumbnail that there are other images than just the default. It automatically reorders things as you assign in a manner that appeared random to me, so beyond image 1, who knows what the order will be- this only makes any difference when you have too many images and some may get shoved off screen!
edit: I just looked back- thumbnails are smaller than before so I can see more, AND it now scrolls sideways if you have more than fit. So, something may have been hinkey when I first checked that's ironed itself out.
I think you can do copy and transfer options integrated into single listings easily as well, if you choose to. I largely avoid transfer on web based systems when I have a copy alternative because I don't trust redelivery and unscrupulous people. (Generally, this is why I don't like transfer, period, btw, and only offer it in very particular cases now.)
Bad Things:
Holy crap is listing confusing. It sort of kinda makes sense once you've done it, but even then, parts are NOT where you expect them to be, divided up between two sections- and some things in one part don't carry over but others do...generally, very steep learning curve. You WILL need to have the Help page open while you're listing, and will have to look back at it for every. single. step. The instructions are pretty good, but they are 100% necessary, and it will probably take me a handful of listings to get used to it at all to where I _don't_ have to refer back constantly. I also got totally turned around trying to edit a listing, and learned a lot the first time that will help out next time, but did a LOT wrong the first time, even going through their instructions. It would be nice if there was an easy way to integrate fatpacks too? However I think that would involve changing the system a bit- prices seem to be constant, and that should be a somewhat different option in the dropdown instead of just alphabetical...so, I don't see an easy way to do it that wouldn't just cause more confusion. This is also assuming that there isn't that ability and I just didn't see it because I'm still picking up on the system. But I was able to easily edit the non fatpack and the fatpack listings to link to each other (BB Code, not HTML- I'm more comfortable with HTML, but BB is pretty common and what most of these sites use anyway, and it's not bad)...once I figured out how to edit active listings (I also made it active before I meant to- again, first listing WILL confuse the crap out of you).
Generally, I'd overhaul the organization in certain ways and move some of the info back and forth- the setting info from one to apply to all thing doesn't make as much sense when you've also got a SECOND place to put in info that applies to all, and the division doesn't entirely seem to make sense. Some does. I also found it may not have applied things across right, and couldn't see where to change the info in the individual and apply it across to all _again_- which is useful.
Images are not bad, but could be yet less clunky. Meta-life's the only one that gets close- let me apply secondary images to all the selected at one click, please. Also, would love to see thumbnails at the item list so I had a clue which ones I'd done what with yet! I had to go through my listing repeatedly to make sure I hadn't listed everything, and some of that won't change with practice, because it isn't so easy to see how the lot of it is set up at a glance. This is less a "bad thing" and a "wish it was this way thing", of course!
All shirts, plus fatpacks, listed. Took (quite a bit) longer than meta-life because a) figuring out system, b) actually changing the pictures for each one! Proper meta-life listings WILL take longer as I didn't slot out the image for each, and c) it may still take slightly longer generally because of the way things are set out across two pages, and how that info there is organized. But, listing all didn't take much longer than one (main problem being assigning images to each)- so for colour alts and such, very good. Listing singles is divided up in the same manner, so that _is_ a little clunkier than some, but not altogether horrible. Still, this is my current personal frontrunner, with meta-life not having uploadable images supported. It has beaten out apez in my book, although single listings are probably a bit more time consuming in the long run than apez.
We may have a winner, for me. It's strange, and not 100% ideal, and reinvents the wheel. But, it might be my best option.
Also, you'll see that my evaluation is coloured by previous things- meta-life plus proper image integration is currently what I'm measuring things against (in other words, I want to see them get close to that, _or_ similar convenience in another package- this approaches the second). I'm also more concerned with cursory listings and will work on more of the extras later, while skimming through each to get the overview.
For convenience (and my wrist's) sake, I'm going to be referring to this as MVX because I can barely _remember_ the full name, aside from it being long. The info from digging around the website looked interesting- a "listing here is weird, but that's because we actually let you group alternates". And listing IS weird.
Signup's a little strange because this is an "integrate all your virtual worlds into one account" thing (as well as multiple SL accounts, from the looks of it)- there's currently one other world (Legends Online? or something like that. I've heard of it, never been), set up an account, integrate it to your SL account second, and they actually USE your email address in sign up...so it makes sense to ask (maybe that's why the whole email signup process on slapt was weird to me? I don't know). Box gets sent, you don't have to leave the privacy of your skybox while wearing awesome but wacky demos and other neat things people send you while you're standing around. p.s. I'm also a fan of convenience.
Good Things:
Multiple options of the same item (like colour alts) collapse into one really easily. One listing, dropdown for all the items on that listing. Totally different system than any of the others, and a nice one- cuts down on the dreaded clutter that omg is the reason the sky is falling and we have to fuck with you. Editing the batch is also pretty quick and reasonably simple...once you know what you're doing, which is not easy.
Image uploading with multiple options, including the ability to grab previously uploaded images fairly easily. Also, you can assign a crapton of images to any single thing (I threw in all 30 alts of the shirt, just to see if I could- it doesn't have a scrollbar, so it's rather useless beyond the first 5 or so, but it DID let me), though it doesn't tell you in the thumbnail that there are other images than just the default. It automatically reorders things as you assign in a manner that appeared random to me, so beyond image 1, who knows what the order will be- this only makes any difference when you have too many images and some may get shoved off screen!
edit: I just looked back- thumbnails are smaller than before so I can see more, AND it now scrolls sideways if you have more than fit. So, something may have been hinkey when I first checked that's ironed itself out.
I think you can do copy and transfer options integrated into single listings easily as well, if you choose to. I largely avoid transfer on web based systems when I have a copy alternative because I don't trust redelivery and unscrupulous people. (Generally, this is why I don't like transfer, period, btw, and only offer it in very particular cases now.)
Bad Things:
Holy crap is listing confusing. It sort of kinda makes sense once you've done it, but even then, parts are NOT where you expect them to be, divided up between two sections- and some things in one part don't carry over but others do...generally, very steep learning curve. You WILL need to have the Help page open while you're listing, and will have to look back at it for every. single. step. The instructions are pretty good, but they are 100% necessary, and it will probably take me a handful of listings to get used to it at all to where I _don't_ have to refer back constantly. I also got totally turned around trying to edit a listing, and learned a lot the first time that will help out next time, but did a LOT wrong the first time, even going through their instructions. It would be nice if there was an easy way to integrate fatpacks too? However I think that would involve changing the system a bit- prices seem to be constant, and that should be a somewhat different option in the dropdown instead of just alphabetical...so, I don't see an easy way to do it that wouldn't just cause more confusion. This is also assuming that there isn't that ability and I just didn't see it because I'm still picking up on the system. But I was able to easily edit the non fatpack and the fatpack listings to link to each other (BB Code, not HTML- I'm more comfortable with HTML, but BB is pretty common and what most of these sites use anyway, and it's not bad)...once I figured out how to edit active listings (I also made it active before I meant to- again, first listing WILL confuse the crap out of you).
Generally, I'd overhaul the organization in certain ways and move some of the info back and forth- the setting info from one to apply to all thing doesn't make as much sense when you've also got a SECOND place to put in info that applies to all, and the division doesn't entirely seem to make sense. Some does. I also found it may not have applied things across right, and couldn't see where to change the info in the individual and apply it across to all _again_- which is useful.
Images are not bad, but could be yet less clunky. Meta-life's the only one that gets close- let me apply secondary images to all the selected at one click, please. Also, would love to see thumbnails at the item list so I had a clue which ones I'd done what with yet! I had to go through my listing repeatedly to make sure I hadn't listed everything, and some of that won't change with practice, because it isn't so easy to see how the lot of it is set up at a glance. This is less a "bad thing" and a "wish it was this way thing", of course!
All shirts, plus fatpacks, listed. Took (quite a bit) longer than meta-life because a) figuring out system, b) actually changing the pictures for each one! Proper meta-life listings WILL take longer as I didn't slot out the image for each, and c) it may still take slightly longer generally because of the way things are set out across two pages, and how that info there is organized. But, listing all didn't take much longer than one (main problem being assigning images to each)- so for colour alts and such, very good. Listing singles is divided up in the same manner, so that _is_ a little clunkier than some, but not altogether horrible. Still, this is my current personal frontrunner, with meta-life not having uploadable images supported. It has beaten out apez in my book, although single listings are probably a bit more time consuming in the long run than apez.
xstreet alternatives-slapt.me
Test drive 3: slapt.me
Now, people have been raving about this one, so I figured I would go with it next. But I started off less into it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Was it the initial screen before you can go into the site proper? Was it the "look" of it generally? The sign up process continued this slightly...off feeling. Put in a valid email...not your av name. We won't do anything for signing up with that email, go here, say this in local chat out loud on channel 0 (not that it's something that matters really...) and we'll sign you up. The whole thing is just...not the way I want it done, and makes me slightly uncomfortable for reasons I can't put my finger on.
But, then we've got nice shop profiles, yay! Mind you, it's one per avatar, the multi shop thing on meta-life spoiled me, I like that feature. There are split profits- I'm not doing that right now, so I don't know if it applies to all across the board or what (nor will I be looking into that now, as it doesn't apply to me- if it applies to you, check it out!)
Door to door box service, which is "how it should be." Something good about all of them so far- they wait to update so you aren't constantly cycling when adding a group, or changing or whatnot (I've had to change in box perms on a bunch of things before, my xstreet box went postal).
Bad Things:
The category listing box...is too narrow...and I can't SEE the categories to figure out where to list something. /facepalm Now, this is because my browser window isn't maximized, but, even with it, I can't see it all and it will cause more trouble with listings. Generally, the interface is too size dependent and has the sidebars that block it in, and this causes a lot of "wait, what's that supposed to be? Ok, first two letters...what might that spell?"- some even with my browser maximized. My screen may be a laptop screen, but it's large for one of those, so I can see this causing trouble. I could lower my font size to squinty...maybe.
The image file cutoff is _way_ lower, and my first try told me "no sir, this is too big!" Now, this _is_ a fairly large image, but is effectively 1024x1024, not above SL sizes.
I'm not seeing any way to make "bulk" listings easier. I put up with that from xstreet because it was "the" thing, there are alternatives that have it, and that means thumbs down from me. I only listed on onrez until after the takeover and killing of it, and never listed as much on xstreet (in fact, until a month ago, I had very little on xstreet, and only just started listing more with the spotlights).
It strips out HTML (oh, you wanted to link to something there? Too damn bad, you get the links that we tack on to the end of everything, and you'll like it), and ignores BB code, so looks like just text is what you get. This also...does not thrill me. The links there at the bottom of each entry auto generated? That's awesome. But, I want the ability to offer other links, for various reasons. What if this has something to do with a location that only this item has to deal with? And I obsessively link pages to the blog entry for that item- this links to the blog...but not the right page. Now- some people DO have lists. So, there may be a way around some, if not all, of this. But the obvious ways to me are not it.
Collections appear to only apply to in world vendors? Which makes them useless to me.
Good Things:
It's not xstreet? Honestly, it's about on par for clunkiness with xstreet (though it's prettier), unless there is a way I'm not seeing here. You can upload images, unlike meta-life, which continues to make me curse the world for not allowing that. In other words: not a fan, don't know why people are raving so much.
And the searching system doesn't suck- but so far all of them do it way better than xstreet, so that doesn't give it a leg up in this race.
I listed....2 shirts. And gave up. Barring not seeing a LOT of useful features, slapt is not for me.
Now, people have been raving about this one, so I figured I would go with it next. But I started off less into it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Was it the initial screen before you can go into the site proper? Was it the "look" of it generally? The sign up process continued this slightly...off feeling. Put in a valid email...not your av name. We won't do anything for signing up with that email, go here, say this in local chat out loud on channel 0 (not that it's something that matters really...) and we'll sign you up. The whole thing is just...not the way I want it done, and makes me slightly uncomfortable for reasons I can't put my finger on.
But, then we've got nice shop profiles, yay! Mind you, it's one per avatar, the multi shop thing on meta-life spoiled me, I like that feature. There are split profits- I'm not doing that right now, so I don't know if it applies to all across the board or what (nor will I be looking into that now, as it doesn't apply to me- if it applies to you, check it out!)
Door to door box service, which is "how it should be." Something good about all of them so far- they wait to update so you aren't constantly cycling when adding a group, or changing or whatnot (I've had to change in box perms on a bunch of things before, my xstreet box went postal).
Bad Things:
The category listing box...is too narrow...and I can't SEE the categories to figure out where to list something. /facepalm Now, this is because my browser window isn't maximized, but, even with it, I can't see it all and it will cause more trouble with listings. Generally, the interface is too size dependent and has the sidebars that block it in, and this causes a lot of "wait, what's that supposed to be? Ok, first two letters...what might that spell?"- some even with my browser maximized. My screen may be a laptop screen, but it's large for one of those, so I can see this causing trouble. I could lower my font size to squinty...maybe.
The image file cutoff is _way_ lower, and my first try told me "no sir, this is too big!" Now, this _is_ a fairly large image, but is effectively 1024x1024, not above SL sizes.
I'm not seeing any way to make "bulk" listings easier. I put up with that from xstreet because it was "the" thing, there are alternatives that have it, and that means thumbs down from me. I only listed on onrez until after the takeover and killing of it, and never listed as much on xstreet (in fact, until a month ago, I had very little on xstreet, and only just started listing more with the spotlights).
It strips out HTML (oh, you wanted to link to something there? Too damn bad, you get the links that we tack on to the end of everything, and you'll like it), and ignores BB code, so looks like just text is what you get. This also...does not thrill me. The links there at the bottom of each entry auto generated? That's awesome. But, I want the ability to offer other links, for various reasons. What if this has something to do with a location that only this item has to deal with? And I obsessively link pages to the blog entry for that item- this links to the blog...but not the right page. Now- some people DO have lists. So, there may be a way around some, if not all, of this. But the obvious ways to me are not it.
Collections appear to only apply to in world vendors? Which makes them useless to me.
Good Things:
It's not xstreet? Honestly, it's about on par for clunkiness with xstreet (though it's prettier), unless there is a way I'm not seeing here. You can upload images, unlike meta-life, which continues to make me curse the world for not allowing that. In other words: not a fan, don't know why people are raving so much.
And the searching system doesn't suck- but so far all of them do it way better than xstreet, so that doesn't give it a leg up in this race.
I listed....2 shirts. And gave up. Barring not seeing a LOT of useful features, slapt is not for me.
xstreet alternatives- meta-LIFE
Test drive 2: meta-life. I'm...less of a fan.
Step 1: sign up and get a box! In fact, I ported into the one and only place listed to get started 3 times- first time, getting password; second time- got the wrong box full of stuff because I found the popup menu confusing. That was my own fault though! I also changed out of the lingerie during this as I kept porting over to random stranger being there. So, following the doorstep service of apez, minus .001, meta-life (because really, this is not something you'll do often, so it doesn't really matter! Just teeny tiny annoyance).
Rezzed the box in my corner, dumped shirts in. Headed off to the site. The site...confused the crap out of me. In fact, I still don't know if I'm listing properly.
Now, as an aside here- I am NOT interested in using the in world vending solutions provided by these services. I don't like scripted vendors generally. Scripts = lag, even low lag vendors add up if you've got a lot, and I use scrolling vendors somewhat sparingly because seeing everything is better. I think, if I liked in world vendors, I would like meta-life more.
Content management tab takes you to options for setting up stuff. First, set up the brand(s) you want to sell things under- this is great. I then made a group for the Oxfords with My items groups. Then went over to my items to start editing.
Bad Things:
Images. Gah. I HATE the way they do images. They just want you to dump UUIDs for the textures uploaded, not upload your own images. They still need to upload these to their servers...the quality is shitty. The aspect ratio...is shitty. I am not interested in making these things available in world through an affiliate or my own vendors, so this gets _me_ no advantage. Mostly I cry because the quality is shitty and I have to dig through inventory, copy the UUID, paste it in, and can't update my listings when I'm logged off SL. Images are basically my only real hate, but oh, how I hate. Also, I put in a secondary image. It has the UUID there. It ignores it everywhere on the site other than sitting in blah blah numbers in that text box.
Item groups don't appear to have searching goodness- it's great for listing, put all the things to mass edit in one place so it's easy. But, I don't see any way to _see_ everything that's in there as a consumer, which is not as useful.
Good Things:
MASS EDITS! HUZZAH! Tick your checkboxes for items, edit the slew of them at once, and boom, there you go! You'll still need to edit individual bits, but that gets you way way way ahead started on listings- PLUS you can go back and change your mind and edit them all easily. I wish Apez had mass edits _this_ way too. Annoyingthing: perms are NOT one of the things that are in the mass list...THERE. Images are...but perms aren't. Which is less cool. You CAN mass set perms, BUT it has to be a different step, which is clunky. Not seriously clunky, just teeny tiny bits of clunky, but still, offputting and seems left out in the other thing, and easy to miss. Category listings...is also weird and easy to miss, in a similar fashion.
Tags! That I can see! And use! And click on to see all the other things with the same tags!
I listed all the Oxfords, every single one, in less than 5 minutes. BUT, that's because I didn't slot out the images for each individual one. Because I hate hate HATE getting all the damn UUIDs. The image thing is quite obviously a deal breaker for me, for a LOT of reasons (hell, the image for the oxfords is fucked up because of the way I had to cheat to get it to work in SL and fix on prims). I have zero interest in also having in world vendors linked to the website presence, and always have, and have always avoided tying SL textures into vendors, even when it was _easier_ to do than this. If meta-life changed the image thing to allow uploading off my harddrive, I would probably be saying, right now, "let's all switch to meta-life". It's not as slick looking as apez (but black text on white, so better for readability), but it's got solid functionality aside from the image thing.
Step 1: sign up and get a box! In fact, I ported into the one and only place listed to get started 3 times- first time, getting password; second time- got the wrong box full of stuff because I found the popup menu confusing. That was my own fault though! I also changed out of the lingerie during this as I kept porting over to random stranger being there. So, following the doorstep service of apez, minus .001, meta-life (because really, this is not something you'll do often, so it doesn't really matter! Just teeny tiny annoyance).
Rezzed the box in my corner, dumped shirts in. Headed off to the site. The site...confused the crap out of me. In fact, I still don't know if I'm listing properly.
Now, as an aside here- I am NOT interested in using the in world vending solutions provided by these services. I don't like scripted vendors generally. Scripts = lag, even low lag vendors add up if you've got a lot, and I use scrolling vendors somewhat sparingly because seeing everything is better. I think, if I liked in world vendors, I would like meta-life more.
Content management tab takes you to options for setting up stuff. First, set up the brand(s) you want to sell things under- this is great. I then made a group for the Oxfords with My items groups. Then went over to my items to start editing.
Bad Things:
Images. Gah. I HATE the way they do images. They just want you to dump UUIDs for the textures uploaded, not upload your own images. They still need to upload these to their servers...the quality is shitty. The aspect ratio...is shitty. I am not interested in making these things available in world through an affiliate or my own vendors, so this gets _me_ no advantage. Mostly I cry because the quality is shitty and I have to dig through inventory, copy the UUID, paste it in, and can't update my listings when I'm logged off SL. Images are basically my only real hate, but oh, how I hate. Also, I put in a secondary image. It has the UUID there. It ignores it everywhere on the site other than sitting in blah blah numbers in that text box.
Item groups don't appear to have searching goodness- it's great for listing, put all the things to mass edit in one place so it's easy. But, I don't see any way to _see_ everything that's in there as a consumer, which is not as useful.
Good Things:
MASS EDITS! HUZZAH! Tick your checkboxes for items, edit the slew of them at once, and boom, there you go! You'll still need to edit individual bits, but that gets you way way way ahead started on listings- PLUS you can go back and change your mind and edit them all easily. I wish Apez had mass edits _this_ way too. Annoyingthing: perms are NOT one of the things that are in the mass list...THERE. Images are...but perms aren't. Which is less cool. You CAN mass set perms, BUT it has to be a different step, which is clunky. Not seriously clunky, just teeny tiny bits of clunky, but still, offputting and seems left out in the other thing, and easy to miss. Category listings...is also weird and easy to miss, in a similar fashion.
Tags! That I can see! And use! And click on to see all the other things with the same tags!
I listed all the Oxfords, every single one, in less than 5 minutes. BUT, that's because I didn't slot out the images for each individual one. Because I hate hate HATE getting all the damn UUIDs. The image thing is quite obviously a deal breaker for me, for a LOT of reasons (hell, the image for the oxfords is fucked up because of the way I had to cheat to get it to work in SL and fix on prims). I have zero interest in also having in world vendors linked to the website presence, and always have, and have always avoided tying SL textures into vendors, even when it was _easier_ to do than this. If meta-life changed the image thing to allow uploading off my harddrive, I would probably be saying, right now, "let's all switch to meta-life". It's not as slick looking as apez (but black text on white, so better for readability), but it's got solid functionality aside from the image thing.
xstreet alternatives- Apez
I'm starting to test drive alternatives to xstreet, following today's awesome announcement. So far I've started with two, apez.biz and meta-LIFE:
Apez.biz is my frontrunner. It threw errors every so often, possibly entirely due to being overburdened with people flocking to it, and it caught up and fixed itself pretty well.
It uses a bit different listing system than xstreet, thank god. This does mean, woo hoo, learning curve. Step 1, obviously, sign up and snag a box through their procedure (it was painless, I 'ported over to set up my password while wearing lingerie to one of the list of places, it was deserted and no one saw my rumpled sexiness. p.s. Apatia Hammerer is to blame for the state of undress. And then I had the box sent to me while standing in my messy skybox server box corner).
Dumped the oxfords in the box. They sell pretty well, and they are _very_ multi listing dependent. They could be listed super easy (onrez was pretty easy!)...or eye stabbingly hard (xstreet). Then went to the website to try to figure out...what to do. The what to do was helped out by the aforementioned errors, which popped up as I tried to muddle through setting up the system and helped confuse things.
"vend" tab, then "inventory" shows your list. I got a bit lost in there, and went to "products" first (note: "catalogs", the next option, is currently not implemented). I created a new collection- with that option being at the right hand side it was less intuitive (eyes go left first. It's a super minor thing, and later it works), to put all the oxfords in to set them up together. I'm guessing this is how it's done, but it's just a guess. Back to "inventory" and clicked on the icon with the fairy wand, which now let me create a new thingie since I have a collection to put it in.
Bad things about listings:
There doesn't appear to be anywhere to fix the perms. So, it shows perms of box, which are probably none, not perms of contents, which usually are not.
The text interface for the description threw in lots of messed up characters when I was editing it, and it took a bit to find a way around the excess bullshit and crappy formatting. This may be due to copy/paste from xstreet listing. I went into the html view, because a) I know it and have more control, which continued to fuck me up with the special characters on saving, and b) I could play around with accepted tags. One really awesome useful tag that's not allowed? img. So....no images in your listings, oh people with logos and such at the bottom making things prettiful. Because yes, I was going to try that, but massively failed. Which is sadface.
No shopfronts, dammit. I liked that about onrez. Also, joint listings, branding, etc. would be nice, for side projects, partnerships, things like that. Maybe you'll get some of that ability with catalogs, who knows.
You can't select a bunch, and edit them all at once. This makes listing, even with the duplicating listings thing, take a hell of a lot longer, because I have to constantly click through and create new and wait for loading blah blah.
Good things about listings:
You can "duplicate" an existing listing and just change the bits you need to. It doesn't update the listing name when you update the object...which is not so good.
It _does_ carry images over so you can have the same extra alt views, plus you can pull down a drop down to access the other images you've uploaded on other items! Which is super duper awesome. I have only made one collection- if it doesn't limit by collection, that list will get unusably long, so we'll see if it retains usefulness at all.
It looks like you can view just the items in the currently selected box. THANK GOD. I can never find a damn thing in my xstreet list because there's too damn much of it.
Tags! Yay! And mini descriptions are neat. Ok, the downside to tags is I don't see a way to USE them other than just invisible search terms, but at least they're there, and will be useful for search terms.
Collections! YOU CAN SEE ALL THE ITEMS IN A COLLECTION AT A CLICK! For items that go together, colour alts et c. this. is. awesome.
Listing multiples of the same colour is still a little clunky as you have to click through to each item to change most of the stuff (onrez had that pop out thing that was REALLY useful, but the carrying info across thing is not bad), but still, head and shoulders above xstreet.
The look is slick- BUT it's white text on dark background. This looks cool...and is harder to read. I would strongly recommend the ability to choose stylesheets and have a nice crisp black text on white for people who aren't so wild about that. Me, I like the dark, but it's a well known _bad_ thing for usability.
p.s. I listed about half of them before I said "fuck this noise, I'll play more later." Still, even with going back and constantly editing all of them (because I was still fighting with formatting), it went way faster than xstreet. BUT nowhere near as fast as meta-LIFE.
Apez.biz is my frontrunner. It threw errors every so often, possibly entirely due to being overburdened with people flocking to it, and it caught up and fixed itself pretty well.
It uses a bit different listing system than xstreet, thank god. This does mean, woo hoo, learning curve. Step 1, obviously, sign up and snag a box through their procedure (it was painless, I 'ported over to set up my password while wearing lingerie to one of the list of places, it was deserted and no one saw my rumpled sexiness. p.s. Apatia Hammerer is to blame for the state of undress. And then I had the box sent to me while standing in my messy skybox server box corner).
Dumped the oxfords in the box. They sell pretty well, and they are _very_ multi listing dependent. They could be listed super easy (onrez was pretty easy!)...or eye stabbingly hard (xstreet). Then went to the website to try to figure out...what to do. The what to do was helped out by the aforementioned errors, which popped up as I tried to muddle through setting up the system and helped confuse things.
"vend" tab, then "inventory" shows your list. I got a bit lost in there, and went to "products" first (note: "catalogs", the next option, is currently not implemented). I created a new collection- with that option being at the right hand side it was less intuitive (eyes go left first. It's a super minor thing, and later it works), to put all the oxfords in to set them up together. I'm guessing this is how it's done, but it's just a guess. Back to "inventory" and clicked on the icon with the fairy wand, which now let me create a new thingie since I have a collection to put it in.
Bad things about listings:
There doesn't appear to be anywhere to fix the perms. So, it shows perms of box, which are probably none, not perms of contents, which usually are not.
The text interface for the description threw in lots of messed up characters when I was editing it, and it took a bit to find a way around the excess bullshit and crappy formatting. This may be due to copy/paste from xstreet listing. I went into the html view, because a) I know it and have more control, which continued to fuck me up with the special characters on saving, and b) I could play around with accepted tags. One really awesome useful tag that's not allowed? img. So....no images in your listings, oh people with logos and such at the bottom making things prettiful. Because yes, I was going to try that, but massively failed. Which is sadface.
No shopfronts, dammit. I liked that about onrez. Also, joint listings, branding, etc. would be nice, for side projects, partnerships, things like that. Maybe you'll get some of that ability with catalogs, who knows.
You can't select a bunch, and edit them all at once. This makes listing, even with the duplicating listings thing, take a hell of a lot longer, because I have to constantly click through and create new and wait for loading blah blah.
Good things about listings:
You can "duplicate" an existing listing and just change the bits you need to. It doesn't update the listing name when you update the object...which is not so good.
It _does_ carry images over so you can have the same extra alt views, plus you can pull down a drop down to access the other images you've uploaded on other items! Which is super duper awesome. I have only made one collection- if it doesn't limit by collection, that list will get unusably long, so we'll see if it retains usefulness at all.
It looks like you can view just the items in the currently selected box. THANK GOD. I can never find a damn thing in my xstreet list because there's too damn much of it.
Tags! Yay! And mini descriptions are neat. Ok, the downside to tags is I don't see a way to USE them other than just invisible search terms, but at least they're there, and will be useful for search terms.
Collections! YOU CAN SEE ALL THE ITEMS IN A COLLECTION AT A CLICK! For items that go together, colour alts et c. this. is. awesome.
Listing multiples of the same colour is still a little clunky as you have to click through to each item to change most of the stuff (onrez had that pop out thing that was REALLY useful, but the carrying info across thing is not bad), but still, head and shoulders above xstreet.
The look is slick- BUT it's white text on dark background. This looks cool...and is harder to read. I would strongly recommend the ability to choose stylesheets and have a nice crisp black text on white for people who aren't so wild about that. Me, I like the dark, but it's a well known _bad_ thing for usability.
p.s. I listed about half of them before I said "fuck this noise, I'll play more later." Still, even with going back and constantly editing all of them (because I was still fighting with formatting), it went way faster than xstreet. BUT nowhere near as fast as meta-LIFE.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Decripple your build tools
I recommend skimming through Tentacolor if you're a huge geek, there are some amazingly awesome things in there.
One of which is how to decripple your build tools.
Disclaimer: the TOS is sort of murky on the legality of this maybe? I don't think that's what they intended with that clause and it's more towards don't copybot shit, but yeah, I feel I need to give the disclaimer. But hey, it's all in xml files, so it's EASY to edit, if they didn't want us doing it, there are other ways they could have approached that instead. Basically, read Jacek's disclaimer, because I can't be arsed to write a decent one.
Go to skins\default\xui\en-us and open up floater_tools.xml with a regular vanilla text editor (unless you like Dazzle Jazz Hands, in which case you want skins\silver\xui\en-us. I avoid it like the plague, so if things are done differently, you'll have to figure that out yourself). Head down to Position (meters), and in the next 3 declarations of code, change decimal_digits="3" to decimal_digits="5" (in my testing, 5 is the max amount SL keeps track of, you just get wiggly numbers you can't do anything with if you go higher). label="X" is doing it for the x, "Y" for y, "Z" for z, of course. Things are in the same order as the actual Build menu in here.
Do the same for Size (meters)! You can up Rotation as well, but 5's probably excessive for use there. You can also play around with the decimals in the rest of the declarations, as sometimes you can get more out of it (sometimes you can't).
The other SUPER DUPER AWESOME thing to do is fix your texture tab (which is talked about in this entry, this is all Jacek's smarts here). Transparency is capped in the editor...because the Lindens think we're idiots? I don't know. There's no reason not to make that puppy 100, so you can do full transparency in one click WITHOUT resorting to another texture.
Go to Transparency %, and bump max_val="90" to max_val="100"
I also up both the Repeats Per Face, max_val="100" to more than 100 too, because it's useful for Planar mapping (normal people have no need of this, but I've passed 100 repeats more than once. I haven't had to bump past 500...yet).
Unfortunately EVERY SINGLE TIME you have to update a viewer you have to go through this process again, which generally leads to me swearing, making due for a brief period, and then telling people I'm logging off to make my tools not awful (because you get used to them being awesome, and going back....sucks).
One of which is how to decripple your build tools.
Disclaimer: the TOS is sort of murky on the legality of this maybe? I don't think that's what they intended with that clause and it's more towards don't copybot shit, but yeah, I feel I need to give the disclaimer. But hey, it's all in xml files, so it's EASY to edit, if they didn't want us doing it, there are other ways they could have approached that instead. Basically, read Jacek's disclaimer, because I can't be arsed to write a decent one.
Go to skins\default\xui\en-us and open up floater_tools.xml with a regular vanilla text editor (unless you like Dazzle Jazz Hands, in which case you want skins\silver\xui\en-us. I avoid it like the plague, so if things are done differently, you'll have to figure that out yourself). Head down to Position (meters), and in the next 3 declarations of code, change decimal_digits="3" to decimal_digits="5" (in my testing, 5 is the max amount SL keeps track of, you just get wiggly numbers you can't do anything with if you go higher). label="X" is doing it for the x, "Y" for y, "Z" for z, of course. Things are in the same order as the actual Build menu in here.
Do the same for Size (meters)! You can up Rotation as well, but 5's probably excessive for use there. You can also play around with the decimals in the rest of the declarations, as sometimes you can get more out of it (sometimes you can't).
The other SUPER DUPER AWESOME thing to do is fix your texture tab (which is talked about in this entry, this is all Jacek's smarts here). Transparency is capped in the editor...because the Lindens think we're idiots? I don't know. There's no reason not to make that puppy 100, so you can do full transparency in one click WITHOUT resorting to another texture.
Go to Transparency %, and bump max_val="90" to max_val="100"
I also up both the Repeats Per Face, max_val="100" to more than 100 too, because it's useful for Planar mapping (normal people have no need of this, but I've passed 100 repeats more than once. I haven't had to bump past 500...yet).
Unfortunately EVERY SINGLE TIME you have to update a viewer you have to go through this process again, which generally leads to me swearing, making due for a brief period, and then telling people I'm logging off to make my tools not awful (because you get used to them being awesome, and going back....sucks).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
