It’s the first week of the year and the Lab is already busy on the viewer front.

New Release Candidate: PackageFix Viewer

Thursday January 2nd saw a new release candidate viewer enter the release channel. Version 3.6.13.284995 is described as Second Life PackageFix Viewer. This update fixes an issue introduced with the 3.6.12 code base whereby the Windows executable name was changed from “SecondLife” to “SecondLifeViewer”.

As any executable using the old name (“SecondLife”) was not removed as part of the 3.6.12 installation process, problems could result when using old shortcuts pointing to the old executable, rather that the new version, which would then run and could then trigger a further auto-update, again without removing older executables or shortcuts.

With this fix, any executables using the old name (“SecondLife”) will be removed from the installation folder, so any shortcuts created to it will cause Windows to display an error message, and the user can then remove them or modify them to point to the correct executable.

HTTP Project Viewer

Monty Linden’s long-awaited HTTP project viewer surfaced from QA on Friday January 3rd. Part of the ongoing HTTP project work, version 3.6.13.284698 contains three headline updates:

Experimental Fix for Long-Standing DNS Problems : the mechanism used to perform DNS look ups has been changed from an application-hosted DNS resolver to a combination of threads and the host operating system’s resolver.

: the mechanism used to perform DNS look ups has been changed from an application-hosted DNS resolver to a combination of threads and the host operating system’s resolver. Mesh Download with Better TCP Connection Behaviour : this release of the viewer reduces by 75% the number of connections used for downloading meshes. It also reuses these connections more effectively further reducing network demands. Those who have experienced connectivity problems from router instability or other networking problems may see a significant improvement.

: this release of the viewer reduces by 75% the number of connections used for downloading meshes. It also reuses these connections more effectively further reducing network demands. Those who have experienced connectivity problems from router instability or other networking problems may see a significant improvement. General Reliability Improvements in Mesh Upload and Download: a great deal of work has been put into the mesh upload and download code. Better error handling, less frequent request retries, removal of many thread issues and fixes for numerous smaller bugs are a part of this release.

Among the changes, this viewer sees the introduction of the new GetMesh2 capability, together with its associated debug, mesh2MaxConcurrentRequests, which are designed to reduce the number of concurrent number of mesh connections from 32 to 8, but which adds keepalive functionality and improved retry logic, and which see the number of viewer / server connections which can be requested by the viewer clamped to prevent individual users overloading the server-side capabilities, as explained back in my 2013 week 36 and week 34 reports.The new capability will run alongside the existing capability as things are transitioned-in to SL.

More news on this project viewer to follow.

New Merchant Outbox Project Viewer

Arriving on Thursday, January 2nd, the Merchant Outbox project viewer, version 3.6.13.284731, is described as including fixes for accurately detecting Merchant status and improves recovery for Merchant Outbox errors. As such, it addresses the following problems:

Merchant Outbox viewer crashes on Exit on Windows 7 (ACME-1219)

User needs to click OK twice to dismiss Merchant Outbox notification (ACME-1220)

Merchant Outbox Initialization fails with 404 error with new account in Merchant Outbox viewer (ACME-1221)

Merchant Outbox panel unusable and unrecoverable if outbox folder disappears (MAINT-2287)

Send to Marketplace from Merchant Outbox says it fails when it doesn’t (MAINT-2301)

Merchant outbox with genuine failure “409 conflict” causes all further imports to fail (MAINT-2452)

Merchant outbox: Second Life 3.6.8 (282375) build – results when user has a merchant outbox misplaced in inventory (MAINT-3319)

Viewer crash when deleting trash which contains Merchant Outbox (MAINT-3320).

Those who have experienced any of the above issues when using the Merchant Outbox might want to try-out this project viewer – but do keep in mind it is a project viewer.

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