Web Browsing - 12 Minutes in Heaven

I took 12 minutes away from Hulu this eve to explore the brand new web interface experience as a guest avatar. Aside from a few beta-esque issues, I think it worked quite well. These are all screenshots of my adventure. I will keep the photos small as there are many. NO FASHION in this post -- unless you count finding out how the default avatars look. And they look preeeeety fancy compared to my memories of birth. This is my last shot. My journey started here  -----

This is the screen that shows up as your experience is loading. Before this there is a very slick and fancy movie and a pane that asks for an email address. There was no verification on the email; it appears you could get in with most anything although I did use a valid one.


SEE BIG PHOTOS!

Click on any photo for a high rez version. You may need to enlarge further with the zoom tool.

My first try I ended up with a lot of other fuzzy folks, I know not where. I actually was logged into SL at the time and apparently my computer was not happy with that fact. I also had my graphics program open to save these screenshots.

OK. If you don't succeed ---

Fellows will be very happy to note that the default avatar is --yep, A GUY! Woot!

He isn't a very hunky guy, although perhaps all his parts hadn't loaded when I took this shot.

My second spot was a very busy club with friendly folks saying hi to "guest number whatever" and such.  I played with the controls a bit and found that I could -- change my avatar.

 It is important to note that you are interacting with the regular grid here. I only saw a few guests, except on that first try. The other spots were regular SL destinations, with avatars using various viewers.

There was a one hour time limit, but it appeared that you could log in again with the same email address and continue your exploring with some information saved (thank you cookies).

By clicking on one of the bottom tabs, you bring up a window with various (and numerous) avatars.

I chose the city gal as she looked pretty savvy.

She took awhile to load but eventually she did. By then I had found the destination guide and scrolled through some of the options. I picked Winterfell as I lived there last winter and do love the place.

Getting there was easy. Since I never use the arrow keys to move around, that was a bit challenging, but I managed. The only other issue I had was my java console coming up repeatedly, but I suspect that is "me" as I know I need to update my java.

All in all, I am very impressed. This really does work well. I am on a 13,000 ish connection and have a fairly decent but old desktop. Experiences of course will vary.

And as you can see, you are able to run the web interface full screen. That is just not my typical mode. It is more impressive without my background graphic *wink*. 

As a test -- as I was working on this post -- I logged back in. The website did recognize me and understood I wanted to be a gal. It did not remember WHICH gal, but hey, she is a pretty good looking lady, so I have no complaints. As I appeared in what seemed to be a "dump the newbies on the grid" spot, I got an IM from a fellow beta tester (we are like SO not official) who was amazed we were on the live grid. Fun!




Try it yourself HERE.

Note: At 8:30 this eve a RL friend of mine tried to beta test and could not,  You are looking for a box that takes your email address (see below), I could still get in through Firefox, but trying in IE, I only saw the "join in" button, like my friend, So I am guessing there is a limit to the number of beta testers :D.