On Browsers
Recently, there's been an "Cambrian Explosion" of various takes on 3D social world user interfaces.
UgoTrade posted an excellent interview with Avi Bar-Zeev of Microsoft, and the post touches on a number of outstanding issues with regards to the metaverse.
When Darren and I started working on OpenSim, we quickly found out that we had a shared vision of where we wanted the 'metaverse' to go;
- It should be about applications, where social networking would be one. The metaverse will never bloom if it never offers any value beyond 'hanging out'.
- There will be a period of experimentation. For this there will be a need for an open, modularized and available codebase for creative people to use in their prototyping.
- This platform should be as mainstream as currently possible, even over technical finesse. Darren chose .NET and the SL protocol, as these are available technologies with large user bases.
- People will go thru with an installation if the percieved value outweighs the install. So, if you do lightweight value, you need lightweight install.
All this has to do with adoption; you want to make the server side as simple to set up as possible, the client side so easy to deploy and install as possible; the content production tools as available and simple as possible - but still retain enough flexibility so that people can tailor it to create services with percieved value.
We did a concept on this a year ago, called "Tribal One" - but we never published it, as the technology simply wasn't mature enough. Now, a year later, OpenSim is much stabler, and stuff like Adams Xenki looks promising.
I would suppose that we will continue to see hybrids and tests, tailored for specific usage cases, until the 'rock solid' cases fall into place - the ones people find actually useful - then we can start merging those solutions.
I have no problems seeing a world where you have a plugin-based app for viewing scenes anonymously, then switch to a full-featured client for collaborative content authoring, then switch to something a little lighter for swift shopping or a quick virtual conference call - and in between, touching on a couple of scenes embedded in applications.
In the UgoTrade blog, I was quoted asking
"what about the user experience in a new browser hosted viewer? How should the user ‘be’ in several places at the same time, the way he is on a web site? How would you have a shared-space continuum like SL operate over several ‘pages’?"
This question shows how I think we all need to think: the percieved application value first, the user experience second, the technical solution last.
Thus, one answer to my question is "Sometimes, you don't".