2D WEB IN A 3D WORLD

Props to Mark Wallace for beating me to the punch as the first blogger to blog about Second Life from within Second Life itself.  Shortly after Linden Lab announced that the client's Help window had become a Mozilla web page, a couple weeks ago, scripter extraordinaire Falk Bergman quickly figured out how to point the URL to pretty much any other URL, an announcement that's since led to an explosion of web hacks in the SL client.  The process of changing the Help page to your website of choice is even simple enough for a code-illiterate user like me to do-- for Windows users, at least, you go into your "C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings", open your "settings.ini" file, change the URL listed after "HtmlHelpLastPage", save, and launch.  I tried to post a NWN blog entry a couple days ago, but my Typepad account was being uniquely cantankerous about displaying properly in the metaverse.  New World Notes itself comes up pretty well, as above, even displaying the .gif animation in the Dice banner ad-- and I did manage to post a Comment in a random entry.

Where this goes from here is still anyone's guess, but personally speaking, I'd prefer we keep the Web and the world as separate as possible.  It's great to bring up the Web in your client, and perhaps on display screens in restricted areas-- but do we really want the consensual illusion shattered by ubiquitous web pages being streamed on walls, billboards, and so on?

Update, 3:51Pm:  In Comments, Chandra Page points to her blog, where she's written an even better means for streaming your favorite page in the SL client.

Comments

[rikomatic]

I think you are probably right that lots of residents come to SL to escape the world "out there" and live in this shared fantasy-space. On the other hand, if SL wants to grow and become the metaverse, it will have to build stronger links to the larger internet. In essense, we are now one step closer to people living, playing and working in the SL paradigm if they can call up the web from in-world rather than switching back to another program.

And now another blatant plug for my own blog....

[epredator potato]

From a technical point of view the llhttprequest in script lets us get to the outside wwworld and move data around.
However I would really like to be able to get the gecko engine working. So that we can have web browsers as textures on objects.
There is a lot of busines, and a lot of content that could benefit from this.
People would be able to use the Sl client and still get to web pages in context. Shop on Amazon etc before the big companies go to the expense of 'metaverse conversion'. Its a good middle step, that helps SL get accepted in a wider context.

[runelogix Au]

This is one of those great simple hacks one finds in SL :) BTW, This works for OS X users to but I havent gotten keyboard input to work properly.

[Chandra Page]

There's one problem with changing the HtmlHelpLastPage value: the next time you log in to SL, the client will have replaced your custom link with the last page you visited in the browser.

Instead of changing the HtmlHelpLastPage value, you can instead add a new line to the settings.ini file:

HtmlHelpHomePage http://your.url.here

This will always open the help browser to the URL you choose. Full instructions are available on my blog at: http://chandrapage.org/articles/2006/05/31/web-browsing-inside-sl

[Hamlet Au]

Thanks, Chandra! Will make a note of that.

[qarl]

the benefits of htmlonaprim are too many to enumerate.

my personal favorite is this:

VNC has a java client - which can go on a prim - which blows my mind.

http://www.realvnc.com/

[Pete Cashmore]

"Where this goes from here is still anyone's guess, but personally speaking, I'd prefer we keep the Web and the world as separate as possible. "

I'd prefer the complete opposite - lots of integration, so that SL and the Web are no longer separate entities.

[Osprey Therian]

heh

I Blogged on May 31st from inside Second Life - you guys are SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!