Linden Lab has released a new Second Life viewer release candidate, specifically, 1.18.4(RC2). This fixes a number of issues with since the last release. There's a list of those changes below the fold.

The viewer is available from the optional downloads page as usual, and we suspect that this one might just be a little more plausible as a release candidate than the last one.

There's a new release candidate available on the optional downloads page. It's one with known problems and it isn't actually a candidate for release. The previous release candidate turned out to have some pretty severe problems, and it seems some people just won't quit using it anyway. So this release is a roundup of fixes for the folks out there who are eating bees.

So, we get the impression that, esssentially, bee-eaters this release is for you. Not eating bees? Give it a miss, and wait for the next release candidate, which might actually be a release candidate.

For my sins I read an RSS of the JIRA. Often this is dull, sometimes fascinating, frequently tends to flame wars, but...

Every now and again you get pure gold. Ever wondered how long it takes a bug fix to propagate? Well, we have a putative number now:

In response to a bug about sculpties, Qarl Linden says: "i'll fix it asap - but it'll be about a month or so before it appears in an RC client..." Of course it will take a bit longer than that to reach the main client, but a month from a fix to an RC release.

Many of you who have used the latest release candidate, 1.18.4(0) have probably noticed that the tooltip popup on the map that shows you the number of people in a sim/region.. well, doesn't actually show you the number. Instead it relentlessly reports zero for every sim except the one you are in, where it reports one (that's you).

How did this happen? Well, when you modify or refactor code, there's two important requirements. First, you have to know how to code. Second, you have to understand what is going on. Lacking the first is less dangerous. You can go safely stick pencils up your nose. Lacking the second, however, means you risk sticking pencils up everyone else's nose. This bug was relatively harmless, if irritating.

Today's release candidate doesn't seem to be winning a lot of hearts and minds out there today. The public JIRA issue tracker is accumulating problem reports, many of which seem - just darn peculiar.

Aside from crashes, virtually all of them seem to be related to the user-interface, and new ways in which it behaves (or misbehaves). On the Second Life development mailing list of late, there has increasing discussion of scrapping the existing user-interface code (which is tangled up in, well, everything) and changing to something more modular and discrete.

At present, as the complaints go, the user-interface code and some of the back-end code have become such an organic tangle that it is difficult to change one without affecting the other, and that some theoretically simple user-facing changes have become monstrously involved.

That appears to be the sort of thing we are seeing here. Changes that should be quite straightforward causing an extensive tangle of dependencies and concomitant unexpected issues.

Over on the official blog is a long, and rather confusing, post about the new release candidate and the new search it is starting to build up.

Search is well and truly borked of course, and this new system should give a better set of search results.

However, when it talks about new checkboxes it doesn't mean in preferences or in search - they're scattered around - there's one in the Edit>General tab, there's one in your profile, one in groups, and probably more. These will lead to things being included in the search tool, and, according to the pictures on the blog a much nicer set of search results to come (once it's all been ironed out and implemented).

There is also a new lag-meter. It flicks rather randomly - my client seems to drop into the amber when I'm sitting still in a skybox with nothing else running - ping times across the Atlantic to the West Coast obviously flick into danger warning territory, but it's a nice touch if in need of some fine tuning.

Builders will also note the new layout of both the general tab and the top part of the edit window... bit sure why it's been looked at, but I think this bit will grow on me.

A new release candidate viewer is available for download now. Similar to the First Look viewers of yore, the release candidates are versions that are being made ready for release. They contain numerous bug-fixes (and sometimes a few entirely new bugs). They operate on your main account, so be cautious.

Feedback provided on release candidates goes towards making for more stable viewers.

Source code for this release is available now.

If you're following release candidates (I've got to say, a lot of it goes under the radar for me, but the edit pane staying on "More > >" saves me SO much time), the newest version is available here.

Not so many fixes, and I've got to say it's been pretty stable for me, but it's another step forward.