ajaxlife

AjaxLife (by Katharine Berry), the browser-based client for the virtual world of Second Life, has been experiencing a rush of new development of late. There have been many bug fixes to make it more reliable, and just recently it moved to a new server to handle more load (find it now at http://ajaxlife.net/). Not only that but it can log into alternate grids: you now get the option to log into the main grid and the Beta grid as well as the experimental grids DeepGrid and OSGrid.

Unfortunately, Linden Lab isn't making things easy for this little independent project. First they closed the MapAPI, the system by which the Second Life grid's map is found, without notice or any kind of mention on the official blog. On top of that, a new login scheme is being proposed to force users to log into a website which would then launch people's clients for "security reasons". This would mean that, effectively, your client would be launched from the website directly - you wouldn't be able to just double-click on the program and run it anymore.

If they accommodate AjaxLife and the other alternative clients like they did (or, rather, didn't) in the MapAPI situation, we can expect several of these clients to be completely impossible to use until Linden Lab works in some kind of command-line function into the web launcher. Who knows how long that might take. At that point many client developers will have moved on to other projects, and we might have to say goodbye to existing innovations like AjaxLife in the short term.

Metaversed readers may remember our earlier article about AjaxLife, a chat program that interfaces with the virtual world of Second Life through your web browser. Created by UK teen Katharine Berry, it has been universally heralded as a truly brilliant third party tool. Not bad for something you just "throw together over the weekend in a language you don’t know". Now, it's about to get even better. AjaxLife has gone open-source.

What this means is that independent programmers and developers can look at the code itself and contribute bug fixes, updates, and added features. This puts a powerful tool in the hands of the community, and will certainly spawn dozens of spin-offs. As always, we'll keep you up to date on the more interesting developments.

Links
Try out AjaxLife
The Google Code site

Katharine Berry, a student in the UK, has created an in-browser AJAX application that allows you to log into the virtual world of Second Life, but without all of the laggy graphics. This is a great way to pop in-world for a moment if you just want to chat with other residents, and as far as anybody else will be able to tell your avatar will look just fine (although mostly immobile).

While you can't yet initiate new IM sessions or use the Search functions (these are coming), you can reply to any incoming IMs and participate in local chat wherever your avatar happens to be. You can also teleport your avatar to other locations via an on-screen map, although once there you can't really walk around.

The interface is really simple, really fast, and works in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and newer versions of Safari. You can take it for a quick test drive by clicking here.