SecondLife :Setting Up FireStorm in Phoenix Mode

By Avatar JayR Cela

     It was recently officially announced that the ever popular Phoenix Viewer was no longer under active development. Now for some people this seems as a major setback, at least for them. Personally I have been using FireStorm full time for about the past year, but I have to admit it took a while for me to make the final switch. If you happen to be a Die Hard Phoenix user, you really owe it to yourself to at least give FS a try, after all the same wonderful people that worked so hard to make PH the kick ass viewer that it is today, are the same people that have gradually brought FireStorm to the point that changing over from one to the other is worth at least trying it out for yourself.

    Anyway's I thought for today's post it might be fun to do a walk through of setting up FS in Phoenix mode. I admit I have not tried this myself yet, so.  Let's get started :_)

Open FireStorm and once the welcome screen loads you will want to click on the drop down Default Settings tab at the bottom of the screen.

 
    Select Phoenix, a notice will pop up that you need to  Quit and Restart.

 

     As you can see, we now have the standard blue colored classic V1.x  mode activated. Next up you can choose either to Log In, or work your way through the various Preferences Menu's. Just to put the mind of Phoenix users at ease, I'm going to walk through these with you, I think you will find they are not all that much different from what you have become used to.

    The opening General preferences should be familiar to everyone by now.  The Away Time Out and Log Out After Being Marked Away are drop down selection area's where you can set to Never or a certain amount of minutes. Next we will go into the Chat Tab, and here you will want to pay close attention to the first sub-tab General, look down at the bottom of this page.

 

     You have a choice here : Show IMs In : Separate Windows or Tabs   ( requires restart ) if you want a true Phoenix experience select the Tabs option, don't worry about restarting the computer until you are completely finished with all the Preferences Settings. Next you can choose wither or not you would like the IM tabs to display Vertically or Horizontally. that is a mater of personal taste, myself I hate the Vertical option.

    The rest of these sub-tabs are pretty much self explanatory. So lets move on.

    I would imagine that you should be getting a little more comfortable right about now, most of, if not all of the features you have come to know and love in the Phoenix Viewer are available in FireStorm as well, the only real difference is that the arrangement is different.

     Everything is here, plus a few extra's. You'll just have to look around for the particular functions you wish to apply.

   
    While this post may seem boring, I think it is important to be prepared. Because as things stand right now, sometime early next year LL is going to throw the switch ! And when that happens, The Phoenix Viewer will no longer function properly in SecondLife !

    So you may as well start getting ready now.

JayR Cela :_)