As of the Second Life 1.19.1.0 RC client, a couple of new, yet very useful features has emerged. First, there's a new in-world web browser that pops up when you clck a link from chat history, IM or even from a llLoadURL function call. While that in itself would make things like my in-world scripted laptops much better, Linden Labs actually manages to top that with enabling parcel owners to now be able to set webpages as parcel media on prims with an owner-specified texture applied. They were careful with this as to make it so that only static pages can be rendered(no clickable links or multimedia), which is a reasonable restraint. However I believe with a little script-fu it is possible for parcel owners to overcome the limitations and implement a crude, yet fully functional in-world web surfing device.
In fact, I will soon start coding up a sample GPL implementation of such a device. My implementation will use the "webprim" feature as a safe page preview function, and offer the user the choice to load the page with the in-world browser.
However, making an in-world web device isn't my only project as of late. I've also released a script that allows prim manipulation via chat commands. I'll talk more about that in my next post.
