Customer Reviews

How to Do Everything with Second Life®

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book offers sound advice on almost all aspects of Second Life from social interaction to scripting, building, and texturing. It goes into fine detail on the workings of the user interface with great time saving tips and tricks for all levels of experience. It's by no means a dry technical read. The author does a good job of tying all of the topics together through examples of practical experience within Second Life.

I keep this book on my computer desk for quick reference. As an experienced user with a bloated inventory I found the topics on asset backup, inventory searches, and inventory organization extremely helpful.

I actually created a second life account and canceled it because of the frustration of not nowing how to navigate through the environment. This books is the most awesome ever for SL and how to navigate through the environment. It includes a lot of shortcut keys and scripting to further advance your knowleddge in the Second Life Environment. This book is highly recommended for those that have no idea of how to navigate the platform and would like to learn how to use the grid, create skin, camera moves, buying land, buying shapes, creating textures etc. This books discusses everything you want to know, desire to learn and more!

Lanesa Stubbs

This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to SL that you'll find -- no need to look any further. It includes general information about how to get started in SL, what to do and where to go -- and it also contains easy to follow, step-by-step information about the things you are likely to be doing there: building, shopping, meeting people. Handy quick keyboard guide inside the cover that will be useful to both new users and seasoned veterans!

What can I say about a book that is supposed to cover a highly graphical environment like Second Life, but only has about a dozen illustrations in the whole book? Very few of the menus or dialogs are shown. Many of the steps described in a text-only fashion have changed in the current version of the SL client. But with no (or few) illustrations, I was often at a loss to know how to accomplish the same thing in the new interface. I know it's important to save trees, but it would have been nice to know what I might expect to see once I logged in. The first illustration doesn't occur until page 33. You can't describe a visual environment with text only.

The author is apparently very proud of the fact that he bought land in SL and built/furnished his SL house. However, learning how to add a basement to a house or a teleporter to the second floor before I even feel the need to own a house quickly turned me off. If I wanted to sit around in a house and admire my furniture, I wouldn't need Second Life. I can do that in Real Life at home. I ended up skipping over the land and house building sections (seems to be about half the book). I don't think that's what a newbie who just graduated from Orientation Island is thinking about.

Almost all of the subjects were presented from a very high-level viewpoint. Very few topics were elaborated on. The reader is (at least I was) left wishing for a bit more detail. The only topics the author delved into in any depth was about how he built his wonderful SL house and how his neighbor blocked his view of the virtual ocean for a short while.

Instead of titling it How to Do "Everything," he should have called it How to Build a House that you can sit in instead of exploring the world of Second Life. I would not recommend this book to anyone just getting started in their SL experience. And anyone who has explored SL more than a month would already know almost everything that's discussed. However, in defense of the author, I did learn one thing near the end of the book - how to take a photo of my avatar and attach it to my profile.

The title is misleading,gives no info on anything that is out of the ordinary,there is alot this book don't cover for those of us that have been in sl for a year or more,could fill another book with all the stuff this book don't mention

I used this book when I first decided to roll up my sleeves and learn how to "live" in Second LIfe. The range of areas covered, the level of detail and the illustrations were perfect. Even after five years on Second Life, I still go back and refer to this book for specific instructions.

Found it to be a great book on a wide area of Second life. Help to understand more than just basics of SL. Allen Lambert

this book helps you learn everything in sl, but really not much info on what i wanted which was to model and texture.. not much on that..just ask people in sl almost everyone is willing to help you out..everything i know how do to is learned by just asking not threw this book