The biggest news coming out of the Second Life Community Convention this year was delivered by Linden Lab Chief Product Officer Tom Hale, aka T. Linden, who announced a dramatic user experience roadmap and gave a tour of several of its features including a new SL viewer and website.

The new SL viewer, which will debut later this year, was designed with user experience in mind.  The navigation is a updated so that you can easily go "back" and forth between previous locations and easily use SLURLs as locations.  The most used features of the viewer are clustered into a single drawer that opens to a right hand panel and then can be shut when you are not using it, in order to unclutter the display. It promises “no more panel proliferation”.       Also coming by the end of this quarter is a vastly improved Second Life website with a machinima to entice visitors, an interactive keyword searchable map, and an improved XStreet SL shopping experience.  They also updated the registration process and provided new users with a PDF quick start guide.  The user dashboard is also updated as well and will eventually be your social networking homepage.