This is a collection of purely random tips that you may find entirely useful or useless. Which way you will lean is dictated by what you usually do in Second Life. But for the most part, there's something for everyone in this very fact-filled journey through potentially unmarked territory.

Crowds-be-Gone

Ever wanted to take a snapshot of a crowded place with no one there? This is a trick that Skidz Partz employs on Skidz Isle to get rid of all those avatars. Hit Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal the Client's Advanced menu.

Scroll down to Rendering, which will expand out to another list. Scroll over again to Types and it will give you a list of everything from "Simple" to "Bump." Click Character and every avatar will disappear before your eyes. There is a keyboard shortcut for this if you want to just try it out the easy way: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-4 will do it.

I Spy with My Little Eye

Zoom out as far as you possibly can with your mouse. For most of you, you don't get out too far. For those of you who know this trick, you see a lot more than the other guys. So to enable this trick, you need to reveal the Client's Advanced menu and click it. Scroll down to Disable Camera Constraints. When you see an X beside it, you'll be able to zoom out for a whole new panoramic view.

Select What?

Everyone else's prims getting in the way of highlighting a selection of your objects? Fret no more, builders! You CAN select only your objects. Click the Tools menu and click Select Only My Objects. Now when you go to select things, you only catch your own stuff! Working with others? You also have the menu option to Select Only Movable Objects, which will allow you to select objects you own or that you have rights to move granted by friends.

Just a small warning about this one, however. If you forget to turn these off, you'll right click on others' objects until the cows come home, wondering why they're not selecting for you. So make sure that when you've completed your selecting job, you disable whichever of the two you enabled.

Viewing

The View menu is great for more than just adjusting the way you see things. You can actually bring about some small features that you might find useful.

Statistics Bar (shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-1)
This menu item brings up a small window with a good collection of stats on you and the location you're in. You can see your frames per second (FPS) the bandwidth you're using, total objects on the sim, how many active scripts are on the sim, and much, much more.

Property Lines (Shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-P)
As a parcel owner, you may need to know down to the very last pixel where your parcel boundaries lie. Enabling the Property Lines view will give you just that. And the system is all colour coded: blue for owned, orange is for sale, red is owned by someone else.

Hide Particles (Shortcut: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-=)
Photographers will most likely know this one. Particles can be a nuisance when you're trying to get a shot without them. All you need to do is enable the Hide Particles option under the View menu and Poofers will go poof!

More to come!