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The contact list has been overhauled in 3.3 to greatly increase the amount of control and
customization available. 3.3 introduces several new privacy options and
allows you to fine-tune those options on a per-citizen basis from your contact list.
In particular, the contact list has been expanded from a simple list of people you
want to keep in touch with to a more general-purpose mechanism for controlling
all aspects of your privacy while in Active Worlds.
An important aspect of the new contact list mechanism is that your contact list is no longer stored
in the local file "contacts.txt" on your PC. Rather, it is now stored by the
universe server. This change has two important advantages: this allows your contact
list to follow you from PC to PC if you use Active Worlds on more than one
computer, and it also allows the universe server to implement your privacy settings
(e.g. telegram blocking) even when you are not logged in to the system.
The first time you run 3.3, the browser will automatically upload your pre-3.3
contact list to the uniserver, and then rename the contacts.txt file to
contacts.txt.sav. From then on, any changes you make to your contact
list will be immediately saved to the uniserver, and the contacts.txt file will
no longer be used.
It is important to note that in 3.3 the contact list is stored
per citizen. This means that your 3.2 contact list will be uploaded
as the contact list for the account that you use to first run 3.3. Since most people only have one citizenship this will not
make any difference, but for people who have been sharing a single contacts.txt
across multiple citizenships, you will now have separate contact lists for each
citizenship that you use. When you switch between one login to another from
the browser, your contact list changes automatically to the new login.
One final important note: once your contact list has been upgraded to the
3.3 format, it is not possible to go back to the old 3.2 format.
In particular, this means that if you set up a contact list using 3.3,
the options you set for it will still be in effect even
if you go back to 3.2.
There are two levels of privacy settings available. Each option can have a
default value which can be set from the privacy settings
dialog. The options set here apply to anyone not on your contact list, and
anyone on your contact list for whom you have not set a different option.
When a citizen is added to your contact list, he or she first inherits your
default privacy settings as you have them set in the privacy dialog. From then
on, you can override any of the default settings for a particular citizen
by right-clicking on their name on the contact list and selecting "Privacy Options"
from the pop-up menu. The following options are available:
- Hide or display your online/offline/AFK status - this toggles whether or
not other people who have placed you on their contact list will see the "green checkmark"
next to your name indicating you are currently online. If you hide your status from
a user, all they will ever see next to your name is a question mark regardless
of whether or not you are currently online. Also, users to whom you are exposing
your online status will see an "AFK" indicator next to your name whenever you
enter AFK mode.
- Hide or display the world you are currently in - this option is the
same as it was in 3.2, except that it can now be set per-contact. Citizens for
whom you have chosen to display the world you are currently in will see the
name of your current world printed next to your name in their contact lists,
if they have you on their contact list.
- Accept or block telegrams - this enables the new "telegram blocking"
feature in 3.3. Contacts with this option set to "block" will not be able to
send you any telegrams. When they attempt to send you a telegram, they will
be immediately informed that you are not accepting telegrams from them,
even if you are not online at the time. Important note:
if you are a beta user or otherwise using 3.3 before it has been released
to the public, you should be aware that this option will be in effect regardless of whether the user
trying to telegram you is using 3.3 or 3.2. Since 3.2 browsers have no concept
of a telegram being blocked, to a 3.2 user it will appear as if the telegram
went through when in fact it did not. Be careful to only set this option
during the beta period if this behavior is acceptable to you.
- Accept or block join requests - this allows you to toggle whether
or not your browser automatically rejects join requests
from that contact.
- Accept or block file transfers - this allows you to toggle whether
or not your browser automatically rejects file transfer requests
from that contact.
- Automatically "mute on sight" - setting this option for a contact
will cause your browser to automatically mute
that person whenever you see them.
The maximum number of contacts on the contact list has been increased from 100 to 500.
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