Firestorm provides a way to organize your friends - and other people - into sets or categories, using your own criteria. Thus you can create sets of friends, colleagues, business contacts, and so on. Such sets can be color coded, and those colors then applied to chat, mini map, and so on.

The Contact Sets window is accessed from the top menu bar, Comms → Contact Sets - or by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Shift-C.

There is a tutorial video available - but note that it was made on development code, for Phoenix.

A sample of the Contact Sets window is shown here (names have been redacted for privacy).

• Set: Shows the name of the currently selected contact set - if any.
• Show notices for this Set: If a set is selected (see above), then this check box will show online/offline notifications for members of the set. Note that this is is in addition to the global setting in Preferences → Dialog Alerts → Tell me: when my friends log in or out. If that is enabled, you will still get notifications for all friends; if disabled, then the settings here take precedence.
• Settings (button): This is covered in detail below.
• Show: toggles visibility of selected sub-sets, as follows:
  • Online: if enabled, includes in the list, those of your contacts who are currently online.
  • Other Set: if you have contacts in multiple sets, and are viewing a specific set only, then with this option enabled, contacts in more than one set, will be show with the color of another set rather than the current one. This allows such people to be more easily visually identified.
  • Offline: if checked, includes in the list, name of people who are currently offline.
  • All Friends: if checked, shows in the list, all your contacts, regardless of which set is selected (see above); if unchecked, it will show only those belonging to the currently selected set.
  • New Set Name: To create a new set of contacts, type the set name here, then click “Create Set” (see below).
  • Delete Set (button) Clicking this will delete the currently selected set.
  • Create Set (button): Click this to create the set named in the edit box to the left.
  • Set Color: Click this brings up a color picker, from which you can select a color to assign to the set. This color will be used as the background for contacts in the list itself, as well as, optionally, in other parts of the viewer like IMs, and so on.

The list of contacts appears as the example shown here.

The top of the list - optionally - shows contact set “folders”. These are equivalent to selecting a specific set from the drop down at the top of the window.

Each contact name is shown on a colored background, indicating what set that person belongs to - if any. The default color (as defined in the Settings window) is used for people who are not part of any set.

On the far right are several icons. In order:

• Profile: gives access to the individual's profile.
• Instant Message: Opens an IM window for the person.
• Online Status: This icon will be white if the person is online, greyed out if offline, and black if the contact is not on your friends list.
• Checkbox: This is used to group multiple people for addition to a set.

If you right click on any name, you get a menu with several options. Note that right clicking will automatically select the current contact (ie, the check box will be checked).

• Add to…: Select a set from those listed, to add the person to it.
• Remove Display Name: Selecting this will “remove” the person's display name - for you only. In other words, this affects what you see, not the person's actual display name. Nor will anyone else notice the change. If you enable this, then the following option appears:
• Remove Alias: If you removed a person's display name (as described above), this option restores it. The term “alias” here indicates that an empty name is being substituted for the display name.
• View Profile: Opens the avatar's profile.
• Instant Message: Opens an IM window for the person.
• Teleport Avatar: Offers a teleport to the selected avatar.
• Deselect All: Deselects all selected names in the list.
• Select All: Selects all names in the current list.
• Add New Avatar: This is a powerful feature: it allows you to add new people to your people, even if they are not on your friends list. The window has three tabs: Search, Friends, and Near Me.
  NOTE: Adding people this way does not grant any rights or abilities that you would not already have. Anyone added this way who is not on your friends list, will not be treated as a friend. Adding people this way is merely a convenience for listing and easily accessing names, and having them stand out with the use of color.

If you have the list filtered to show only a specific set, then you will have another option in the menu:

• Remove from xxx: (where XXX is the name of the set). This allows you to remove the contact from the list.
  Note: This will only show an option for the currently selected set. If you wish to remove them from a diferent set, first use the drop down to select that set, then right click and select remove.

The list can by scrolled using your mouse wheel, up and down arrow keys, or by hovering over the top or bottom bars. Also, to find people quickly by name, you can simply start typing the name in, and the list will filter by what you have typed.

This window allows you to customize the behavior of the contact list window, and how colors are applied.

• Default color for friends not in a set: This is the color to use for all contacts who are not in a set. If you click the colored box, you are shown a color picker, from which you can select a different color.
• Scroll speed: Controls how quickly the contact list scrolls.
• Show Online Notices for ALL friends: This is a duplicate of the setting in Preferences → Dialog Alerts → Tell me: when my friends log in or out. Disable this to get notifications only for certain sets (or none).
• Color a friend's mini map icon based on their Contact Set: If enabled, this will use the color of the set the person belongs to, for their mini map icon.
• Color a friend's name tag based on their Contact Set: If enabled, this will use the color of the set the person belongs to, for their on-screen name tag.
• Color a friend's radar list entry based on their Contact Set: If enabled, this will use the color of the set the person belongs to, for the radar view.
• Color a friend's chat based on their Contact Set: If enabled, this will use the color of the set the person belongs to, for their local chat and IMs.

• Color only a small area of the background of the Contact Sets floater: If this is enabled, the set color will be used only for the name of the set appearing below the avatar name, rather than for the full bar.
• Colorize text instead of backgrounds in the Contact Sets floater: If this is enabled, the set color is used for the avatar name, rather than for the full width of the bar. This option implies the one above, meaning it will make the change described above, whether or not that option is enabled.
• Require CTRL key to be pressed to enable multiselect: When enabled, this option makes check boxes behave the same way as they do in most applications: to select more than one name, you need to press and hold the Ctrl key. Otherwise, with this disabled, that is not needed.
• Use the Zoom Effect in the floater: If this is enabled, the portion of the list under the mouse is magnified, for better legibility.
• Use the color highlight effect in the floater: With this enabled, the background colors of list items will become less transparent the closer your mouse is to the item.
• BG Strength: The slider controls the intensity of the background color of the sets on the window. Setting to 0 disables the colors entirely.
• Show Folders above contacts: If enabled, this will result in the defined sets being shown at the to of the contact list.
• Draw Profile Icons Next To Names: If this option is selected, small profile icons will be shown to the elft of each contact name.
• Name Format: Allows you to select how you wish contact names to be displayed.
  NOTE: This is overridden by your settings in Preferences → General → Name Tags. For example, if you have Display Names disabled there, they will not show in the list of contacts regardless of how you set this option.
• Sort by: Indicates how you wish the list of contacts to be sorted.

• In the edit box at the top, where you can see New Set Name, type in the name of the set you wish to create.
• Click the Create Set button.
• Select the set from the drop down list at the top left.
• Define a new color for it at the top right, Set Color.
• Now, go through your list of contacts and check each of those whom you wish to add to the new set.
• Then right-click any of those selected, and from the menu, select “Add to: xxx”, where xxx is the name of the new set you created.

Once you have one or more sets created, and contacts assigned to them, you can put them to use. If you select a set from the drop down at the top, you can then select all members of set (right click any contact and Select All). At this point if your right click again, you have the options to start a conference call, and do a mass teleport.

NOTE: Using the contact sets features just described does not allow you to get around built-in SL limitations. Therefore, no matter how large a set, you cannot send a mass TP to more than 20 people at a time.

It is possible to assign friends to more than one set. Simply right click on their name and add to as many sets as apply. The set names will be shown below their names. (Note: clicking on the set name here will make that set the active set; it will change in the drop-down at the top.)

Where it becomes interesting is how set color is applied. For example… say you are looking at a list of your business contacts. These are defined as being blue. So normally everyone on the list will be blue (assuming you have disabled the “all friends” option at the top). However, if one people on this list also happens to be in another set, one of your friends, and that set is green, then this person will show as green in the list of business contacts.

If instead you are looking at the full list, all sets, then contacts use the color of the smallest set (the one with least members).

The same “rules” apply for mini map icons, chat and so on.