Three things
1) Crikey. Where did Second Citizen forum go? I was on there only last week.
2) I think I just found out why the last update was compulsory. Seems that someone published a password-stealing hack. I'm glad LL got onto that right away. A couple of precautions to take: don't use IE as your default browser. And on the Web tab of your Profile, uncheck the "Load web pages automatically" box.
3) Sculpted stairs. After the problem with my randomly phantom stairs I decided to experiment with sculpty stairs instead of a ramp. Unfortunately you can't actually climb them. I think, because the client detects the height of the prim as the height of the top stair, and not the stairs inbetween. So even though the bottom stair appears low enough to stand on, it's merely an illusion; the height of the whole prim is the height of the top step. A workaround: Make the stairs phantom, and insert a solid but invisible ramp over the part where the steps are. Looks great and works perfectly.