Shoutbox

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Originally posted by Patchou
You can skin all the old-style dialog box windows of Mesenger by creating new resources in a DLL file. It's pretty easyer when you get used to it, I should create a section about that inu the documentation. All you need is a copy of Visual Studio Express, which is free.

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Or could I use ResHack?

Can someone spell it out, I don't quite get it all...

Standard Win32 menus and dialogs are saved as compiled resources in a PE file (EXE- or DLL-file). Since they're compiled, it's pretty tough replacing these items without some kind of editor, to compile them. But it's possible, don't get me wrong.

You could create your own DLL (or steal it from mynetx as everyone else does), and then use a resource editor to add/edit the resource. I'm not sure if Resource Hacker has the ability to add new resources, but I'm very sure you can do this with Visual Studio. Visual Studio is an IDE, much more than just a resource editor. It also contains several handy tools when developing programs. The Express version is free, and I strongly recommend it.

Back to dialog-replacing. You can view the original dialog by opening the DLL/EXE containing the resource in Resource Hacker (this resource is not getting extracted by the MP!L extraction wizard), and then modify it and copy it over to your own DLL's resources (save it to a RES-file).

Under the SkinInfo documentation in the skinning-docs you can find the tags needed for dialog-replacement. I think you will find them on your own.

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Originally posted by Patchou
You don't need dll files for icons (at least, when specifying icon groups).

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I was talking about the one of the task bar, as mynetx replaced with a dll...

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Originally posted by Patchou
I do plan on supporting those in a future update though.

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Nice to know it... thanks for the explanation...

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Originally posted by vikke
The Express version is free, and I strongly recommend

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wich one of they??? there are visual basic, visual c++, visual c#, etc...

Microsoft made all their versions so confusing. I think it's just called Visual Studio Express. But if I were you I would choose Visual C++ from the list you got, since C++ is the best programming language IMO.

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Originally posted by vikke
confusing. I think it's just called Visual Studio Express. But if I were you I would choose Visual C++ from the list you got, since C

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Thanks for the info mate... I will ask mynetx about it...

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Originally posted by vikke
I'm not sure if Resource Hacker has the ability to add new resources

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yes. Resource Hacker can even be controlled from the command line (it has its own scripting engine!) to extract, replace, remove, recompile resources, etc.... It is actually way more powerful than most people know. Read the help files closely

eg: Since Plus!3, I use a simple batch file to replace the Dutch language file in the setup (which is actually a compressed custom resource in the setup) with the one I'm busy with, to test the translation with the setup. Which is normally only done by sending Patchou the latest translation update and then waiting on a new beta release.... All with a few Resource Hacker command lines (and a compression program to (de)compress the resource).... Similary, I have some batch files which will replace some strings and menus in Messenger automatically (searching, replacing the correct parts, recompiling, replacing). All I need to do is start the batch file, et voila, done.

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As for Visual Studio, it is not so confusing actually...

"Visual Studio" contains "Visual C++", "Visual Basic", "Visual whatever". It is the whole lot plus some extras.... If you only need one programming language you need to get "Visual <the program language you want>" Edition.

And there are several different editions for each package. For example, you have "Visual Studio Professional Edition", "Visual Studio Basic Edition", "Visual C++ Basic Edition", "Visual Basic Enterprise Edition", "Visual C# Express Edition", etc....

However, for making dialogs and menus, you don't need such a 40Mb per programming language download (and that's just the stripped down Express editions - Visual Studio Express Edition is even close to 1GB!).... All you need is Resource Hacker and maybe a free resource compiler like GoRC.

The possible added benefit for downloading Visual Studio Express is that you have a nice GUI though. But, according to wikipedia, it seems that Visual C++ Express Edition does not include the resource compiler/editor.

Anyways, you can actually do everything from within Resource Hacker too (which will also show you how the dialog will look), since most of the time you're just going to edit existing Messenger dialogs anyways.

PS: Visual Studio Express Editions (which are free): http://www.microsoft.com/express/