Shoutbox

Well its finally here, open live is officially released for all of you to use. You won't find Open Live in the skins database since it is a resource so yeah. Anyway onto a few release notes (pretty much the same as the official page:

Skinning Windows Live Messenger has never been an easy task. Most people struggle to understand what is going on when you make and skin and do not know where to start. I created open live to try and help those new skinners out and to give experienced skinners something to save them a bit of time.

Open Live is a special version of Windows Live Messenger 8.5 that has been edited to make a skinners life a lot easier. The key features of open live are as follows:

    * No MSNRLE images, all images are normal png, jpg, bmp, ico and gif.
    * Easy one line edits for things such as text colors and spacing of buttons.
    * All images are named and labeled to show what they do and are also in organized folders
    * Comes with guide images and source images for animations and those tricky images
    * Comes with pre-made and pre-translated options and about windows.

and MUCH MORE!

Open Live will be sure to make the skinning process a much quicker task than what it is now.



TERMS OF USE

This skin is not intended for commercial use since it is based upon Microsoft's design and contains mostly their resources. Although this skin is free to edit and redistribute, the only this I ask for in return is that you leave the small credit that gives thanks to the translation team and the "based on open live" line in the about window.

Thanks for the support!

For Windows Live Messenger 8.5 ONLY. Requires Messenger Plus! Live 4.60 to use.

Skin options panel available in (future updates may add support for more languages):

English
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian

Open Live Download

Official Open Live support will be at http://designevolved.net, with an update to the site happening eventually which will host Open Live content and a tutorials database.

EDIT

This link will let you download the latest build of Open Live, while it is still marked as the build that is up on the page there are still differences:

Website Version: 1.1.0A
Latest Version: Open Live 1.1.0C

Great job Willz, i think i might try out skinning now

Well I hope everyone finds it handy, my plan is to start a wiki on designevolved which will take you through skinning messenger using open live. Of course that will be a lot of work, but I think it would potentially have a lot of interest.

I'll see whether its worth it or not soon enough I guess.

Now that it's in the wild, I can use it to make a skin ... figure it needs some promoting ...

You should see a skin from me soon, you know which one ... just need a catchy name for it though.

p.s. you seem to have too much time on your hands...

quote:

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Originally posted by ipab
Now that it's in the wild, I can use it to make a skin ... figure it needs some promoting ...

You should see a skin from me soon, you know which one ... just need a catchy name for it though.

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Ipab's vista ultimate X-treme++ lite?

That'll get in the downloads

Congrats On the skin completion, surprised you didn't ask me to test anything

Great , now I might try skinning as well.Cheers mate .

yeah well i just found a bug thats not because of my code, but rather Plus! not being able to replace certain resources properly so I will have to make them their own custom resources.

For those playing at home its the checkbox images that I'm talking about, those don't replace at all (even though the code is right)

EDIT ok sent it over to menthix, will be marked as version 1.0.1. Should be up shortly.

Thanks Willz! This will help out the community tones! .

Pity i cant use it... Im a die hard 9.0 user .

But very very good work Willz!

The skinning community wouldnt be where it is now today without you Willz! I think Patchou owes you something!

ok well menthix has uploaded 1.0.1 so go nuts now

I was going to try 9 comparability, but then i found that a few things were not working and then i figured the skininfo would become too complex, which is the opposite of what i want.

And then of course theres the whole thing about if a new build of 9 is released ill have to code it all again.

So yeah.... just went with 8.5.

Yeah i knew you'd never do 9.0. *sigh*. Only 7 more months till 9 becomes final! Hopefully by then they have added the time stopping algoreth(i cant spell). Which would be fairly usefull in messenger. You know, stopping time so you can catch up on your WLMing