Shoutbox

Well boys and girls, the moment you have been waiting for has arrived. The release of one of my most popular skins so far: Phunk'n.

But before I get onto that I'd like to take a second and thank all the people that have supported my work over the years. I didn't really think I'd be around this long, but hey it's you guys that keep me going. I just had a talk with Menthix (the guy who runs the skins database) and he has given me a number which represents how many downloads I have had since the Messenger Plus! database opened. Ready for it?

7,489,442 (Excluding things like Open Live and discontinued skins like Sopair)

Pretty scary though considering skins were lucky to get 100,000 downloads 2 years ago. It's good to see skins are becoming really popular. Keep it up everyone!

I have been really busy these past couple of weeks working on bringing the skin back to Messenger 2009. It was a tough road but I think the skin will speak for itself in terms of quality.

I had to completely recode the entire skin and re-think certain parts of the skin to suit Messenger 2009. While most of the skin retains the layout from the previous version you will notice some differences in version 2.

The most major one is that fade animations had to be scrapped. Sad to say that they have changed in Messenger 2009 and are extremely restricted. I couldn't really find a balance between making it work, look right and not lag the skin up.

So in the end I decided to scrap it altogether. But with that being said I did add a bit more functionality to the skin. Version 2 now allows users to go back to classic Messenger icons in case they don't like the ones supplied with the skin. This was one of the requested features in version 1 so I am proud to say this is available in version 2.

The skin has adopted the layout mode that I first introduced in the LTD skin. Users will be able to switch between this mode and classic mode and also be able to align the chat window how they wish.

Scenes have been completely removed in this skin. This was a pretty hard design decision but I think I made the right choice. It was just too hard to find a balance where the scene actually complemented the design. I found that there was too many variables to deal with and most of the time it just made the skin look weird. But I have given the ability to stretch chat window backgrounds to the full area so hopefully that will remove the need for scenes.

The custom Messenger Plus! UI has also been scrapped due to the fact that Messenger Plus! Live 5 will be entering development soon and I would rather wait to see what is going to happen with the UI before diving in too deep.

The registry entries that I added in the previous version return in version 2. There are a few new ones such as choosing the size of the extra display picture in the chat window and also the one in the contact list. Toolbar alignment options are also in these entries.

Because you can't colorize the alert I have written a series of entries which forces the alert to become a certain color. All you have to do is pick the entry that suits your tastes and away you go.

And yeah that should about cover it. Now for some screenshots:

Infusco:




Niveus:




Well that should keep people busy for a while. Oh yeah and while I was building Phunk'n I was also toying with a brand new skin design. Expect that one soon, its going to push the envelope a bit so yeah expect something cool.

Enjoy the release!

Willz.