Shoutbox

Hey. I've been curious for quite a long time as to whether there's a way to get rid of this mysterious grey bar at the bottom of my conversation window.
Changing the skin doesn't seem to fix the problem, or changing the conversation wallpaper.
From what I can gather, this was originally a 'grey' filter, like the one used in the chat reading/typing boxes for the bottom text advertisement.
If you look at any default msn skin, this bar is tall enough to support the ad, but with it removed, it's just tall enough to reach the top of the rounded bottom corners.

I'm using 8.5 WLM, and have stuffplug, a-patch, and msgplus.

any help in removing this grey bar is deeply appreciated.

Is it not part of the skin design? The reason I'm thing this is it matches the other grey parts. Or not?

quote:

---

Originally posted by john-t
Is it not part of the skin design? The reason I'm thing this is it matches the other grey parts. Or not?

---

I believe it is part of the design. The 'skin' i'm using is just the standard windows live messenger. However, the backround i'm using does not have that in it, it's part of the conversation's ui, if you will.

originally, it was taller by a bit, so you could read the advertizement text. but with the text removed, it's only tall enough to be seen for the rounded corners, it looks.

it is not part of the design. The gray bar is supposed to have ads but as it seems the ads are hidden. Nothing to worry about.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Basilis
it is not part of the design. The gray bar is supposed to have ads but as it seems the ads are hidden. Nothing to worry about.

---

I know it's not something to worry about, I just really want to get rid of it all together. I figured maybe there was some way i could do it through skinning, since there's a lot of code available in that.

Any way of removing it would be nice though. It just makes the bottom look so clunky.

The grey bar, or add space, can be removed. How I am not sure, but I know that mess-patch offers(or used to anyway) the ability to do so. It would simply be a case of finding out the id for this space and setting it to LayoutPos=None, I would imagine.

Or you just have to make it transparent

Transparent would be good, but I wouldn't mind removing it all together. Transparent would probably still keep the added space, which I'm trying to get rid of on top of the grey filter.

Mess patch hasn't gotten rid of it fully in a few versions, and since there isn't an 8.5 compatible version, i can't recheck. a patch didn't do it for me, so now i'm left with finding out the string and removing it myself.

Your best bet is probably to look through the 4th part of Willz Skinning Guide as it lists all the different resources within messenger. It's where I would start anyway.

quote:

---

Originally posted by vaccination
Your best bet is probably to look through the 4th part of Willz Skinning Guide as it lists all the different resources within messenger. It's where I would start anyway.

---

unfortunately, i think that file is unavailable right now.

Sigh. All this painful time and effort, for a damn grey bar.