I am looking for someone who is good with photoshop and wants to create skins for the new MSN Messenger. If you don't have it I'll send you an invite so you can work on it with me. Thanks

At this point, skinning Windows Live Messenger 8 isn't possible. Since Microsoft used messy RLE's instead of simple PNG's, we aren't able to skin the biggest part of Messenger. Untill this is fixed, skinners will get stuck on 7.5...

I would be glad to help you, but it's just not possible...

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Do not let the headline fool you, I wish I could be saying that I really do however skinning may have reached the end with Windows Live Messenger, this post is a report into, the world of skinning Live and how it may of died.

In MSN Messenger we had the ability using certain software’s to replace the resources in the main exe (msnmsgr) to modify the appearance, by changing bitmaps, icons, uifiles and the main image format pngs. In Windows Live Messenger, we have all these things expect for the pngs. This is a huge blow as skinning is useless without images, and skinners like theunknown and ipab spend weeks finding out information that could enable us to skin again.

The research discovered that a new image format was included, known as .rle, immediately we thought we could skin again by converting it into a png, editing it and converting back to .rle but low and behold Microsoft officially hate us a made the extension in there own encoding thus making this technique impossible unless we were Microsoft employees.

Our hopes were down and we began to speculate, maybe in Live a new skinning system is being set up, one that allows us to change themes like visual style do, it makes sense why else would they change it? However, after fizcials numerous e-mails to the team they claimed they had no idea what we were on about and there were no public plans to set up a skinning system. Furthermore by patching the main .exe the sharing folders feature stops working, as it needs to be digitally signed and we all know the team are extremely proud of this new feature and would go at all costs to keep it.

So skinning does look bleak now and we cannot say if there will be any more skins coming soon, the only way to skin is hard and annoying we could manually re-add the links to the pngs in the uifiles, which would make the whole process about 3 times as long. I plan to keep fully up to date about skinning Live so stick around for more information.

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It is really sad that this has happened ..... i hope there will be a possibility of skinning in the future ....
Did ms not like people changing the default theme that they had ??
Oh well

its been skinned... to be honest, if not for the rle's, everything would be the same. There are ways around the rle and the unknown is really good at that. I'm trying to get used to that way too.

Sad there will be no skins but we'll soon get used to with what we have now an live without them

Like I said, it can be skinned, it take quite a bit longer but it still can be skinned. Never fear .

sure if you hack some file which maybe illegal

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Originally posted by Animal
sure if you hack some file which maybe illegal

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Originally posted by XxRebelSeanxX

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Originally posted by Animal
sure if you hack some file which maybe illegal

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Hack? More like chance the resources/PNG's. It's not -that- illegal. As stated many times, the MSN team does not care if it's skinned.

Oh, and I wouldn't even bother anticipating a skin till the release of the final version .

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didnt skinning msn messenger 7.x also include h@xing some files to change a few resources ..... so wasnt that in a way a bit illegal ??

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Originally posted by ipab
Like I said, it can be skinned, it take quite a bit longer but it still can be skinned. Never fear .

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* John Anderton waits for aero wlm

aero wlm will start as soon as TB figures out how to save rle resources. Right now, thanks to TheSteve (from msnfanatic), wtbw and TB, we are able to view rle files. Not save them, just view them. It's a great big step in the right direction.

@JA:
holy shit yes, skinning is soooooooooooooo illegal, its off the chart.

as soon as he figures it out?.. which could be a long time if he's busy with skool stuff,

"Not That Illegal" err, Illegal is Illegal No Matter how you put it, and by skinning Messenger you are H@xing the Exe and which is more than a "bit" illegal

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Originally posted by Idium
"Not That Illegal" err, Illegal is Illegal No Matter how you put it, and by skinning Messenger you are H@xing the Exe and which is more than a "bit" illegal

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Originally posted by Absorbation

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Originally posted by Idium
"Not That Illegal" err, Illegal is Illegal No Matter how you put it, and by skinning Messenger you are H@xing the Exe and which is more than a "bit" illegal

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not really i never signed the terms of use. It is legal for me i did not get any prove that is was when installing the program.

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just remember the EULA is a electronic contract, by clicking NEXT u have said "i agree to be bound by such turms and conditions as layed out in the Contract" hence the last letter in EULA standing for Agreement.


there i go being pedantic again

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Originally posted by Animal
sure if you hack some file which maybe illegal

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