Well boys and girls after nearly two months of solid work I am ready to release Phunk'n into the world for everyone to enjoy. For those of you that don't already know, Phunk'n is a skin that I have designed to the highest of quality. The aim of this skin was to create something that would be treated as if it was like a designer label.

Phunk'n is unique in the sense that it brings a lot of things that have never been seen in Windows Live Messenger skins before, which is why I kept a lot of it under wraps for a long time. It is the first skin to utilize Messengers animation tags all around the entire use interface which means every single button will fade animate in and out and other things around messenger will also slide around.

There are transitions animations everywhere in Phunk'n so be on the lookout and see how many you can spot. Some are in place's that you won't even notice for a while If the animations are too much for you then that is fine because I added the ability to turn them off.

What else is new in Phunk'n? Well Phunk'n also features the first fully fledged Messenger Plus skin. Yes I went to the exhaustive effort of skinning plus itself (which isn't easy by the way ) to make the skin a bit more complete. While I tried to skin every window, there are some that couldn't be skinned because of technical reasons which I hope will be fixed in the future by Patchou (hint, hint).

Phunk'n also brings a unique feature known as the drawer effect. In the chat window you will notice two new buttons under each of the toolbars. This is the new drawer feature which allows both toolbars to be fully hidden on the fly. Nice right?

On top of all of this Phunk'n has been coded to play nice with the latest versions of StuffPlug and Messenger Discovery Live. I got in contact with the developers of both these products and wrote special compatibility modes for both addons. The stuffplug one is on always since it doesn't affect the skin itself, but the Messenger Discovery one will have to be turned on in the options panel.

Now onto the skin itself. The skin comes in two editions: Infucso (Black) and Niveus(White). Both offer the same variety of user options except that Infusco has one extra option that enables a lighter background in text areas for those too lazy to use the text override feature in Messenger Plus Live. For those wanting the removers you know where to find them *cough DE *cough.

That should about cover everything. I had a small extra to release alongside of this but that will have to wait till later.

Peace and enjoy!

Willz.

Screenshots:





Download Links:

Get Infusco!

Get Niveus!


Changelog:

1.0.1:

Fixed:

Messenger Plus Borders issue.

1.0.2:

Fixed

Font special character issue
Sign in animation glitch
Spanish tooltips not showing
No display picture mode retaining extra padding
No display picture mode crashing
No display picture mode button glitch
Contact cards animation glitch
Skin options showing title that overlaps the Phunk'n logo


Added:

Both skins come with a folder called "Skin tweaks". This lets users do the following:
     * Restore the display picture at the top of the contact list
     * Align the top contact list display picture to the left or right
     * Restore the icon in the top left of the chat window
     * Reset the font back to Messenger default
     * Specify their own custom font by editing the registry entry

Toolbars can now be right aligned

Simple yet awesome!

I've been awaiting this for more than a month now.... at last its here !

* Felu downloads

Willz, you're just awesome!

Wow very nice!

* Th3rmal downloads and tests

congrats on another awesome release

EDIT: Very nice work. Although, the text font doesn't look smooth for me, although that may be because of the windows theme i have installed.

* Spunky sexes and then waits to get home to download

One word: Hot!

I must wait 5 more minutes to test the skin since I have a slow internet connection. I can't wait anymore!

I don't like the icons(they're especially bad in the white version), nor the bevelled look around a few groups of images(like colour, options etc). Don't like the rounded corners on the emote, wink, etc toolbar either.

Other than that nice, but I won't be using it =p

The sign in window is the best I have ever seen! I don't like the font though. It is great how everything is slowly transitioning.

If people get a problem with the border in the preferences shifting it has something to do with the units of measurement that the plus windows use. Apparently it all depends on your screen settings so some people might get the glitch while others wont.

Its really weird. ugh skinning plus was horrible I'll take a look into it tomorrow, its late and I don't think my brain will be able to work it out now.

I'd love to learn the drawer thing...(but that's probably top-secret)

I don't quite like the icons... looked good in the screenshot, but not when you're using it. I agree with vax that they should be colored(or atleast an option). And probably a bit bigger in size too.

Also, I don't quite like the status images. I prefer the normal WLM status images.

Anyways its a nice and simple theme, but maybe not exactly what I like.

* Felu switches back to Windows Aero Messenger.

quote:

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Originally posted by Sunshine
I'd love to learn the drawer thing...(but that's probably top-secret)

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very very nice mate, keep up the awesome work

quote:

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Originally posted by Eljay

quote:

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Originally posted by Sunshine
I'd love to learn the drawer thing...(but that's probably top-secret)

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I'm guessing it's just a button with the cmdid taken from the menu for show/hide toolbar. Probably a bit more to it than that, I shall investigate

Anyway...

I don't like the sign-in window at all for some reason, but don't have to look at that for long so it doesn't bother me too much. The main thing bothering me is how all the buttons appear greyed out and therefore look disabled

Overall a nice skin, but not for me *hugs Vistafy*

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very nice, great skin
using Infusco now

WILLZ!!!
Where did you go? I can't find you on Messenger any more.

Anyway, I think I fixed your border problem with the Plus! Live Preferences window!!!

This is what you have in PlusWindows/Interfacepref-General.xml on lines 109 to 114:

code:

---

<Element xsi:type="ImageElement" Id="Border">
   <Position Top="-2" Left="-2.5"/>
   <Image>
      <Name>pref_border</Name>
   </Image>
</Element>

---

code:

---

   <Position Top="-2" Left="-2"/>

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OMG excellent work Williz, the only thing which i miss is that i cant see my own DP on the top of the main window would be nice if you could put this possibilty into it.

quote:

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Originally posted by Andylongi
OMG excellent work Williz, the only thing which i miss is that i cant see my own DP on the top of the main window would be nice if you could put this possibilty into it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by SpunkyLoveMuff

quote:

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Originally posted by Andylongi
OMG excellent work Williz, the only thing which i miss is that i cant see my own DP on the top of the main window would be nice if you could put this possibilty into it.

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Make sure your sign in window is tall (and wide) enough for it to show

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Excellent job, tis not that often I use skins but this set caught my attention .

* Basilis congratulates Mattike for fixing the Preferences problem.
Works perfectly now.

* roflmao456 likes the effects

HAWT

a couple of minor MD incompatibilities (webcam snapshot and record buttons not loading) but all in all, very nice

Wow.

You officially made me say 'wow' out loud when I applied the skin lol.

Looks much better than the screenshot. Really nice. Well done.

ohhhhhh good work, my favorite skin is now OUT!!
Congratulations!

Im having another problem when im using the tabs i cant read the nicks at the Infusco Skin. Could you make that a lil bit lighter pls?

Thanks in advance

Yeah, and something else regarding the tabs... When it flashes it's too dark, and you have to really concentrate to see which one is flashing...

this is awesome... except the font looks like shit... sorry =\ (found out you need clear type for this... but i HATE clear type ]=)

and i also found a bug... the plus toasts dont get a title...

other than that... this is fucking mad willz


edit: i also liked having the status image in the left top corner of the chat window... ]= can i haz back?

also found a bug when you have the show contacts' details and put the option of no display picture

ive never known you to swearbefore nanafreak

i havent dl'ed it yet, due to people reporting little bugs and stuff, but i will some time, but at a glance, it looks peng. now im stuck with what skins to use ;<

The only thing I don't like is the status icons. Green for online, blue for away/idle, red for busy? I prefer traffic lights or similar. If we compare to older versions of Messenger, red was the colour for offline, so it's a bit weird having it for busy. When I saw a red status icon on the tabs I thought it meant offline, so I thought it was a bug at first, until I scanned through my contacts list and found it was for busy.

I feel bad for criticizing a skin which has had so much work put into it . But I guess it won't do any harm .

After looking through the posts here, i have also noticed some things they pointed out that i would like to see

1. The status picture returning to the top left of each conversation window.
2. I really do not like the font, i think you would be better off with a more rounded one? But thats only my opinion.
3. And I am having the same problems with the tabs here also.

Thanks!

OK i'll review whats been said here and in other places.

First off the bug with the preferences window is now fixed. I'll send Menthix an update later today.

Now to address stuff one by one since last night:

ok here goes

@Andylongi

The display picture in the top left corner of the contact list is something that I was mucking around with for a long time. The original plan was to make the display picture smaller and have the setting to be able to enable or disable it.

That part of the contact list relies 100% on the fact that its height does not change, otherwise it will cause all the tiling patterns to go fully out of whack. Yes there are tiling images, and because wlm can't define tile margins I had to do a cheap hack to make it seem like it works.

But its not that bad of a thing since most people spend their time in the chat window more than anything else. I wouldn't exactly sit there and stare blankly at a contact list going "ooh look how cool my dp looks". So to me losing the dp there isn't a big deal because most of the time your dp actions are done whilst in a chat (at least with me anyway).

@Shiny Rabbit

Ok I will have a talk with Matt to see how to get this all working again. Give me a day or two. If you notice anything else missing please let me know.

@AndyLongi (again)

The chat tabs text color is something that I would change If I could. Unfortunately you can't actually change the text color of a lot of things in Messenger Plus! and its something I have been complaining about for quite some time now. So if you want a fix then just demand Patchou add it

You can always edit the tab colors in the skininfo to something lighter, but I found anything lighter than that just doesn't blend as well as it could.

@Nanafreak.

Again this is an issue with being able to edit the color of certain text in Plus. Because I couldn't change this to something other than black I removed it. Even if I would have left it in it would not have been readable (at least in infusco). So I would have rather people know I did something rather than think I forgot to change it.

@Chris4

Its ok to criticize, everyone has their own tastes in things so its always good to hear what other people think just so you can try different design decisions in future. Again I know I won't be pleasing everyone so yeah.

@Eddie

#1 I could re-add if people wanted to, its just one more option I have to add to an already crowded options panel so I am not sure if I can even fit it in or not.

#2 The font was picked on the basis of having the largest range of special characters. I went with Arial Rounded which is a system font so I know there is a lot of special characters for it. I could have easily gone with a more rounded, smoother font, but then people would complain that more than half of their contacts names weren't showing. Ideally I would have liked to go with a more rounded font, but I would need to find one with good character support first.

It might be changed in future versions should I find one that's suitable.

#3 see above.

Ok, that should about cover it for now

This is byfar my favorite skin, well the only skin i will probably ever use.

Just one tiny thing, how do i get rid of the ads? i can't stand them.

Just out of interest..... how many people would be interested in this? :



and yes that is a screenshot.

What's that for?

A skin for an app called cd art display, its becoming fairly popular in the desktop customization side of things. It used to be only for winamp offering an alternate skin mode that displayed album art but now they have expanded into being compatible with just about every other major media player.

Pretty much you just point it to the media player you want to use and away you go. Its a nice little app considering it is very easy to skin and it supports transparency and aero blurring.

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
Just out of interest..... how many people would be interested in this? :



and yes that is a screenshot.

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Hi! I was wondering if both the skins can be made also for version 9.0? I like the 'Infusco' skin very much but I noticed it's only for verson 8.5. So I suggest the skins be made for version 9.0 as well.

quote:

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Originally posted by morphine{luv}Cory
Hi! I was wondering if both the skins can be made also for version 9.0? I like the 'Infusco' skin very much but I noticed it's only for verson 8.5. So I suggest the skins be made for version 9.0 as well.

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Any purple, red or blue monkeys?

quote:

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Originally posted by zach
Any purple, red or blue monkeys?

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Thanks. I could've always had a look myself but I wanted to mention the monkeys

Not a bad skin... Installed MsgPlus for it.

A little bug I found is that you somehow made the option panel and the about window smaller and so if someone wants to access the option panel of another skin, he cannot see the OK and the Cancel buttons.

P.S. How did you manage to align the About button with the other two? This is the reason I think it would be better if Option Panels used DialogTemplate. There would be no need to skin Messenger Plus! to get the result you want. I hope Patchou adds this sometime.

quote:

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Originally posted by Basilis
A little bug I found is that you somehow made the option panel and the about window smaller and so if someone wants to access the option panel of another skin, he cannot see the OK and the Cancel buttons.

P.S. How did you manage to align the About button with the other two? This is the reason I think it would be better if Option Panels used DialogTemplate. There would be no need to skin Messenger Plus! to get the result you want. I hope Patchou adds this sometime.

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What you did is like you cut off the edges of the existing window so users can only see the parent window?

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
#2 The font was picked on the basis of having the largest range of special characters. I went with Arial Rounded which is a system font so I know there is a lot of special characters for it. I could have easily gone with a more rounded, smoother font, but then people would complain that more than half of their contacts names weren't showing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Justin

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
#2 The font was picked on the basis of having the largest range of special characters. I went with Arial Rounded which is a system font so I know there is a lot of special characters for it. I could have easily gone with a more rounded, smoother font, but then people would complain that more than half of their contacts names weren't showing.

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Most/all my contacts with special characters in there names just show as squares with this skin enabled.

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I found one bug that should be fixed as fast as you can... with your skins... MP!L buttons tooltip have disappeared...

and other two that are minor ones in both skins:

1. links text color in information bar don't get colorized... neither in warning windows... see SS:



2. check boxes and buttons (accept and cancel one) don't get colorized in warning windows... this can not be seen in screenshot because I was using the default color... but if you select another one you will see that the pink color is still there...

limitations of windows live messenger.

Colorization does not apply to 926, 934, 935, 942, 945 and 946. So its nothing I can fix since wlm will ignore all colorization in those windows.

The text thing is another limitation.

The appear offline text is not controlled via uifiles but rather html text which has its own formatting rules so any colors you put in are ignored. The same goes for certain message boxes.

So yeah they're not really bugs, they're actually just wlm not wanting to use what I set.

very nice skin, a skin i might actually use

a "bug": when dps are disabled in the contact list, their space is still "reserved", not allowing nickname text to surround the complete window.

a suggestion: add option to see your own dp in contact list, allow contact list toolbar to be moved to the right, add that sexy dropdown thing in convo windows to contact list toolbars

quote:

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Originally posted by Voldemort
very nice skin, a skin i might actually use

a "bug": when dps are disabled in the contact list, their space is still "reserved", not allowing nickname text to surround the complete window.

a suggestion: add option to see your own dp in contact list, allow contact list toolbar to be moved to the right, add that sexy dropdown thing in convo windows to contact list toolbars

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quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
The toolbar to the right? what as in right aligned? Anything other than that will destroy the layout as it relies on the heights i set to remain the same.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
Re-adding the dp to the contact list is something I don't plan to do unless I figure out a way to resize it. I put up the reason why above, to put it simply it will just destroy the layout if its there.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
I will look into the first thing you said.

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Ok sure I will add the right toolbar alignment as an extra setting for 1.0.2, its really easy to do that and it does not require extra space in the options panel or translations.

PSM Nick center alignment I won't do though. It can be done, but if i did do it I would have to get more translations done and then resize the options panel and graphics just to fit it in. Too much effort

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
PSM Nick center alignment I won't do though. It can be done, but if i did do it I would have to get more translations done and then resize the options panel and graphics just to fit it in. Too much effort

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quote:

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Originally posted by Voldemort

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
PSM Nick center alignment I won't do though. It can be done, but if i did do it I would have to get more translations done and then resize the options panel and graphics just to fit it in. Too much effort

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i agree with you now (registry option =D? one can hope.)

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Wouldn't it be better if you put an option to disable the font and replace it with the default one which is compatible with all special characters?

quote:

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Originally posted by Basilis
Wouldn't it be better if you put an option to disable the font and replace it with the default one which is compatible with all special characters?

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I understand. I have a question. The toolbar to the right is easy, I have already done it. But, is there a way to have a button which hides the entire toolbar? It can be done in the chat window but can it be done in the contact list? I mean, you have told me that you cannot put something in a window if it is not already there.

quote:

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Originally posted by Basilis
I understand. I have a question. The toolbar to the right is easy, I have already done it. But, is there a way to have a button which hides the entire toolbar? It can be done in the chat window but can it be done in the contact list? I mean, you have told me that you cannot put something in a window if it is not already there.

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bumping to announce the release of the 1.0.2 build for both versions. Changes are as follows:

Fixed

Font special character issue
Sign in animation glitch
Spanish tooltips not showing
No display picture mode retaining extra padding
No display picture mode crashing
No display picture mode button glitch
Contact cards animation glitch
Skin options showing title that overlaps the Phunk'n logo


Added:

Both skins come with a folder called "Skin tweaks". This lets users do the following:
     * Restore the display picture at the top of the contact list
     * Align the top contact list display picture to the left or right
     * Restore the icon in the top left of the chat window
     * Reset the font back to Messenger default
     * Specify their own custom font by editing the registry entry

Toolbars can now be right aligned

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
Restore the display picture at the top of the contact list

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quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
Toolbars can now be right aligned

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quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
No display picture mode retaining extra padding

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what for the skin? or the reg files?

Skins on the first page of this thread, reg files in the actual skin

how do i remove the padding from the remains of the tiny contact list DPs?

quote:

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Originally posted by Voldemort
how do i remove the padding from the remains of the tiny contact list DPs?

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i'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, so here it is

hmm interesting, mine doesn't act like that.... mine goes all the way to the edge, it wasn't a registry setting or anything I just made it like that.... hmm. Wonder if anyone else is getting this. Actually I think I know whats wrong now I'll fix it up.

ohh i thought it was a leftover from the dp or an intended indentation

quote:

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Originally posted by Voldemort
ohh i thought it was a leftover from the dp or an intended indentation

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I like the update Willz Nicer font, thats the only change i noticed but yeah, i like the font

Great update my friend... thanks for it...

btw... have you notice that there is an strange behaviour with the MP!L settings password pop up??? actually I am not talking about the bg issue of it (niveus bug only)... I am talking about the lost focus of the OK button... maybe this is a MP!L hidden bug???

Yeah well anything that happens with the plus skin now is beyond me. I did what I could so I am not going to kill anymore time on the Plus windows. It just takes up far too much time.

quote:

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Originally posted by Willz
Yeah well anything that happens with the plus skin now is beyond me. I did what I could so I am not going to kill anymore time on the Plus windows. It just takes up far too much time.

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Great Skin but I was just wondering about whether there will be a release of an ad remover like a small registry fix for it for those who wants to remove it?

quote:

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Originally posted by Matt-in
Great Skin but I was just wondering about whether there will be a release of an ad remover like a small registry fix for it for those who wants to remove it?

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great skin i'm using it right now and i really love it

i just wonder if there is some easy way to change the color of the chat window's ... er ... "chat area" in the infusco version. i would really apreciate it as some contacts use dark fonts and i don't want to use the plus option to change their font

still, great work man, i've been using you're skins since before the plus! skining component and to me these are the best so far

quote:

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Originally posted by Rophagus
great skin i'm using it right now and i really love it

i just wonder if there is some easy way to change the color of the chat window's ... er ... "chat area" in the infusco version. i would really apreciate it as some contacts use dark fonts and i don't want to use the plus option to change their font

still, great work man, i've been using you're skins since before the plus! skining component and to me these are the best so far

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Thanks, that was exactly what i was looking for the "use light backgrounds..." option

now it's perfect ^^

Found a bug.

1 - Hide the toolbars in the conversation window by clicking the arrow below the toolbar.
2 - Change to a different skin or no skin.
3 - The toolbars do not show. Only way to get them back is to enable the Infusco/Niveus skin and show the toolbars again.

thats not a bug when you think about it, phunk'n adds a button which replicates the hide/show toolbar featureunder the menu bars in messenger. Its more of a tricky limitation.

Its not a special custom drawer, its actually just something the accesses the same thing that messenger does through the file menu. To bring them back just hit alt and hold alt in a convo to bring up the menu or just show the menu bar from the main window.

Yeah I thought it would be a limitation. Ah well.

Simple but nice.. Thank u so much...

I need the old versions for Messenger 8.5. Where can i get it?

I found the Infusco version somewhere
http://www.oledownload.com/downloads/phunkn-infus...ive-messenger.html

quote:

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Originally posted by Basilis
I found the Infusco version somewhere
http://www.oledownload.com/downloads/phunkn-infus...ive-messenger.html

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He may have it on his website. In his list of downloads.

The guys of Design Evolved need to update this part of the site:

http://www.designevolved.net/board/downloads.php?cat=3

and then you rix will be able to download it there...