Shoutbox

         <AllowContactListChange>false</AllowContactListChange>
         <AllowChatWndChange>false</AllowChatWndChange>

put simply these control plyus's own buttons in my skin i added options to choose whether the messenger plus buttons are hidden or not as i did them on an individual basis i found that plus put its buttons in alongside my copies so these 2 statements solve that

allowcontactlistchange lets you set whether or not plus uts in its own toolbar buttons or not and allowchatwndchange does same thing but for the 4 buttons in chat window, neither of these are needed to make tab colors work but as there in the same messengerplus group tag that i pasted from my skininfo for the above example they got copied with the rest of it.