Shoutbox

Seeing as though the contest has been announced I thought I'd post up a preview of my next skin.

So last contest even though I didn't enter I still showed people what I would have entered just to give people an idea of what they would have been up against and the sort of things that are possible given some time. That skin was Phunk'n.

So this new skin is something I have been wanting to do for ages but I really couldn't figure out the technicalities behind its design. The main problem I've had with skins in the past was that in order to create a lot of color variations I had to add a whole bunch more images and the amount of color variations were limited to the amount I could fit into the options panel.

So since in 2011 colorization is technically hidden by default, instead of re-enabling it I decided to go down a different path and create my own form of colorization that allows much better results.

In this new skin when users click the colorize button it launches a browser window to a website I have made that specifically allows people to create, save, edit and download color themes for this skin.

Themes are downloaded in form of a .reg file which then updates the skins code to apply the new color values. This goes above and beyond normal colorization because people are picking 5 colors to style their skin with as opposed to just 1. It really allows for some pretty awesome color variations.

At launch there will be over 100 color themes available for people to try and also the ability for people to create their own. If I want to add more themes for people to download it's as simple as me editing the website instead of the skin. I'm hoping to apply this system to the other skin updates I do so yeah.

Anyway this skin will be launching soon so keep an eye open. Oh yeah and as a bonus this will work on Messenger 2009 and 2011 so everyone can enjoy it. You just have to have Plus! 5 to use it.




Example of a theme.