Shoutbox

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Idea may be nice but it is also as good as totally impossible.

Especially if you want something which simulates multiple versions without installing/uninstalling Messenger.

You actually would end up recreating each and every Messenger from scratch. Everything would exactly be the same, except for the connection part.

Thus all this is not possible.

A more "easier" (read: very relative easy, aka: still extremely hard) way is to create a program which simulates the protocol/internet traffic. A proxy so to speak, but which runs locally on your computer as the backbone server to witch the existing messenger programs can connect.

Such a local protocol/switchboard server would be usefull for testing certain parts of Plus! too (and translating for example), etc. Although it would never be able to replace the real thing of course.

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Anyways, to be realistic, such a tool will never be made. Or will never be practical to use. The best thing you can do is as you've always done: connecting to the real thing and testing everything on the real thing.

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You could use the internal Messenger librarys such as MSNCORE and UXCORE to recreate the window without running the Messenger process.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Idea may be nice but it is also as good as totally impossible.

Especially if you want something which simulates multiple versions without installing/uninstalling Messenger.

You actually would end up recreating each and every Messenger from scratch. Everything would exactly be the same, except for the connection part.

Thus all this is not possible.

A more "easier" (read: very relative easy, aka: still extremely hard) way is to create a program which simulates the protocol/internet traffic. A proxy so to speak, but which runs locally on your computer as the backbone server to witch the existing messenger programs can connect.

Such a local protocol/switchboard server would be usefull for testing certain parts of Plus! too (and translating for example), etc. Although it would never be able to replace the real thing of course.

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Anyways, to be realistic, such a tool will never be made. Or will never be practical to use. The best thing you can do is as you've always done: connecting to the real thing and testing everything on the real thing.

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im happy to test on the real thing, all i was saying is both my pc and my dads pc only have 8.5 installed i dont want all the hassle of uninstalling and installing different versions of messenger everytime i make a skin just to test it works on that version, nor do i want to by 2 pcs for testing purposes and keep having to buy a new pc every time a version of mesenger is released.

which is why unless it becomes possible to install multiple versions of the messenger software onto a single pc for testing purposes any skins i devolpe will only be compatable with whatever version of messenger i have installed at the time which at present is 8.5.

if anyone knows a way to have multiple versions of messenger installed on the same pc and run all 3 versions simultaniously then id love to hear about it.

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Originally posted by vikke
You could use the internal Messenger librarys such as MSNCORE and UXCORE to recreate the window without running the Messenger process.

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many people would love you if you would do that...

But still, you would need to include some stuff like contacts, side tab content, and all kinds of content, etc in order to see everything as it would be in the real thing. Doing this all would mean you would almost end up with a total recreation. Not wordth the effort I think, when you could simply use the real thing.

I'm not able to make anything like this, nor would I know exactly how, but I do believe making a "protocol simulator/proxy kind of thing" is more easier and more generic. (and I know some people have already done something like this in a very very basic form)...
You can compare it with those proxies which intercept and send their own stuff via the protocol. As it is "just" that which makes people unable to test their skins: the connection.

Well I dunno. But I would be more in favor for such a proxy since you would be able to use that also, in a limited way, to test certain parts of Plus! (and other addons), to translate quicker, etc, etc.




[OFF TOPIC]

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Originally posted by stuartbennett
which is why unless it becomes possible to install multiple versions of the messenger software onto a single pc for testing purposes any skins i devolpe will only be compatable with whatever version of messenger i have installed at the time which at present is 8.5.

if anyone knows a way to have multiple versions of messenger installed on the same pc and run all 3 versions simultaniously then id love to hear about it.

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Installing multiple versions has been done since years, by many people. And explained in many posts...

- Simply uninstall the version you currently have first.
- Then start installing the lowest version you want.
- When that is done, copy the entire folder (including its subfolders) to something like "\MSN Messenger 7.0.123"
- Then install the next version (eg: MSN Messenger 7.5)
- And again copy the folder...
- etc
Do this until you have installed all versions.
You can now run whatever version you like by running the msnmsgr.exe program from inside the version folder you want....

(PS: be carefull with WLM9, in case you are a beta tester, it is beta and the installer is not quite what it must be. And new libraries may corrupt the older versions. Some people have reported the above method doesn't work for WLM9, so...)

eg: I've currently got version 6.2 to 8.5 installed, including almost all different builds (of course the majority doesn't work anymore as you're not allowed to connect with them anymore... note to myself: start cleaning your HDD)

[/OFF TOPIC]

thanks cookie, im sorry for going off topic, ill get on to doing that asap.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Well I dunno. But I would be more in favor for such a proxy since you would be able to use that also, in a limited way, to test certain parts of Plus! (and other addons), to translate quicker, etc, etc.

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Thinking of piracy here pirates made a way to have Business Vista activate itself against a fake server in a Virtual Machine, could 'that sort of thing' be done for this?

Is there not a way, to have some sort of application that emulates wlm and can import the changes you have made from the skin? perhaps this is a big project but surely it can be done with a success?

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Originally posted by aNILEator

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Well I dunno. But I would be more in favor for such a proxy since you would be able to use that also, in a limited way, to test certain parts of Plus! (and other addons), to translate quicker, etc, etc.

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Thinking of piracy here pirates made a way to have Business Vista activate itself against a fake server in a Virtual Machine, could 'that sort of thing' be done for this?

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Yes, that is almost exactly what I was thinking about.

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Originally posted by smooth-criminal
Is there not a way, to have some sort of application that emulates wlm and can import the changes you have made from the skin? perhaps this is a big project but surely it can be done with a success?

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that is exactly what this thread is about and being discussed

What would also be nice is a WLM preview with tooltips telling you what section of messenger is where. What I mean is this:

Have an interactive contact list where you hover over the display picture and it tells you the ID to look for to modify that element. Then hover over the wordwheel, and it tells you the ID to look for, etc. etc. It would be easier than searching through text documents for the elements you need.

Maybe even have a special "skin maker" kind of like the chat log viewer. On the left hand side, text documents would load when you hover over certain sections of messenger on the right. They would scroll down to the section of text that needs to be edited to change whatever you're hovering over.

I can't explain it to well with words, but hopefully you get the gist of it. This would all be offline as it wouldn't need to connect to messenger at all. There could even be a test messenger button that would skin a "fake" messenger image with the changes you have made.

I don't know if this is possible tho .

That's almost the same of another idea I had. I was thinking of some sort of program which would display a picture of WLM and it's separate windows, and when you hovered over something it would give you the ID, and then it would be possible to double click on that element and the folder containing the file/element, or the file/element itself would open up to allow editing.

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Originally posted by Aardvark
That's almost the same of another idea I had. I was thinking of some sort of program which would display a picture of WLM and it's separate windows, and when you hovered over something it would give you the ID, and then it would be possible to double click on that element and the folder containing the file/element, or the file/element itself would open up to allow editing.

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Exactly. Kind of like the "live preview" presented in A-Patch showing the customizations as you enable/disable the options. It would make skinning a lot faster/easier if a skin editor like this was constructed.

I don't know if anyone has ever used the program by Stardock called "Skinstudio" that is used to make windowblind skins, but I was thinking that something like that (altho a LOT simpler) would be a nice idea. You click the element in a preview picture, and then the possible modifications would pop up that you could edit. For example:

You click the dashboard background in a preview image. Options pop up to change the image itself, the dimensions, foreground, background, transparancy, etc etc. Then there is still always the way we skin now (editing the text files) for more advanced options and such.