Shoutbox

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Originally posted by Volv

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Originally posted by Willz
Although I sorta wanted to hear like what people wanted to see done in the skin but oh well this is good too

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lol
Well then, I think most importantly you should ensure that the 'basic skin' places minimal limitations on creativity - skinners using this skin should be able to do everything they currently can without being guided down any specific design paths because I think the last thing we want is 500 identical and generic skins with a couple of different pics and text colours separating them

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Like i have said before, its just going to be the normal default windows live design. What will be different is the internal bits of it, they will work in a better manner, more simple like back in MSN Messenger.

I will not be modifying how messenger looks at all, it will mainly be code edits that will make it easier for skinners to make a skin.

So I just don't see it affecting any creativity at all since a person who doesn't want to take skinning seriously will always just edit one or two images, whilst someone who wants to make something more will push forward and modify more.

But meh we will soon see.

If menthix would have allowed all the rips hes denied, then what we would see would be 500 identical skins with just a couple of different backgrounds and text color edits Either way there will always be people who do this and yeah nothings gonna change it.

If Menthix gives me permission ill post a screenshot of the Ev0 rip he showed me. It made me lol and sort of shows the need for this

errmmm...
Have you ever seen that using the "Read Only" or "Hidden" atribute at the file propierties won't allow the resources to be seen? (except for when the person already knows that, knows how to turn Hidden files to visible)

I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, if you can it would probably be great. I'm just finding it a bit difficult to imagine what the product will be like

Okay, another suggestion which you may have (and probably have) already thought of is extensive comments in UIFILEs (such as a description of what the current UIFILE is for at the top, what each element corresponds to in WLM, etc.) so that users can easily track down what they're looking for.

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Originally posted by Volv
I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, if you can it would probably be great. I'm just finding it a bit difficult to imagine what the product will be like

Okay, another suggestion which you may have (and probably have) already thought of is extensive comments in UIFILEs (such as a description of what the current UIFILE is for at the top, what each element corresponds to in WLM, etc.) so that users can easily track down what they're looking for.

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Yeah I have the final product already in my head and I sort of forget that people can't see that

I was giving that a lot of thought as to how I am going to structure the comments in the skin not just for english users, but for the non-english languages.

What I had planned was to have an an index at the start of the xml which shows what sections are in the xml and that way if people want to jump to one specific part they just hit CTRL+F and find the specific heading defined in the index section.

If people have any suggestions I'd like to hear it.

I can see the file being overwhelmed by comments if I do in fact implement multi-language comments, so what I have thought of is to include multiple skin info files, one per language.

if you really want to be a nazi you could sign every file going into the script database with a special private key, and embed a public key into messenger

for debugging, everyone could have their own public key also embedded into messenger, so they could run their own skins on their own computer without submitting it to the scripts DB.

but, don't use that idea. it's stupid.

This might sound absurd, but how about releasing the skins into the public domain or with very relaxed licensing (Creative Commons). Think freedom, think software libre.

The license people use to release their skins is up to the individual skin creator.

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Originally posted by mezzanine
This might sound absurd, but how about releasing the skins into the public domain or with very relaxed licensing (Creative Commons). Think freedom, think software libre.

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Yeah people on deviantart use creative commons, but that still doesn't really do much people still take work and do not credit the original author. There are still people out there who do not know what it means or even bother to read licenses anyway.

Anyway and now for your viewing pleasure here is an Ev0 rip. This shows the sort of stuff that Menthix rejects on a regular basis. This guy did not approach me about anything, all he did was replace my background image with his and try to release it as his own work

So this is one of the many reasons why I am making the open source skin, you guys don't hear about all the skins that Menthix rejects and I'm sure if he showed a few you would be thinking the same thing.

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Originally posted by MenthiX
The license people use to release their skins is up to the individual skin creator.

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In fact...I guess anyone publishes their licenses. or at least don't make it completely clear!
(an unclear would be "CreativeCommons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported", and clearing it would be the description).

What if rules were explicitly stated in the skinning how-to's as well as in the instructions of how to upload your skin? You can't say they wern't warned.