Skinning Miranda - tips?

[Aztek]

Hi there,
I'm planning to spend some of my free time to skin miranda. I fell in love in fan concept for project neon's skype and im gonna try my best to 'translate it' into miranda's gears.
here - image was too big to put in in [ imgs ] http://s5.ifotos.pl/img/windows-1_aaqarnw.jpg
(sorry, i didn't manage to find orginal author)

For now im gonna ask for some tips from more experienced users. I've some experience skinning miranda, but i've worked only for changes to tweak it to be more simple, minimalistic in cool way (my magnum opus - http://s5.ifotos.pl/img/mriandapn_aaqarsx.png kinda get old ).
I know our plugins for skinning (both for contacts list and msg window) are kinda stuck somewhere in 2002 and it's shame, but let's talk about some problems here.

I don't see many problems with Contact List in this case, buuuuuuut...
1. Is it possible to make nice looking circle avatars (profile pics)? There is an option to round them, but result is ugly AF. - http://s10.ifotos.pl/img/Zrzut-ekr_aaqaxes.png
2. Any tips to make color strokes on avatars to show current status or new msgs? I tried to make new icon pack for protocol and make its icons bigger, then use it as an overlay, but everthing thats not 16px x 16px doesnt work.
3. Show last msg and author in 1st line below name?
4. Icon to notify that mentioned msg was seen?
5. I remember there was an option to dock contact list to msg window, is it gone now? would be useful.
6. Ok, i don't even dream about getting your profile pic to show it in the corner but i have an idea for this.

Ok, now serious problem - msg window. As far as i know the best plugin for skinning is TabSRMM - which is also terrible! No transparency, hard to get any good looking effect.
The biggest problem i see is to make that texting box. Any tricks to get rid of borders, add icons? Use some java scripts or something there?
Also is it possible to have only one of container and chanigng interlocutor on contact list?

And when it comes to IEView:
I've never seen a feature of marking msgs as read inside chat. Is it possible? Also - can javascript be used to support facebook features like sending stickers and other facebook stuff? Maybe some javascript toolbar in IEView will help to support some facebook's features?

I think that's it for now. Thanks for any help

[Robyer]

Hi, I'm afraid Miranda is too old and rigid for this advanced skinning and most of things wouldn't be possible with current clist_modern/tabsrmm plugins...

1. I don't know.
2. Not without implementing such thing in clist_modern itself, I guess.
3. This may be possible with use of Variables plugin.
4. There is plugin MessageState which shows extra icon in clist if message was read (for supported protocols, e.g. Facebook)
5. I think this would require special plugin, there is no option or current plugin that allows this (or at least I don't know any).

You can barely skin TabSRMM. There is some info: http://wiki.miranda-ng.org/index.php?title=Plugin:TabSRMM/en/Skinning_format

I don't use IEView but I don't think there was ever done any change to support manually marking messages as read - although it's theoretically possible. Also I don't know what Miranda methods one could call from IEView's JavaScript... but again, theoretically is possible to implement it (with some changes in IEView / FB plugin itself).

[Aztek]

At this point i made messege window, inspired but not copied.

I have to admit, limitations of Miranda started to irritate me, that's why it took me so long.
I'm not happy enough with result either, but i feel its best what i can get.

In meantime i started to play with Telegram - it has godlike desktop client that truly belongs to 2017.
Looks good, plenty of functionality and still gets big updates. And that's when i decided to switch.
After almost 10 years of using Miranda, i miss big updates that could keep Miranda from drowning, but even when the fork NG kick in, there was no big changes and therefore future for Miranda. So now im just exporting my (gotta say rich) history and im making step ahead.

[Vulpix]

It's quite sad - but Miranda pretty much has only one active developer - Ghazan.

Then it has three sleeper agents - Robyer, Unsane

And a guy who added Omemo recently, but yeah.

Many of the recent additions (like support for Discord) and other fixes have been pretty much funded by me and coded by Ghazan (or Unsane and Robyer).

It is truly sad, but at least it hasn't been abandoned completely.

[Robyer]

As a big limitation I see we are using the C++ with plain Windows Forms. Perhaps using better GUI toolkit would make huge difference regarding look&feel.

And then yeah... there is only few developers, only ghazan doing bigger changes but mostly internal non-GUI stuff.

[Aztek]

Yup, exactly - look&feel is miranda's weakness. I never really paid that much attention to that - i switched to Miranda in 2008 and since then i never looked at alternatives, i didn't have to. But friend showed me Telegram and i realized how outdated Miranda is. Everything there is so smooth, elegant, there is tons of features* and doesnt have an impact on performence**.
Meantime miranda's default look remembers Windows XP and trying to make it better by yourself has limitations, since (i think) noone really supports clist_modern and tabsrmm (i send a ticket with really simple tweak 4 years ago - http://trac.miranda-ng.org/ticket/410 no response at all***). I won't  even mention that these plugins themselves are super clunky. It's kinda shame, that there is no more revolutions in Miranda and i know it's actually hard to going on when there are only few devs.

Our situation is still better than in our friends' camp - Miranda IM. Did you visit their site recently? Tried to download plugins?

*kinda like facebook, but more simplistic, made waaay better.
**neither do miranda, but c'mon - compare these two.
***yup, confirmed. Nightwish doesn't maintain it any longer.

[Vulpix]

I migrated from IM when the "big divide" happened; but I used to do some troubleshooting with borkra related to MSN/Skype I believe. It's been such a long time ago. I didn't actually know IM was still alive. I guess it is not indifferent from NG right now though - it also only has one guy doing the work for the most part.

And I really like the miranda interface, believe it or not I've set it up for ~5 of my friends ish and we all use it. But as you have said, miranda is truly dated - and there are so many issues that one man simply cannot solve, even if he was actually dedicated to the task; but Ghazan - and all the other miranda guys who did stuff - have jobs and this is more of a hobby for them.

Miranda is however still the only way to go for me. I do not have a smartphone and I despise all of the "facebooks" and whatever the kids use these days No seriously, why does an IM protocol need to know my phone number?

I'm a big supporter of internet privacy and such things - within reason, of course.  (which is the reason why I cannot use Telegram - I don't like someone knowing my phone number. If I wanted to use my phone, I'd send an SMS!).

I don't know what the future of IM is. I guess that as long as there's at least one person doing something for Miranda, I will keep using it; it's been good to me all these years (since 2005 I believe; at least that is as far as my history reaches).

I wasn't really thinking about it but yeah, I feel sad. Melancholic, at the very least.

I hope Miranda doesn't die. 

[Aztek]

Miranda is however still the only way to go for me. I do not have a smartphone and I despise all of the "facebooks" and whatever the kids use these days No seriously, why does an IM protocol need to know my phone number?
I'm a big supporter of internet privacy and such things - within reason, of course.  (which is the reason why I cannot use Telegram - I don't like someone knowing my phone number. If I wanted to use my phone, I'd send an SMS!).

It's actually a side-effect of being a direct competitor to WhatsApp i guess. It has pros and cons. When it comes to privacy Telegram should be actually on the podium, you can read about it on their site. When i was using Miranda i used Gadu-Gadu protocol, which has nothing to do with safety. I didn't had much trouble with switching, cuz this protocol was kinda dying already anyway. But hey, im not here to promote Telegram, i just admire it.

I wasn't really thinking about it but yeah, I feel sad. Melancholic, at the very least.
I hope Miranda doesn't die. 

It's not gonna die, because one telegram fag came in and is bit*hing around about it, don't worry
But yeah - problem with IT is that when you don't progress, you regress. You can't stand too long in one place.

[Aztek]

If someone is interested in that IEView skin above (or/and my clist_modern/tabsrmm/prev. ieview) here it is:
https://github.com/Aztek92/MirandaSkins

To be honest i just started my github channel and wanted to put something there
I wanted also to put it somewhere in Skins section, but there is no place for packages, and since this thread is about skinning anyway...

[Robyer]

Aztek, I created special repository under Miranda NG organization for skins etc. - https://github.com/miranda-ng/addons

I can add you as a contributor there, if you wish to put your skins there :-)

[Aztek]

Yeah, sure, why not.

[Robyer]

Aztek, done, check https://github.com/miranda-ng/addons/invitations

Just please make sure that Clist_modern skin will be in own subfolder (currently you have /Clist_modern/metro.msf, so it should be rather /Clist_modern/Metro/metro.msf)

[Aztek]

Repository updated, with some previews and comments to each skin.
I know i broke the intergalactic rule, but i didn't use relative links for previews, forgive me my sins, i had trouble using them.

[Robyer]

Aztek, nice
I fixed the relative paths as mentioned here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10189374/2801482