How to edit contact list window as follows?

[washer]

I'd like to alter my contact list window so that the user icon is 96x96.

In addition, I also want the Profile name to appear beneath (space given is not accurate in my pic) the new 96x96 picture. As well, I want the "Connected" status messages to appear where the yellow line is.

Is this possible?
Thank you for reading!

[washer]

Sorry, thought image was attached.

[j_heng]

Good enough?
(Post to follow with Window-ContactList.xml)

[j_heng]

Please excuse the double post (angel)
It's for file attachment purposes :)

Note: Not thoroughly tested, quick ~10minute hack job.

Just replace your Window-ContactList.xml in \Trillian\stixe\interface\Default

OR

You can create a new folder if you know how to edit the desc.txt and main.dtd to point to all the files from Default and only the new Window-ContactList.xml in the new folder.

Note: you'll probably want to back up the original just in case. If not, you'll need to clean install Trillian somewhere and copy it from that installation.

[DiamondNRG]

Originally posted by skryingbreath
skry is proven wrong yet again :) (LMAO)

You were just stuck in skin land, when this is an interface question/problem ;)

j_heng: Remember long ago when you made that really nice contact list interface for me? And then you left me to tackle the message windows on my own? Well I still can't get it working right ... have you another 10 or so minutes to do another quick hack job for me? If so I will post a mockup of what I am looking for...

[j_heng]

skry: Well, I didn't make a new interface, just modified the Window-ContactList.xml file for the Default interface... so you could just replace Window-ContactList.xml in your default folder with the one I attached. Is that what you mean?

EnergyGod: Sure, post or PM what you want and I'll see if I can scrounge together some time today. (Hooray for procrastinating assignments :P)

[DiamondNRG]

j_heng:

Skry wants it to be in the skins folder ... so a way to have the look without changing any part of the default interface ... I'm not sure that would be possible though.

I like interfaces, they allow you to combine layout and look as you want with a particular interface and skin combination.

I will post back shortly with a rough mock-up of what I would like to see for the message window portion of the interface.

I will start with the message window from "Iconholder-Scrollbar-Mod" being that I am using that interface. So whatever you see on my mockup, thats what I was running.

[DiamondNRG]

Alright here we go ... I hope I got everything I wanted on here... and that its not too confusing... but im sure some of it is not possible...

#1 - I would love for the tabs to only display the name of the person I am talking to, not the medium or my account name ... that always makes the screen messy and that information never fits on the tabs. Tabs that auto-size would help this problem slightly, but that is only if you can't get that other "junk" off the tabs. If possible, options for the hide and close buttons as well in the view menu (otherwise I can just use a skin that works with the configurator to fix this, but it would be better as part of the interface)

#2 - An anchor on the menu bar like you did with the contact list.

#3 - A view menu option for large toolbar, small toolbar, and NO TOOLBAR ... with no toolbar being the default.

#4 - I would ideally like for this bar to display the renamed names, not the account names, and also maybe be an option to disable it in the view menu (especially if changing the text to use renamed names is not possible)

#5 - Default the avatar and send button to both being hidden (I know they are anchored already, but I dont like always having to slide them)

#6 - An option in the view menu to remove the scrollbar like you did on the contact list.

#7 - An anchor on the edit bar if possible, otherwise an option in the view menu.

#8 - A view menu option for the status bar (or just removal of it - but only if #9 is possible) ... If 9 is not possible then please make this optional with the default being that the status bar is still displayed.

#9 - Somehow to get the icon on the tab to display when the user is typing ... or even the text to change color on the tab or something (like it does when you have a new message) But I do not want to lose the ability to tell the medium and status from the icon on the tab.

Wow ... hopefully you do not regret the decision to spend a few minutes on this for me. I would really appreciate it, Trillian needs an interface that is highly tweakable, and yours works SO well for the contact list already ;) ... Would be nice if there is a view menu option on the contact list to move the iconholder to the top (even if the anchor on it doesnt work then) ... and another option to not display the section title bars ;)

You rock j_heng, thanks ahead of time.

[eh?one]

Skry: yes, it's possible to make the changes in the skin... but it's not necessaarily a good idea. the changes will go into effect on any interface the user selects... even ones where it has an adverse effect. a configurator option, however, would be the best of both worlds :)

Originally posted by EnergyGod
<snip>I'm replying because i think you have really great ideas for an interface :)

1: not possible
2: definitely possible, great idea
3: Again, good idea
4: it's not possible to have it display renamed names if you want it to keep the "From ... to ..." If you want it to just display the other user's name, it's possible. It's not possible to add a hide option to the view menu, but it is possible to seperate it into its own panel, however, it wouldn't be pretty
5: Agreed, that's one change i made myself long time ago
6: Not possible in the view menu, but it can be done with an anchor
7: I've done both in personal mods, the view option seems to be my favourite (and has the added side effect of being able to position it wherever you please)
8: Possible
9: the typing icon is not allowed in tabs (yet)

with that being said, checkout the default view for my own personal interface :D

[j_heng]

Well then, as far as my experience goes, sorry skry ;) The point of stixe is to use the interfaces, so... it's an interface :P.

eh?one replied while I was reading, and basically posted what I was going to (in regards to responding numerically with which was feasible/possible etc...)

That said... this isn't really a quick hackjob huh? (LOL)

Man... what did I get myself into... :P

Just kidding. Anyways, this'll take more time than just a 10 minute hackjob, so you'll have to wait a while, especially with 4 fairly sized assignments due this week for me and my heading out of town next weekend. It'll probably be about a week before I can really start work into your request. *cough*Especially with my current Guild Wars addiction...*cough* :)

[j_heng]

Alright, so after finally getting around to it and a couple hours of work, here's what I've got.

Implemented 2, 3, 5 and sorta 8...
6 and 7 were giving me funny results when I was trying to add in the anchors, probably due to my inexperience.
8 is "sorta" because it's done, but it doesn't look too pretty, again, probably something fixable but I don't know how. Description: Well, I didn't want to add it into the view menu since that would mean I would need to add 3 more options: large toolbar with/without statusbar, small toolbar with/without statusbar and no toolbar with/without status bar. So, added as an anchor, however, if the anchor is resized to 0 (bottom of the window) the grabable part of the anchor disappears, so I left 2 px space at the bottom (same thing for the menubar anchor actually, but that one is less noticable).

6 was screwing around with me in that, when I added in the anchor into the Panel-TextDisplay, it did this funky thing where the message part wouldn't display, and the scrollbar buttons were at the very left (same width as before) however, mousing over any part of the display panel would result in the "appropriate" scrollbar portion highlighting. I checked my values several times, but this always seemed to be the result, so I canned the attempt.

7 is most likely due to my inexperience with %% variables or whatever they are: %tzoneEditBar.height%, so when the anchor was there, it wouldn't actually move anywhere and stuff... yeah... it just didn't work for me... (LOL)

So anyways, here it is for now. If anyone (eh?one?) could possibly tell me what I'm doing wrong for the other things or tell me how to get them to work, I can add those in and edit this attachment to the more "fully featured" one.

Edit: Oh, and I guess I forgot to state that since EG was basing it on the Iconholder and Scrollbar Mod, I did the same. So this includes the Iconholder and Scrollbar Mod plus some of the message window modifications as per EG's ideas in his above post.

[j_heng]

That would depend on exactly what you were looking for... ;) It's gotta be easier than what EG requested... :P

Small how? Just the buddy icon? Get rid of some stuff?

If you wanted to look at it yourself (since I recall you saying you wanted to get into doing skinXML stuff :P (LOL)), take a look at Window-ContactList.xml in the interface folder you wanted to play with (if it's not there, then it might be using another interface's file, like the default. Check in main.dtd for where it's getting the Window-ContactList from).
If you can read code at all, it should be pretty easy to find what you're looking for. Most of the names mean pretty much what they're called, so you can go look for the MyIDPanel (or whatever it was called...) and take a look at the values for the frames and components it contains.

Locations are done using num="" width="" or num="" height="" where num is the numerical value, and width and height are either 0 or 1. 0 means to measure from the left or the top, whereas 1 means to measure from the right or the bottom (depending on whether it's for width or height).
So, something like:
<left num="0" width="0"/>
<right num="5" width="1/>
<top num="0" height="0"/>
<bottom num="0" height="1"/>

would result in whatever object those belong to going from the very left to 5 px from the right, and from top to bottom of the parent object.

[DiamondNRG]

Very nice work jheng!

I can't believe I forgot to check this thread all weekend...

I love the toolbar gone :) lack of avatar and send button is beautiful, and the anchor on the menu bar is just heavenly.

You are right about the statusbar thing ... that anchor looks funny when its dragged off, but I will probably leave it on anyways because of the typing indicator now that I try it both ways...

Maybe eh?one can post how to accomplish whatever you were struggling with on the edit bar, my message windows look awesome all cleaned up.

I gotta go fix the width of things now though, i forgot on my copy of your other mod I had pretty much removed all minimum widths, so i could have a very skinny contact list and pretty much as small of message windows as I wanted.

But great work :)

[eh?one]

i don't have time to explain it all, but i'm posting a personal interface of mine that uses a similar technique. feel free to steal any of the code i you want...

[DiamondNRG]

Sorry I didn't get to comment on the dynamic interface earlier.

First of all ... great interface ... there are a few things I really like, that hopefully j_heng can get worked into the other one, as it already has the contact list tweaked out the way I like it.

The above posted version of the EG Mod has a major bug as well, the "menu bar" anchor seems to not work right on a container, in otherwords I set it to be hidden then when a new IM arrives in the same container, the menu bar is visible again ... perhaps it needs a setting in the INI for its default position or something? Because I would like for them all to be hidden until I need them (instead of the other way around). I know its not possible to have it so that changing it affects all contacts at once...

Ok as for things from dynamic...

LOVE the way you can drag the bars around ... that is neat but I do not REQUIRE it.

I would however love to see the View menu options for the text edit bar ... that would give me a lot of what I have been looking for.

I notice that dynamic also suffers the same statusbar problem, in the fact that it looks funny when dragged down, and is extremely hard to get ahold of it to drag it back up.

In terms of the larger icons in the iconholder, I actually think that is really bad ... it increases the width necessary to fit all my connection icons ... not a good thing at all, plus the >> button was not done right, it shows 4 arrows instead of the 2 it is suppossed to. But being that you said the dynamic interface was a personal project and you dont use many medium plugins, I could see how it might be nice for you.

So in all terms ... things I would still love to see in the EG Mod if at all possible...

1) The view menu option for the edit text bar

2) the ability to drag/drop the sections of the message window

3) the ability (anchor or option) to get rid of the scrollbar!!! (PLEASE)

4) the ability to set the default appearance of the menu bar (or just make it default to off if not possible to give user a choice)

5) ability to set defaults for layout of message window components in dynamic mode

Thanks j_heng and eh?one ... you guys are great.

[j_heng]

I still have yet to even get a chance to look at the code of eh?one's dynamic interface :P We had a... sizeable assignment for our OS course dropped on our laps, and it'll take us a while to weed through it, so I'm afraid I won't get the time to look at this for a while, again. (Well, maybe I can find some time on this upcoming long weekend to take a look at it (hey, something "productive" to do other than assignments) instead of playing Guild Wars or something :P)

I'm not sure about that menubar... I was under the impression that Trillian would save it's location, but if I need to save it manually, I don't know how to do that :P That or I'm not completely understanding what you mean and as I will probably say a few more times, I don't have time to check it out right now... :(

Since I haven't taken a look at the dynamic interface yet, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about for dragging the bars around, but you don't need to explain it, since I won't have time to look at it for a bit anyways. I'll probalby figure it out when I do, but for now... all I get is the idea of panels... which should still work (text display and text edit that is).

Again, the reason I'm resisting putting the text editbar option in the view menu was that since you're already requesting for an option for no toolbar, I would need to add another 3 options just to allow no editbar for the 3 options of toolbar (large, small, none). That just seems a bit much for me.

[DiamondNRG]

But once you take a look at Dynamic you will see the view menu thing won't be that bad.

You could have a checkbox in the view menu for the editbar isntead of having it tied into the menu bar ... thus you dont really have to create it the way you are thinking now.

I believe eh?one turned the menu bar and the edit text bar and the toolbar into their own panels ... I think thats how he made it "dynamic" so to speak.

When you get time, load it up and you will see what I mean and then we can hash over the finer details of life ;)

Thanks ahead of time j_heng!

[DiamondNRG]

16 day bump for j_heng (or anyone else) ;)

Anyone have any new ideas on any of this?

EDIT MADE BECAUSE I CAN NOT COUNT, DOH!

[j_heng]

Midterms start monday ;)

No, I haven't forgotten, this term is just really bad for me in terms of course work. Think 40-50 hour programming assignments every couple of weeks. X-( (on top of regular assignments for the other courses).

[DiamondNRG]

Originally posted by j_heng
Midterms start monday ;)

No, I haven't forgotten, this term is just really bad for me in terms of course work. Think 40-50 hour programming assignments every couple of weeks. X-( (on top of regular assignments for the other courses).

Alright, well good luck on them, and after you ace them, you can work on this ;)

Let us know how it goes.