I just signed up, thought I might introduce myself. I'm threedigitboy, freelance graphics designer and winamp lover.
eh?one and maybe a couple more of you might now me from the official winamp modern skin forum.

Been using trillian for quite a while now and decided to start my first skin for trillian3, based on rpeterclark's obsidian skin for DFX (with his permission, graphics will be custom made though).
Just wanna warn you, I'm going to ask a lot of stupid questions in the next couple weeks, so watch out

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

Welcome

Welcome
Remember, for beginners, stupid questions sound smart. In other words: We asked them as beginners as well.

Good luck!

More skinners.....and winamp users......YES!!

hehe

Welcome, good to have you.

edit: Ooooooo....just checked out the obsidian skin for DFX....if you could do this for trillian.....I would wet myself.

Another skinner is coming!!

Quick! hide the dirty magazines!


Welcome and good luck

Welcome to the forums. Can't wait to see the quality of the skin...

Blog and latest works: Sawdust & Glitter
Feel free to add me on: Twitter - Tumblr - Facebook

Everything I said is my stupid nonsense! It has nothing to do with the company's opinion!

883 made an AMAZING winamp modern skin called Drone. I can't imagine using another skin for winamp at this point.

Is Ryan Petrich the R Peter Clark of Trillian?

P.S. R Peter Clark is a famous coder of Winamp skins.

Blog and latest works: Sawdust & Glitter
Feel free to add me on: Twitter - Tumblr - Facebook

Everything I said is my stupid nonsense! It has nothing to do with the company's opinion!

So what kind of skin are you going to make?

One with a small toolbar by default?

good to see you around 883. i'll help at every opportunity i can. i'm sure the rest of the regulars will do the same. good luck.

lol, our names are similar, but i have a long way to go to reach his god-like status

thanks for the warm welcome guys!
so here's a first screenshot:

/ screenshot was updated, scroll down /

I know, the titlebar buttons are not displayed on the contact list and are not in the right order, don't have an internet connection at home anymore so I had to guess. In fact, I hardly know all the windows and fuctions trillian offers. Please don't hesitate to tell me that something can't be done in trillian engine if you see anything weird.

also took a look at the source code of that aikon3 skin, is it right that trillian3 skinning is based on xml only? Does it require programming experience at all? I'm asking because I'm thinking about teaching myself how to do it if it's not too hard, and if so, do you guys recommend any specific tutorial site?


Edit: Why can't I upload an avatar pic here? Do I have to reach a certain number of posts before that option is unlocked??

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

looks good. everything seems basically doable. You are right in assuming that trillian skins are coded entirely in xml. Don't let that fool you into thinking that is gonna make the language easy to learn. It took me at least 35 hours of deep concentration to learn by disassembly and fully understand everything that is needed to create a skin and countless more to just get something that will load up in trilly without crashing it. Since the time i was learning, reference materials have gotten tenfold better so learning might not take quite as long (big thanks goes to dread and the rest of the civillians). I still think the best way to learn is to privately mutilate the works of others .

avatar pics may be uploaded once you have reached 100 posts

Avatars.. need 100 posts

Maxmize button only has one state; it doesn't change the image between maxmized/restored modes. Also, the contact list doesn't have a close button, and the minimse button is only shown if the taskbar entry is enabled.

PNG blending, i.e. drop shadows, is available within the window, but not for the edges of the window. (guessing the shadow in the image is just for effect, but wanted to point it out).

Basic introductory tutorial at http://www.civillians.com - also has a reference of stuff which you're bound to use at some point.

Stupid questions welcome .

ah I see. I'll probably try to team up with an experienced coder once I have most of the graphics done, don't have a lot of patience

question about the messenger icons: are these usually custom made or can I use existing sets (and if so, where can I get those)?

I've slightly modified the contactlist background, there's a light gradient on the bottom now, can this be done with the text on top?

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

Looks excellent. We've been waiting for some very well-crafted skins like this for a long time! I hope Trillian 3 looks inspiring enough to do the trick. You can have maximized/restored buttons if you create two buttons with one using visible="window.maximize" and other using visible="!window.maximize". Sjoerd knows this better than me.

Here are the basics.

There are four ways to make a skin:
- Freeform skin: Skin like Winamp3. Every window with customized layouts, appearances and behaviors. You design window by window. Best for skins that are critical on detail. Examples are Aikon, Zymosis or the old default skin Trillian Cordillera.

- Modular skin aka 'Stixe': Skin like Windows XP. Windows are composed of modular components such as toolbars, buttons and window frame. You design each module that composes a window, and the skin engine composes the window together with a regular UI. Best for skins that has repetitive window frames and components. An example is the default Whistler skin.

- Hybrid skin: With the power of Trillian SkinXML, you can mix both ways together. You can have part of the skin with very specified free forms and some parts of the skin that you might not be very interested in to be composed with modules. Saves time yet preserves beauty on critical parts. Examples are Media Center Edition skin for Pro 2.0.

- Themable skin system: If you are very good at Trillian SkinXML, you can create a whole new system of interfaces for other skinners to base on. Examples are Microscopic, MCE, MdXP and SETi.


A. Freeform skins:

There are 7 types of windows, with variations:
- Contact List
- Contact Message Windows (optional* variations by mediums, incl. 5 standard mediums AIM ICQ MSN Yahoo! IRC, 5 extended mediums Jabber Rendezvous Sametime Exchange Novell, 1 template default)
- Conference Windows (same options as message windows)
- Connection Status Windows (same options as message window, with a compulsory exception that IRC has a input box)
- Container Windows (MDI-form and Tabbed-form both required)
- File Transfer Windows (Incoming and Outgoing)
- Template Window

All windows require a tabbed phase for their placement inside Tabbed Containers.

Contact List, Message Windows and Conference Windows are composed of Panels, if you are interested in having dynamic panels in your skin UI, consider these:
- My Contacts panel
- My Web panel
- My Music panel
- Text Conversations panel
- Text Editor panel
- Users List panel for conference rooms
- Video Camera panel
- Audio Chat panel


B. Modular skin:
Look inside Trillian\Whistler\images for references of what modules are required.


Good luck with designing! Looking forward to your next update.
And I hope this can motivate me to finally write an official tutorial...

Blog and latest works: Sawdust & Glitter
Feel free to add me on: Twitter - Tumblr - Facebook

Everything I said is my stupid nonsense! It has nothing to do with the company's opinion!

This will definitely help me Kid, thanks! In fact, this seems to be a pretty friendly community, I often see how newbies get bashed for asking stupid questions in other forums, luckily that's not the case here.
and I'll check out that civillians link when I get more time

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

Well, you came to the right forum (Skin Dev) and started on the right foot (not begging or whining but saying 'I have a dream...' er something).

If we see someone who's actually willing to take the effort first, it goes much smoother than if someone just comes in and says 'gimme'.

got more finished last night. *yawns*

// image removed, scroll down //

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

Sexify!

Will this be "theme-able"?

maybe? A trillian coder could probably tell me how to set up the graphics for theming...
I understand that you need a plugin to make them work and you have to edit the images for each theme, am I right?

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

Yep. You could write your own themeable code, or do what Juz did w/ Aikon3 and what I did w/ .HmmXP Theme Pack and use Tom's The Configurator.

Kid is right. I do know it better.

Trillian 3.0 offers us new functionality, a few instances are "System Variables", "Panels", and from the 'pack's point of view, we now have "Icon Packs" as well! The system variable Kid is talking about is
"%window.maximized%", as well as the arithmic operator ! for "inversing" the value. Another cute addition is "%window.docked%". Both can be used for hiding window borders, or toggling buttons/bitmaps appropriately.
4 ways: 2^2 ways. SkinXML y/n, Stixe y/n
These skins take a lot of work to complete, yet I see them as the best. Because of the huge ammount of time spend in the project, you know it will look good, afterall: Who wants to spend months on a skin he does not like? (ME!)
The default skin is one of the few /stixe skins that I find pretty. A lot of them seem like a cut/paste kind of job which is really ugly done <no offence>. There are a few good ones, which I will not name, but I also see some quick jobs where the authors forget to actually see if it looks good, and solve any problems.
Ah, "Hybrid" skins. The /stixe skinning system is actually a SkinXML skin that leans on a generic piece of code that is released with Trillian. Strictly speaking, "stixe" is a themable system. But, because of the way SkinXML works (or XML in general), there are ways to override the Themable parts with your own design, thus giving it a bit of your own twist.
Several good looking skins. If I were you, however, I would not choose to bring in a too obvious theming system. It seems you are very interested in designing, and not the coding aspect. Most themes - for instance the AIKON3 ones - are really quick&dirty. Not well designed, in my opinion. I would not do it if I were you. But, because I'm myself, and amn't good at graphics at all, I don't even bother designing/skinning anymore.
Ah yes, a whole load of information. Just read it, he's probably right on this one.
Modular (theming a themable skin)
Yup! Good luck! Kid: Go official tutorial! Somehow, we blokes can't find time/dedication to work on it! Maybe you might! And, as an added bonus, you could design a goodlooking 'template' skin that you can gently walk the pupil through.

-SJ

That math is slightly flawed since you can't have SkinXML [n] / Stixe [n]. (See the FAQ under 'unskinned Trillian' )

In reality they're all SkinXML [y] it's just that with /stixe, someone (Kid) has already done the code for you. (So /stixe 'skins' are really just themes of the /stixe skin, but since they have their own directory in /skins and all have their own desc.txt and trillian.xml, they show up as independent 'skins'.)

// updated. see next page //

slightly updated. Yeah, I think learning how to code trillian skins doesn't seem to be that much fun to me, I'll stick with what I know.

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

About your design.

I like the style. At the moment, it looks like it could be one of the few well-designed "stixe" skins. On the other hand, there're some things I wouldn't like to trust "stixe" to do for this skin.

Like everything?

it's done!

www.eight83.com
www.breedart.org

So pretty. @_@

-drooling-

"The old, blood stained piano
plays the tune of murder."

There are some technical aspects:
1. For the bounding box of the selected menu item, the box can only be a border and a filled inner color right now.
2. You may not be able to distribute the modified icons with your skin without permissions, so you might want to consider some other free icons or draw ones that fit your skin.
3. Message Windows have a typing indicator that indicates the other user is typing. It would be nice to include it in the design.

Keep up the good work!

Blog and latest works: Sawdust & Glitter
Feel free to add me on: Twitter - Tumblr - Facebook

Everything I said is my stupid nonsense! It has nothing to do with the company's opinion!