Fuse is something I have been working on and off for the past few months. Messenger 9's layout is difficult to manipulate when it comes to taking down the extra space Microsoft added in.

With every skin I made, I learnt a bit more on how to get around some of these sizing restrictions to condense the space down. So after a lot of coding I was able to construct a skin which significantly brings down the minimum window size you can have when using Messenger.

Fuse features a highly compressed chat window and contact list design. It took a lot of experimentation and a mixture of code from different skins to be able to come to the final product (kinda how it got it's name, it's a fusion of all the layout compression I have done.)

Fuse features the standard options you guys have been used to in my skins recently and also uses some of the extra registry entries you see in Phunk'n as a little bonus. But yeah I recommend people check out this skin because it really does grow on you (like how it colorizes and if you combine it with the right scene it looks really nice).

I had to completely recode the entire skin and re-think certain parts of the skin to suit Messenger 2009. While most of the skin retains the layout from the previous version you will notice some differences in version 2.

The most major one is that fade animations had to be scrapped. Sad to say that they have changed in Messenger 2009 and are extremely restricted. I couldn’t really find a balance between making it work, look right and not lag the skin up.

The custom Messenger Plus! UI has also been scrapped due to the fact that Messenger Plus! Live 5 will be entering development soon and I would rather wait to see what is going to happen with the UI before diving in too deep.

The registry entries that I added in the previous version return in version 2. There are a few new ones such as choosing the size of the extra display picture in the chat window and also the one in the contact list. Toolbar alignment options are also in these entries.

Why LTD? Well I was trying to come up with something that would describe what I wanted to do with the skin. LTD stands for "Love This Design", which is kind of what I want to happen. The skin was designed specifically for Messenger 9 so scenes work better than ever. For those wondering, yes dark colors work on this skin unlike Ev0.

So what does this skin have to offer? Well along with the usual settings, LTD has been designed compress down the look of 9 and offer something that is a bit more cleaner and functional. The display pictures have been simplified further and do not take as much space so you can fit more contacts in your list area.

Additionally the chat window has been transformed into a new layout where your text goes from one end of the window to the other. This gives you a lot more room to read and means you can have a shorter window but not sacrifice the reading area. You also have the option to switch back to the default style of chat window if you really want to, the options are all there.

Being the second skin in the designer series, I take great pride in this skin and it has been created with a lot of thought. Check it out even if you don't like white skins, you'll be surprised how quick it grows on you. I would have a darker version, but I found that a lot of the design didn't really work.

• Added hide add contact button
• Added hide contact options button
• Ability to switch to 16px icons for the top toolbar in the contact list
• Fixed most bugs regarding animation and cut offs
• Hide infobar works properly in the contact list
• Wordwheel should no longer show cursor when hidden
• If wordwheel is hidden then the menu button is moved to the top of the window with the rest of the buttons
• Added Turkish translation of Options panel - thanks Raplex

I believe that we met for a reason. God was like you see that guy over there? he's pretty cool. But its your job to make him awesome.

Phunk'n is unique in the sense that it brings a lot of things that have never been seen in Windows Live Messenger skins before, which is why I kept a lot of it under wraps for a long time. It is the first skin to utilize Messengers animation tags all around the entire use interface which means every single button will fade animate in and out and other things around messenger will also slide around.

What else is new in Phunk'n? Well Phunk'n also features the first fully fledged Messenger Plus skin. Yes I went to the exhaustive effort of skinning plus itself (which isn't easy by the way) to make the skin a bit more complete. While I tried to skin every window, there are some that couldn't be skinned because of technical reasons which I hope will be fixed in the future by Patchou (hint, hint).

Now onto the skin itself. The skin comes in two editions: Infucso (Black) and Niveus (White). Both offer the same variety of user options except that Infusco has one extra option that enables a lighter background in text areas for those too lazy to use the text override feature in Messenger Plus Live.