Skinning Tutorial - Windows Live Messenger
Hold on there buddy, Windows Live Messenger has some dramatic changes, but don't worry, I'll tell you them.
Please don't rush into skinning Messenger without the information below in mind.
First and most important all resources are now stored in msgsres.dll and not msnmsgr.exe, doesn't sound too bad, well just prepare yourself.
The main change is the image format PNG has been removed and replaced by an extension knows as .rle. Problem with that is, no image editor will edit it nor convert it. With this set back, replacing images is impossible at the moment. However, with great minds in the Messenger community we discovered if you know your uifiles well you can manually re-add the PNG code. A crack for the .rle will come soon, so you can either wait for that or re-code the PNGs back into the uifiles. If you want, here is a simple program that will convert .rle files into .PNG files (but not back).
There are also some changes to the uifiles. You may have noticed all the style classes are stored at the top and all the main code at the bottom. Now each uifile has been spilt up, into two, one for style the other for the main code. In addition, some uifile names are totally different with ridiculously long numbers. Here is the structure tree for the uifiles, it looks very different now, that's for sure:
If you are new to skinning and have been forwarded here, try skinning MSN Messenger for a few days, learn how to replace basic resources and once you know how to do that and feel confident move onto Windows Live Messenger with this information in mind.
First and most important all resources are now stored in msgsres.dll and not msnmsgr.exe, doesn't sound too bad, well just prepare yourself.
The main change is the image format PNG has been removed and replaced by an extension knows as .rle. Problem with that is, no image editor will edit it nor convert it. With this set back, replacing images is impossible at the moment. However, with great minds in the Messenger community we discovered if you know your uifiles well you can manually re-add the PNG code. A crack for the .rle will come soon, so you can either wait for that or re-code the PNGs back into the uifiles. If you want, here is a simple program that will convert .rle files into .PNG files (but not back).
There are also some changes to the uifiles. You may have noticed all the style classes are stored at the top and all the main code at the bottom. Now each uifile has been spilt up, into two, one for style the other for the main code. In addition, some uifile names are totally different with ridiculously long numbers. Here is the structure tree for the uifiles, it looks very different now, that's for sure:
If you are new to skinning and have been forwarded here, try skinning MSN Messenger for a few days, learn how to replace basic resources and once you know how to do that and feel confident move onto Windows Live Messenger with this information in mind.