[Release] iChat in MirandaIM - 3 Color Variations

[ppoppe]

Here it is.

ichat_miranda.zip

[lakaveli]

Here it is.

Thanks a lot!

[glitch]

I lost my password, I used to go by deciever and made y'z dock themes a long while ago. Always wanted them ichat bubbles and I just recently came back and found what ZTL made and its excellent work. I had even made a thread about how one could accomplish this with html a long time ago some where here but at that time as far as I know either Miranda did not exist and nor did IEView.

hmm....just looked up all my old threads I posted in... only 16 listed...I am guessing a lot of threads got deleted, funny though how everyone in those threads back in 2002 non of them are online.

btw here is an attachment for those who think the text in these bubbles are too small, at least at high resolutions it is for me. Just drag it and drop it and replace your css file with this one, also has them big avatars from duyvan who beat me too it .

I increased the font size from 11 to 14

ichat.zip

[glitch]

Later today if I have time(studying for my final exam) I will try and post an edit of this skin with a white background, as well as other colors in folders with the color names on them so you can easily change the background in miranda by changing you CSS file for IEView. I will also make some more bubble colors and I will convert the existing ones to alpha transparency, this makes it easier on me and who ever want to edit the CSS on changing out the background color. Also I notice miranda downloaded some png2lib thing automaticly(by asking through a popup), so maybe I won't have to use the DirectX javascript method to get the alpha transparency to work on PNG24. Also I will try and figure out a way to fix the tables so the ichat bubbles appear more rounded and dead. And I will try and match the font size and weight to the original.

If anyone knows how to get IEView to respond to the someone is typing thing let me know so I can try and get the thought bubble in it too. I assume an additional plugin would probably be needed though to send something out to the output window as a trigger for the CSS or some html code.

I assume ZTL won't mind me changing a few things and speeding up his to do list for him? =) considering his last post in this thread was in june, can't blame him though I just found old threads of mine of my "to do list" of 2002 that I had all but forgotten.

here is a screenshot of the bubbles today (without my 14 font size, I had thought my font size caused the bubble not to be exact but nope its the code or the images being too big.)

to clarify what your seeing it is ZTL's original contrasted to the original ichat.

[kmccormi]

Later today if I have time(studying for my final exam) I will try and post an edit of this skin with a white background, as well as other colors in folders with the color names on them so you can easily change the background in miranda by changing you CSS file for IEView. I will also make some more bubble colors and I will convert the existing ones to alpha transparency, this makes it easier on me and who ever want to edit the CSS on changing out the background color. Also I notice miranda downloaded some png2lib thing automaticly(by asking through a popup), so maybe I won't have to use the DirectX javascript method to get the alpha transparency to work on PNG24. Also I will try and figure out a way to fix the tables so the ichat bubbles appear more rounded and dead. And I will try and match the font size and weight to the original.

If anyone knows how to get IEView to respond to the someone is typing thing let me know so I can try and get the thought bubble in it too. I assume an additional plugin would probably be needed though to send something out to the output window as a trigger for the CSS or some html code.

I assume ZTL won't mind me changing a few things and speeding up his to do list for him? =) considering his last post in this thread was in june, can't blame him though I just found old threads of mine of my "to do list" of 2002 that I had all but forgotten.

here is a screenshot of the bubbles today (without my 14 font size, I had thought my font size caused the bubble not to be exact but nope its the code or the images being too big.)

Ahhhh this sounds awesome! Thanks.

[glitch]

ok I am 50% there, I figured out how to lay the text on top of the bottom gradient, but now I need to get it to lay on top of the top gradient aswell. Unfortunetly I don't have a creative enough mind to think of one method that works for both, so I will have to use two different methods.

Div tags are a very tricky thing >( as ZTL probably noticed and is why the text is currently laying on solid hex-colors all the time.

[glitch]

Finally I successfully fixed the text to appear on top of the gradients like they should but the bubble still wants to expand too easily, with font sizes large than 10pt. So......now I have to figure this one out....how to lessen the images of the bubbles wanting to expand too early.

[glitch]

well at my favorite font size 14 it is one damn pixel too big....but I am happy, it looks dead on and it has all the gradient stuff so the text really is lying on gradient images not a solid color! w00t

I only fixed the code for one ichat bubble and when workin with this skin you gotta fix 4 bubbles, 2 of each color but it shouldn't take me too long, all the hard work is finished. Well I say hard work I didn't create the skin ;P I just improved it!

Unfortunetly this also means ALL of the ichat bubbles will have to be redone their top and bottom gradients are incomplete...... I may just release the modified code tonight here in a bit then re-release it with the new more accurate gradient bubbles.

It's kinda funny looking at the two now, for my ichat bubble to be as big as it was before I modified I have to set the font size to 20 where as before the font size was 11 with an oversized bubble. Also I just realized after directly comparing the original ichat font to mine that font size 14 is slightly too big but font size 13 looks to be an exact match and the bubble is then a dead on match in size, so that is how I am going to release it. Also the font is centered perfectly in the bubble.

here is a screenshot comparing the original code(white bubble) to the new code(blue bubble)

[glitch]

Finally here is the modified code for PERFECT ichat bubbles :cool: or well I still need to fix the gradients and alpha transparency and make more colors but the code is perfect.

This is only the ichat.css file for the white and blue bubbles just to demonstrate it working, meaning you will have to copy it into the /white_blue/ folder. (or just point miranda to where you save it to)

I do not have time right not to fix the other two(I have postponed studying for my Final exam long enough oo), if you want them you can just compare the code and match what I did or wait probably until tomorrow, when I have time to release all of it with new gradients.

@ZTL your top and bottoms were in the wrong place, they belonged in the table and the middle td text area as backgrounds, you had them in the top and bottom rows of the table. By doing that I was effectively able to create two separate backgrounds displaying at the same time, took me hours to figure it out though.

(to clarify what this file is, it fixes the over sized bubbles to better fit the text inside and it is also exactly the same size as the original ichat bubbles)

ichat.zip

[glitch]

here is another screenshot of the modified code.

[duyvan82]

@glitch: very nice mate, I would love to see this supporting message grouping, that's the only thing lacking with this skin. Also, there is another bug that i've noticed while using this skin, whenever you type a link, the link doesn't get wrap would be nice if you could fix it.

Poor me has no css knowledge whatsoever

[glitch]

thx, I am actually new to miranda took me almost a month to get it to work lol...stupid plugins... Anyways I am an experienced html coder and have dabbled a good bit in CSS just for fun.

Since I am a new user to miranda I actually don't know what message grouping is, could you link me to a picture of an example of it along with a skin that does it? Also if you know of a skin that wraps the hyper links could you link me to it, it would be helpful to see how they coded it so I can implement it.

[duyvan82]

@glitch: glad to hear you're good with html and stuff. I actually don't have any links to show you, however i have that template :)

I'll contact you as soon as I'm back home tonight (I'm about to leave for work )

If you can, please PM me with your MSN or AIM

[glitch]

hmm...javascript does work in IEView that really opens a lot of doors. I am sure that even php could work too, granted you install the php server software. That just opens up a bunch of possibilities for any skin. I think I will look over other skins though before I do some ambitious coding that has already been coded lol.

it is possible to change background color by javascript btw. This would save one a lot of time from having to make many variations, aslo if a similar method can be applied to images which I think can be done, it would mean you could also change your ichat bubble colors by a menu in your message window and the menu could be hidden and only appear when you mouse crosses over a hotspot in one of the four corner or edge of the window.

If anyone has any suggestions or knows of themes with features like those plz let me know.

[Nicesnake]

If you really good in this stuff check THis

and This Pay attention to Russelc skins.

And there you have one of the most innovative skin for Adium Click! just download, unpack and you will have all resources. I've talked with IEviev developer and he told me that fading is posiible and not so hard to do.(But not for me ) Also i know that Russelc is working on skin with fading

Keep up good work.

And Sorry for my english

[glitch]

they look very nice, I'll start picking away at his code as soon as I get my alpha transparency working on backgrounds with png 24 images, it is being a real pain.

I hit a road block I finally kinda got alpha transparency to work....for png24 for IEView...but since I made the mid top and mid bottom backgrounds that means they go past the rounded corners too...so...the saga continues

.....well it looks like I might just have to start from scratch and recode the entire thing oo

*Update* maybe not, I just wasn't thinking creatively enough, the left and right sides are cells of a table that has one background and one cell background(same cell as text), so I feel pretty stupid right now, duh just make the left and right cells color background match the background color via CSS.

Still can't figure it out cuz the bottom ecorners of the bubbles are backgrounds...transparent bg's are evidently extremely hard to figure out how to do.

I am tempted to just install IE7 beta and see if IEView can work with it, atleast I know IE7 does render png24 correctly. I may end up having to try it, but for people that don't won't to upgrade I dunno what to tell ya. And that is considering if IEView still works. There is a way to install them side by side though so you still have both but which one IEView will choose? I don't know

[duyvan82]

ok, I've just installed IE7 beta on my PC and IEview works great with it.

@glitch: remember the smiley's bugs i told you yesterday, the smileys are now rendered correctly with IE7. :D

[ShadyApple]

how do i get my avatar as well as friends avatars to be displayed in my ichat?

[glitch]

thx duyvan82, I just hope it will run IE7 if you install it concurrently with IE6. But this should be able to get me to focus on all the other features now since this rendering bug appears to have a fairly easy solution. I just don't know how willing people are to upgrade their IE6 to IE7 beta if it comes to that.

here is Revision 0.2

What has been accomplished in this build

- ichat bubbles are now perfect in size and text does overlay gradients of the bubble not a

solid color as previously, Font size increased from 11pt to 13pt

- The bubbles are on the correct corrosponding sides courtesy of duyvan82

- avatar size in ZTLs release was 30x30 and duyvan82 was 48x48, but my release will be 32x32

I believe that is the actual ichat avatar size.

Sorry for waiting so long to release it, I had it finished but I didn't want to stop and before I knew it I had a mess of unusable files strolled everywhere and modified code that did not work, yet I did not want to reverse any of it because of feeling so close to accomplishing PNG24 in IE6....it was only an illusion.

@shadyapple I do not know the bug that causes it yet but you normally have to close the window atleast once maybe more and reopen it and eventually your buddies icon will appear. I will investigate how other skins retreive their avatars, I have a feeling it is more of a Miranda bug than the skin though.

BTW I RENAMED the HTML FILES TO IVT so that they show up when you browse for it to select the skin(w/o selecting "All Files"), so do not just think you do not have to change settings if you are currently using this skin. Also all IVT files are html, why ZTL left it at html is beyond me.

ichat.zip

[glitch]

The current to do is

- Fix PNG24 alpha transparency - should be fixed now, and released in 0.3

- Add luicida sans

- Add Duyvans color variations with built in background changer

- Add built-in bubble color changer

- Add message grouping

- Fix link wrapping

- Add built-in avatar size changer

- Add someone is typing thought bubble

- Create installer that will configure everything as much as possible

I know skins normally do not have an installer for miranda and its plugins but I had such a hard time getting miranda set up, not only me but my friends that I won't feel very good bout completing a skin for a program that only 2% can even figure out.

I have just now installed IE7 and it most definitly fixes the png24 problems without any adverse effects on IEView. Might this break skin compatiability of IE6 skins, maybe but most likely it will not unless someone was exploiting a hole or html bug in IE6.

[glitch]

well I finally fixed the blue bubble to where it is alpha transparent and can be laid on any background color. But it requires 5 changes to the CSS file and 4 more for the other bubble so in total you would have to change it in 9 spots to change the background color..... to me that is unreasonable so I will find a to cut it down to one single change. It is not just unreasonable to a manual point of view but mostly coding a script to change the background will be better if it only has to change one variable not 9. Less code is more.

btw scratch the font thing it was correct already.

[Gideon007]

installer is not really necessary but some detailed instructions on which plugins you need and what settings you need to switch in the newest ersions of these plugins would be really appreciated.

Up to now I have not managed to make it work at all...

Anyway, many thanks for perfecting this theme.

[dreamsINdigital]

Thanks for keeping this theme alive guys!

Can you possibly add code to break long text into lines instead of keeping it all together? The way it currently is, if someone types a really long word or URL, it stretches the window to the right and shows a horizontal scrollbar. I know russellc implemented code to do this with some of his IEView templates.

[glitch]

that is on the list link wrapping is basicly the same thing, I have not had a chance to review russels code still to implement it.

My number one priority has been to fix the appearance of the skin and easily allow different backgrounds to appear by code, otherwise it would require unlimited numbers of bubbles with varying background colors all as images. I have solved the problem by using IE7 which will be REQUIRED for this skin to work(0.3 and up). It has to be installed over IE6 but I will provide all info on what to do and how to keep IE6 after installing IE7.

And to Gideon,...... well most of my friends I know in real life will give up before they even have IEView.dll in the plugins folder, so I hope to try and turn this into something everyone can enjoy. Maybe we will see this in flyakite =)

I have not yet seen the bubbles duyvan made for me 2 or 3 days ago, but I did manage to find the real ichat bubble colors, and ZTL's blue bubble I know for sure and probably the others had their contrast lifted. The real bubbles are more pastel. Just don't ask me how I got them I had to do some digging back into the past.

[glitch]

ok after hours of trying to create dead accurate original colored ichat bubbles, I made these. I actually had to use gimp it has a very handy Color to Alpha filter but that then left me with the entire image as alpha transparent, so after messing with it and doing a few different methods I finally settled on an anti-aliased white bubble that fits snuggly behind just the color part of the bubble, and since it is aliased it feathered nicely with the outline just enough for it to blend into the bubble but not so much that the border no longer blends in with its colored background.

Not tryin to step on your toes duyvan hope ya made some other colors. ya just need to send em to me.