Skins will make it be seen as an MSN Messenger type thing for those who want it to be seen as an MSN Messenger type thing, for others it will look however they want it to (think windowblinds, styleXP, winamp, wmp or any other programs that have skin support)
- All of the programs you've listed there are criminally slow. It's not a coincidence.
Anyway, saying 'you can turn it off' is
not a reason to add something, it's simply a reason to not not add something (yes, there's a difference). The entire point of skins is beyond me. I don't use an IRC client so that I can look at the window frame around the text and say 'wow, that looks good!', I use an IRC client to talk to people via IRC. Just as skins are pointless with all the programs you listed above, they would be equally pointless in mIRC. Skins do, in fact, largely negate the point of having a windowed GUI like Windows - uniformity of design so that people familiar with one program can feel instantly at ease with any other. Changing the position and look of every control to make something look 'cool' is not my idea of functionality.
Yes, I could just not use skins. Yes, I could just 'turn it off' and presumably then mIRC wouldn't suffer from the crippling slowdown. But then again I'd rather not have mIRC potentially bloated because of skins, and much more importantly, I'd rather not see mIRC's development turn towards the style-over-functionality development model. I'd rather not see each release being brought down to the level of being largely a bunch of bugfixes and additions to the skinning engine. I'd rather see mIRC improve as a program than be able to have my mIRC window in the shape of a duck.
But that's just me.
Note: I'm not against changes of any kind to the mIRC interface, I'm just very much against skinning.
