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- All of the programs you've listed there are criminally slow. It's not a coincidence.


Two of those applications install system wide hook procedures to catch certain window messages and paint the window, an application wide hook isn't nearly as slow.
Winamp and wmp aren't slow on this computer.

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Anyway, saying 'you can turn it off' is not a reason to add something


I never said it was.
Being able to turn skins off should solve the problem of not everybody wanting to use skins though.

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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.


Me too.
When I use a program for long periods of time I'd like it much better if the program looked good.

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Yes, I could just 'turn it off' and presumably then mIRC wouldn't suffer from the crippling slowdown.


I've not once used a program with skin support (only for its own windows) that had a crippling slowdown, maybe the program you used was badly written or your computer is a bit old.

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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.


Why will style will take over functionality if skin support is added?
If that was the case I'd imagine there would be 20+ new things added for picture windows with each release.

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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.


Hopefully nothing *big* will be added to mIRC then.
mIRC should just stay exactly as it is while the other clients add new cutting-edge features.

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I'd rather see mIRC improve as a program than be able to have my mIRC window in the shape of a duck.


Skinning is not really that hard to do.
You seem to think that adding support for skins will take over most of mIRC's development when it won't really take much at all.