Forums Feature Suggestions appearance of mirc

Ok, this suggestion is something I probably wouldn't utilize myself, but the trend with a lot of applications/software is to make available different "skins".

Just thought I'd throw it in amongst all the other suggestions.

You can change all kinds of colours in mIRC, using the ALT+K Dialog. Some pre-loaded 'schemes' are there, though they're just examples.

For more advanced themeing, you can use MTS Themes, available at various scripting websites, most notably mircscripts.org.

Regards,

It wasn't colours I was referring to, sorry.

What I meant by skins is a different appearance of the mirc window itself, eg some software let you choose woodgrain, sleek metalic look, rusted metal look, etc etc.

My gf's brother even has a "catwoman" skin for his window's media player, which opens like a cats eye when you first open it, blinks once, and then the buttons appear for you to play music.

Like I said. It's not something I would use personally, but I know is something that would be used by many if added. Every now and again you get people asking in forums "how can I change the appearance of my mirc buttons?"

People like to personalize stuff these days.

People have been personalising mIRC for years. I've had woodgrain in mIRC for the longest time. Personally I'd prefer mIRC's borders to have a chromeless option and a re-inclusion of /setlayer and to include the MDI window, currently it is only possible with a DLL. That along with my woodgrain tool/switchbar it'd look pretty good.

One thing to remember though, skins, of the kind you'd like to see implemented, consume resources and as such slow down reaction times for any programmes that are running. I remember back to Windows Blinds and StyleXP - both are great and highly customisable but neither are terribly efficient. I am that fussed about it that I use the Win2000 look in XP.

Actually, skinning a single (Or a few) window(s) isn't likely to have a noticeable effect. Open up Apple iTunes for an example.
Window blinds and the like are slow because they have to parse theme files, catch every window opening, repainting, etc., then do the actual drawing.

And you believe that there is no way that mIRC skinning would operate the same way?

Yes it probably would, but mIRC wouldn't have to paint as many windows, I also doubt mIRC skinning would be as versatile as windowblinds skins.

Also, the hook procedure mIRC would use would use up less resources than a system-wide one like windowblinds uses.

There'd be little difference on most systems as they arn't new installs of the operating system. Even StyleXP and Windows Blinds is flawlessly fast when the install is new. After six months or so I still think there'd be a very noticeable difference, even if mIRC itself wasn't as slow as OS-wide theming system gets. I think there is room to give people some options here though as history dictates, when this happens the option of a straight-foward way of doing things usually disappears after a while and the market is usually asked to accept what is thrown at it.