Forums Feature Suggestions skins!

the one thing that would make mirc the best! complete and full skining, with scripted dialog skins and all! i would get mirc with skins even if the download was 4 times as big as 6.03

Ugh!

what?

Would you care to explain why this would make mIRC "the best"?

why bother skinning it?


just another way to waste resources.

Well, since windows came out with candybarXP, I think nowdays ppl wan't to "skin" everything.

Just wondering, if you skin windows using a themexp skin or whatever, then surely mIRC should inherit the skinned interface, all the way through to the dialogs?


Because the dialogs are Windows "child dialogs".

Mind you, I hate skins, so I haven't tested (and refuse to try) this out....

why bloat mirc with these type of things when u can download scripts that apply this same thing your asking for ... if u want an all decked out irc client download a script someone already made ... i for one wouldnt want mirc to be so bloated because have that "pretty" [censored] serves no functionallity ... id sacrifice looks and appearance for functionallity anyday

Kind of like a good lover.
mIRC may not be so pretty, but see who falls asleep first.

the point is, i want to be able to use mirc own features to skin dialogs, nopt dlll's or whatever, because 1 how it is done, i havnt figured out yet, 2 mirc just needs this feature.

end of story!

Well sorry but I really hope Khaled doesn't add this. You've made it very clear that there is NO reason to add it. When you were asked multiple times why it was needed and the only reason you can come up with is it "just needs [it]," that proves that there is no valid reason it should be added.

just words out of context

Well again, instead of answering WHY IS IT NEEDED. You decided to post something yet again that is NOT going to convince anyone it is needed. So please, tell us why this is needed and why, as you say, it will make "mIRC the best"?

im not going to bother argueing with you, its NOT up to you to decide what does, and doesn't go in it...

Heh, ok. Well based on the responses of everyone here, you've failed to convince a single person that skins are the greatest thing ever. So when Khaled comes to these boards and sees you say it is great, and everyone else says it isn't and you refuse to give a reason it is great, what makes you think that he is then going to decide to add it?

blah blah blah

ok let me get this straight ... because u cant learn how to figure out dlls then u want this added as a funtion to mirc .. so that u still cant figure it out?

what i cant figure out is how to skin dialogs, but thats besides the point, the point of making mirc was to have it being poular, this skinning would make it even more popular, compared to mozillas chat, xchat, ect ect ect

Make mIRC more popular? Lets see, you said you want it, 7 people said they don't. Now doing a little math, 87.5% of the people don't want it. How exactly does it make it more popular when 87.5% of people who responded said they don't want it? Popular literally means supported by the populous, or the people. In this case 87.5% of the people do NOT support it. How can it therefore be said to be popular?

...point?

If you can't see my point, then all that does is prove my (and everyone else's) point of, you have no facts to backup what you said, and the reason you want it is because you can't figure out how to do it with the tools already available.

hell with y'all
god im sorry i freakin suggested anything

guess what? ... u dont need dlls to skin out dialogsu can add a background icon to the entire dialog and set an image file as that icon ...... then poof there u go u have a skinned dialog NO DLLS ....... if u cant figure that out then there is nothing that anyone could put in mirc that would allow u to skin anything anyhow

guess what? im talking about the title bar, buttons, check boxes, every last thing that can be put in a dialog.

a skinned checkbox without dlls? nah dont think so

People have been doing this very thing for years using PicWin GUIs. Again, if you'd just justify why this is a valuable feature, perhaps people would support it. But again, you refuse to do so.

pic windows, exactly...im talking about dialog, so that doesnt really help...

Umm you use the picwin to create your own dialog. And yet again, you evaded the question of giving us a reason why this is needed.

ok mtech heres the problem in your suggestion ..... 1) you dont know wtf your talking about 2) your not listening to anything that anyone is saying to you 3) picwin gui is another type of a dialog menu .....

now here lies your problem if your cant figure out how to use a dll to skin your dialogs then how would u be able to figure out the necessary functions that mirc would have to add to it so it can skin the dialogs?

mind you im not saying your completely wrong for your suggestion but your not making any common sense what so ever here ..... its great that u like things to be skinned ,,,,, but it sems that your in both accounts wont read to understand how to do them ......

sorry if you dont agree with this point but whther mirc added this functionality or not ud still be here asking that it be explained to u as from what it looks like your just not reading

TO ANYONE WHO IS NOT MTECH

ok i know i said the same things over and over to him ... but maybe he will listen to atleast one of them?

forget the skins idea...i havnt got a freakin clue what im talkin about

dont use skins...mirc dont need it


mirc will eternally suck

I released a script about 3 years ago with skinned dialogues. Just use an appropiately sized "icon" and load that before the editboxes and buttons, etc.

If it sucks why are you using it?

bottom line ur looking for something that resembles a full blown script ... yet u lack the ability to create it ..... how is this going to make mirc better? how will it make it easier? thats all everyones asking u

What skins are good for:
1. If skins were optional, then it would just simply attract more users to mIRC. A certain percent of these people would probably register mIRC, and Khaled would benefit that way.
2. For those non-hardcore PC users who don't need any extra resources because all they do is web-browse and talk on mIRC, it would make their expirience with their computer seem more 'stylized' and their expirience with mIRC more assuring of their 'uniqueness' because they have control over what it looks like.

What skins aren't good for:
1. The efficiency of the program and how it uses system resources.
2. Making people interested. ..as most users have fun chatting on mIRC, not sitting there looking at how pretty it is.
3. People who understand that skins take up a lot of resources may consequently stop using mIRC because they find it to be inefficient. The certain percentage of people who would've registered their mIRC now wouldn't, and Khaled would not benefit in this respect. (this is if skins were mandatory)

Solution 1: Optional skinning, where there is not a "traditional" skin alongside others that can be chosen, but rather a way to actually turn it off or on. So the user can either use their mIRC efficiently or they could turn mIRC into a resource hogging "pretty" program. This would most likely attract more people to mIRC (albiet morons), and generate some more cashflow for Khaled.

Solution 2: (this is for users who want skins) Just download a full mIRC script to put some sense of style into your mIRC. Some of these scripts have sounds that play and everything, so you'll probably be blown away by the prettiness of it all..

Solution 3: Take all people who like big and bulky skins over more useable and efficent programs and put them on an island. Then nuke the island into oblivion, and have the rest of the people of the world have more kids and raise those kids right.

I doubt skins are going to signifigantly increase mIRC's user base; because it would imply the only reason they don't use mIRC is do to the lack of skins. To my knowledge, there are no other popular IRC clients that support skins. So where would these people come from? They'd just say "now that mIRC has skins, I think I'll start chatting on IRC?" I really doubt that will happen.

It's common sense: Those users who are currently using other IRC clients that like skinnable chat clients might switch to mIRC if it was skinable.

I personally think a skinable mIRC is just nonsense, but it could have some sort of positive outcome for mIRC and could benefit Khaled.

Implimenting it would, at least I think, seem to cheapen it. But if the option wasn't made too apparant, and mIRC didn't "have to" have skins loaded, so extra resources would not be taken up.. Why not?

The question is, how much more of a user base would mIRC gain, and is it worth taking the time to add this option for that increase? This question is for Khaled to answer for himself. It is not ours to judge which way he decides as well, because I'm sure he'd have a good reason for whichever route he takes. He has, after all, had the good sense to create a very very useful program that has become the most popular IRC client..

ok atleast your able to bring out some sort of reasonaing behind the idea .. which is more than i can say for the original poster ... altho i still dont agree that skins are going to make anything any different and id really rather not see them in mirc .. as anything that needs to be skinned is done already by me in my scripts thru dlls... if mirc where to support customized skins then the actual settings and codings for it would be most likely the same as using dlls .. so u wouldnt be gaining very much in my opinion unless mirc came with a few preset skins of its own ....... (horrid idea there) which would allow simple users to just point and click on what they would want. it wouldnt add anything atractive to mirc thats not already there

Well the thing is, mIRC is already "skinnable." Severl themes already exist allowing you to change all the colors mIRC uses. You can change the background of all windows, you can change the color of text in the nicklist, you can change the icons on the toolbar, dlls exist that allow you to change the appearance of the switchbar, menubar, add statusbar, etc, etc. Pretty much, everything you could want added in a skin engine is already available in some other form.

it would be good to come with various skins to save people the effort.
besides i dont like raping mirc with dll's ;\

i have doubts u know how to rape mirc with dlls. as for adding extra skins. no i dont want khaled deciding what i should think is nice as a skin. as his idea of nice is apparently 6.1x to me id have been happier if all he did was just fix bugs in mirc 6.03 and not change anything. there are hundreds of feature suggestions id have loved to have seen added. and yet hardly anything was. no id rather khaled not add skins into the exe