Ok, so “unleashed” makes it sound like a big update, when in reality it was only a smaller one. The main new feature added this week is better support for group chats, which for those interested in skinning means one extra window to skin (apparently quite a simple one though).

There was, however, a minor “fix” that for us skinners is a rather l-a-r-g-e change:

  • 5523 Kevin Kurtz FIXED [SkinXML] Support for slice inside the resize tag

It doesn’t sound like much, but in skinning terms roughly 100 or so lines of needed code were just wiped from the “to do list”.

The resize code is the one part of your skin that defines where (if you hover your mouse over the skin) you can resize the contact list (or whatever window you’re viewing).

With this new simplified code, you can make a full working custom window skin in quite a small size. I posted the complete xml of a simple custom window over at the Trillian forums which you can see here.

Although the simple skin has limited features, you can see how simple it is now to create a working skin. I’ll be updating and finishing off my tutorials in the near future so anyone can make their own custom window skins!