As you may have noticed, CmYK has changed its visual design, this time only moderately. I’ll provide a list of all the stuff I’ve done, both on and offsite (backstage on stuff I’ve written, yay!):

- I’ve changed the header, footer and post separators because they didn’t go too well with the site. Hopefully this design is much better looking
- I’ve added a super-duper zoom function to my Messenger display picture (just hover over it and wait a bit). I was originally going to have the zoom-out part delayed by a couple of seconds, but I decided against it. Also a note about Internet Explorer: It doesn’t seem to like the zoom very much and will push the entire blog to the left until it is restored. I can’t be bothered to try and fix this, as of course I have a distinct dislike for IE much like many webdevs.
- The orange headers have gone! Yep, I figured it was time to let them go, as much as I’ve developed a liking for orange over the time I’d used it. Still, I rather like the new light blue that succeeds it though.
- I’ve switched my Messenger status display method from the XML DOM to PHP’s SimpleXML, which is much better, and fixed a bug that invalidated the page by not returning the string with the proper HTML entities. This fix will also be incorporated into Helios once I get the chance to release the PLSC and PHP together.
- I’ve not been able to do anything with VistAero for now, but I have released a new version of CADLive, which now looks more like the new version of WLM2009! Check it out here. Also updated is 724 for CAD, just a few minor changes there though.
- I’ve had a quick look into the resources of the new Messenger version, and while I probably won’t be making any fully-fledged skins anymore, a WLMod version for 2009 could possibly be in the works soon. My school holidays are coming up as well, so I might have some extra time then to work on a lot of different things, WLMod perhaps included :D.

I’ll be back again soon with more stuff I’m working on, mostly Plus! scripts I’ve developed (they’re kind of useless, but I like them). I’ve also been thinking about making a new CAD skin with a totally new design; I’ll have to play around with Paint.NET for that!

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That’s right, I’ve again been very busy as usual!

I’ve more or less finished the CmYKv2 Site theme, just a few tweaks here and there and some more additions to the Internet Explorer CSS and I’ll be done. I still have not got around to the CAD skin yet, I haven’t been using it very much recently, but I’ll one day get it done, sorry if you were looking forward to that (which I doubt). I’m still moving on to other projects, leaving a trail of half-finished things behind that I really want to clean up soon… but I’m in a bit of disorganisation at the moment, I’ve finally got my new CPU (A Pentium Dual Core, not that flash, but it’s brilliant for now, better than the old Athlon), and I’m piecing together all my stuff into the familiar formats and locations and all that. A secondary 500GB drive is also coming, so I can finally get everything started again.

I’ve also made two VB.NET apps mainly for my own use, HexConv and HexaDecimal, which convert hexadecimal codes into text and decimal numbers respectively, and vice versa. HexaDecimal may prove to be very useful indeed, as some colours are represented by decimal numbers. This way, I’ll be able to convert them into recognisable hex (HTML) colour codes eg. #FFFFFF. The other program simply turns hex code into readable ASCII.

Another project of mine you may have noticed is Helios (listed under Pages). This, also, is not done yet (surprise, surprise); I still need to make some adjustments to the script and ask for permission to release it or at least get the author to release it himself. This is probably one of my favourite things to work on, it’s simple and user-friendly (at least I hope so) and very lightweight. Thanks go to MeEtc for the PHP SimpleXML method of getting data from XML files, and Eljay for the Messenger Plus! Live script that started me off here.

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I have a lot to do around the place and not much time left to do it… but here they are, in no particular order that I can consciously recall. None of these projects are finished yet, but some are coming close.

Two New Apps That Will Help You Skin Messenger
UIBENC and R2PGUI are two programs I have been developing in Visual Basic .NET. They are essentially frontends for console applications that I have found hard to use from a beginner’s point of view. I have made it easier to use these tools by introducing a lightweight pseudo-addon for them. The first of these, UIBENC, assists conversion to and from the new UIB format used in Messenger 9. The second, while not being able to convert to for certain legal reasons, can convert the rather longer-running propietary MSRLE format also used in Messenger (from 8.0 onwards), to normal 32-bit PNGs.

That CAD Skin I Told You About
Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to work on this too much. Rest assured I will get it up and running soon! I don’t think the multiple backgrounds idea will go ahead, so all I have to do is copy the substyles for different resolutions. For now, not much news to report.

And last but not least…

CmYK Is Getting A New Look
I’d had enough of the bright white and blue (OK I didn’t, I just wanted to get rid of the Wave 3 header cause it isn’t actually mine), so now I’m plonking on a nice Web 2.0-ish look, using light and dark blue, white and  orange. I think it looks quite good, and I’ve made a DP border, signature, and wallpaper out of the general design. The wallpaper I’ve not released, but I hope to sometime. It looks kind of realistic, as though it was a photo with a fair amount of noise, or stripy carpet. It’s a variation on the 724|3 screenshot background.

There may be odd things happening around the site as I can’t test php locally. It’s not a complete interface overhaul though, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

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I am still alive! I have been very busy (not exactly) during these past weeks: I’ve had the graphics artist’s equivalent of writer’s block. So far, with my shiny new Toshiba laptop I got for Christmas with Vista, I’ve uncovered some pretty useful image resources I can use. This is the first of many more creations to come thanks to those resources.

Soon to be on CmYK is VistAero, a pretty self-explanatory skin for CD Art Display. It is a fullscreen skin for the latest 2.0 beta that, at the time of writing, only comes in 1440×900 and 1280×800 resolutions, as they are the resolutions of my PC and laptop, respectively. I will add more resolutions and I may also add different backgrounds, too!

I’m considering changing the site design, as I can almost smell some sort of legal action. I might just make a new header that’s “the same, but different”. You can’t copyright a colour scheme

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Yep, CD Art Display 2b5 users can now have a matching skin to go with the original WLM skin.

The reason I chose the beta version of CAD over the stable 1.0 release is that I found the beta to be really stable already, and elements such as text glows and pretty much skinning in general were impressively refined. CD Art Display is an awesome bit of software that is incredibly versatile.

You can find 724 for CAD here.

On another note, SevenTwoFour itself is coming up to its third incarnation. Version 2.5, as I have said previously, could be seen as just a bridge between versions 2 and 3. I have yet to have a few things done for 2.5, mostly boring stuff such as cleaning up the code, especially the SkinInfo. It should be out by the end of November, at the very latest.

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