Design Evolved Community Forum

Well Zero-G has now been updated to Version 2. This thread is a quick overview of what is new in the skin.

For those looking for an ad-remover, go to the Downloads section of this site under Miscellaneous.

The major thing to come in Zero-G 2 is the new color themes so we will cover these first:

New Colors

Black - The classic Zero-G



White - The light side of Zero-G



Dark Blue - The Dark Colorizable Zero-G



Light Blue - The Light Colorizable Zero-G



New Settings

Version 2 introduces new skin settings to play with. They are as follows:

Extra Large DP mode
Adding of contacts status to nicknames in the contact list
Adding of status pearls to display pictures in the contact list
Setting all offline people in the contact list to have the same display picture
Hiding Gleams
Hiding contact list buddy
Hiding Email Notification button
Hiding chat window information bar
New Modern Emoticons (as seen in Windows Aero Messenger 2)

Fixes

Toasts now tinge depending on the selected color (except plus toasts)
Fixed contact list issues on dark visual styles
Fixed contact mouse overs in certain areas of the skin
Options panel updated
Fixed hiding of mobile icon so that it doesn't stuff up the contact list

Things to add in future
Multilingual Options panel
More Messenger Plus! skinned areas (when the skin system is more advanced)

woot, congrats on this release
ill try it later

Great update !!!

love this skin, thanks for the update, do you have to un-install the older version of Zero G then install this, or it doesn't matter? thanks again

With Plus! skinning, it won't matter. Just install it right over the old one and restart messenger

thank you for the help...

this skin is awesome ! unfortunately I now use 9.0 and does not work. I'll be waiting the release =(

I think you will be waiting a long time. (I believe) Willz has stated that he will not support BETAs (even public ones) as they constantly change with resources and other stuff.

Also 9.0 is a private BETA and really shouldn't be used by anyone but official Microsoft testers. (Correct me if I'm wrong about you not being an official tester.)

but his latest releases support 9.0 (e.g Kung Fu Panda & Wall-E)

Yeah its a bit different. Wall-E and Kung-Fu Panda are really simple skins, the majority of Windows Live Messenger's original layout is still intact so porting it over to 9.0 is not hard at all. Because there are very few changes to Messenger a lot of it fits into WLM 9.0 beta and only a few new windows have to be made.

Zero-G on the other hand uses a lot of custom layout structures so it is extremely difficult to get it working in 9.0. The main problem is that you can not decrypt a lot of WLM 9.0 beta images yet so you have no way of knowing whats what. Plus I have tested some of my code and it just dies in WLM 9 beta.

So I feel that it is not worth trying to update complex skins to wlm 9.0 beta mainly for the reason that the next build of wlm 9.0 will need another rewrite in the skins code. When WLM 9.0 goes final, then any updates that are made to it are only minor and do not affects skins at all.

Basically any complex skin like Zero-G, Ev0, Iron Man, Windows Aero Messenger etc will not be made for WLM 9.0 until 9.0 is FINAL. So you will be waiting for a long time since Microsoft has said it will launch in 2009.

Its the sacrifice you have to make when using beta software I'm afraid.