Skinning the Astra Contact List

From TrillWiki

[edit] Objective

The Contact List is the center of all operations for Trillian, all other windows will stem from here or from windows that were opened from here.

The Contact List's main function is to display a list of the user's contacts and their current connection status, other information commonly seen is the user's current connection status and which mediums they are connected to.

[edit] Essentials

For a contact list to be completely functional in a skin, it should at the very minimum include the actual list. You will also need some way for the user to hide the window or close it, so at the very least a Hide button should also be present.

Users generally like some way to know if they are connected to their mediums of choice, so we recommend the inclusion of the iconholder (which lists the current mediums and your connection status) as well. It's not essential, but recommended.

Other items on the contact list are totally up to you as the skinner. You may choose to have the users current buddy icon on show or their away message, or you might choose to have no extra info at all. The complexity of things is totally up to you.

So essentials:

• Hide (or close button)
• Contact List (and a scrollbar so you can scroll through the list)
• Connection Status (iconholder)

The Contact List isn't attached to a container by default, but the user can attach it. This means you might require a tabbed version of the window layout. The Base skin does include a tabbed version as well.

[edit] Introducing The Base Contact List

Open up your text editor (I use Crimson Editor http://www.crimsoneditor.com/, but Notepad will also work) and load the skins\base\xml\layout\contactlist.xml file. Have a look at the code, familiarizing yourself with the structure. It's all commented so you can see which bits do what.

It's surprisingly short isn't it! Of course this doesn't show all the underlying code for things like the way the list looks or anything like that, but we will get onto that shortly! Just be reassured that getting a working window is not that hard!