Archives

I've put a new article into the Wiki which describes, in detail, the available options to format the title bar of a TabSRMM message window. People have been asking frequently and this wasn't documented anywhere for any recent version of the plugin.

So here is the link. The information is current for development builds of TabSRMM v3 and not all variables are available in the older versions. Especially %t and %T are new.

While building this site, I stumbled over a small problem regarding proper picture scaling with CSS. The original template had a simple scaling for the comments display which scaled any avatar to a fixed size of 48 by 48 pixels. Non-square avatars were, of course, looking a bit strange because of this scaling method.

User pictures are usually small, but restricting their size too much is not always the best idea. Some people insist on a certain level of “quality” for their user pictures, so a size of at least 100 by 100 pixel should be allowed for a profile picture, unless you really need to care about traffic a lot.

Now, 100 × 100 is fine for the profile or other locations, but for forum posts and especially comments, I would consider a 100 × 100 sized user picture too large. But when the pictures themselves are larger than – say – 100 × 100 pixels, you must dynamically downscale them for certain places of your site. Read more...

Some updates regarding skins

In TabSRMM 3 the way to choose a skin has changed somewhat. Previously, you had to select the .TSK file from a normal file selection dialog and it was possible to have skins in any possible folder location. Because this can cause quite a few problems with relative path names, I've changed this behavior in TabSRMM 3. Read more...

Aero support in TabSRMM

Aero UI

One of the bigger new features in TabSRMM 3 is its ability to use Windows Aero for some UI elements. Like you can see in the screenshot, some areas of the message window can obtain the typical transparent look when running under Windows Vista or Windows 7 with the Aero theme enabled.

The Aero Glass UI is clearly better than the somewhat bulky and not very pretty standard UI in Windows XP. Whether Aero is useful or not is debatable, but it does look attractive and gives Windows a fresh and clean UI design.

Read more...

TabSRMM Version 3

Development for TabSRMM Version 3 has started quite a while ago and is currently still in an early stage. There have been 1000's of changes in the code and while the major rewrites are more or less finished, there is still quite a lot of work left.

Version 3 will be quite different from previous versions in many ways. There are a few new features and many changes to existing features. Also, TabSRMM 3 has been optimized and major internal changes will make it work faster while using less resources at the same time.

A few features were removed from the plugin in order to clean the code up and remove redundant or poorly implemented code.

Read more...