TRILLIAN PROFESSIONAL
Version 1.0 Build 1006.5 for Trillian 0.635

Skin updated on 17 August 2001 with the most recent emoticon set (16x16). Thanks folio!



Designed by Kid at Design Hazard.

A casual screenshot... showing Trillian living with other windows happily ever after...

Trillian users can go here for discussion: [link]

This was one of the skins from our studio sessions, while we were also working with the Trillian skin for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Trillian FAQ and the Oxymoron skin, obviously. (like Radiohead working on Kid A and Amnesiac at the same time...)
We received no salaries for all these. hehe doesnt matter.


Our aim of the design is...

1. Make Trillian Look Professional:
I hope (I hope...) Trillian can be one of the prettiest prorgrams on your desktops, apart from Sonique, WinAMP and Windows Media Player, which happens to be all media playing softwares. As there is a "Skin" feature in Trillian, there's no reason why Trillian has to look ugly. And therefore, I hope Trillian, by a new and professional-looking skin, can attract new users quickly in the next release.

It's not pixelism. It's not Aqua. It's not really Luna (although color is). It's not plastic. It's not glass. It's not metallic. It's not imitating any material. It's not imitating any kind of mechanical stuffs... mmm, it's just a nice window.

2. Make Trillian Look Original:
Trillian Professional gathers new ideas and old ideas. New ideas are... argh, something new, ok, something new. Old ideas are the previous three skins designed by Trillian by Ryan Saghir - Trillian Original, Trillian Business Skin and Trillian Default Skin... If you look at some parts of Trillian Professional carefully, you may find a lot of elements from the three old skins!

It is completely original. All Icons (even the medium icons), all windows and everything everything were created from the ground up, no matter by means of process, by means of ideas and concepts, and by means of techniques. 100% Trillian, 50% Kid. It's not composed of any themes - It's not about anything. It's completely abstract - It doesn't have any distinct meanings yet. Therefore, I can say, as the designer, that this new design is: Trillian.

The tint of blue is Cerulean Blue(s)... It's not Windows XP's toy blue.

3. Make Trillian Look Integrated:
I researched on the skinnable programs listed in Deviantart, except those completely change your UI (e.g. Litestep, WindowBlinds). Most users like to use skins that suit their desktop. Therefore, we can see that there are lots of 'rips' (refer to JG's essay) for Trillian to suit their WindowBlinds or LiteStep. However, actually most users in the world share the common Windows interface - Blue Bar Top and Grey Window.

So the devil asked me to make something completely outlandish: Dye its hair, pierce and make it punk! But the angel also told me to make something that lets Trillian live happily with other windows ever after - yet retains Trillian's originality. Oh my dear Angel Piccadilly, well, I trusted you and so I made this one. It's very Windows-ish, yet also very Trillian-ish!



Technically...

1. It's basically everything I invented and discovered during these months of skinning for Trillian... You know, interesting ways to place medium-icons, The blinking Transfer Icon... well, these techniques are now applied by many Trillian skinners today.

2. It looks big, right? But actually you don't need a high resolution to use it. My 800x600 fits Trilly well.
I find it fits Windows XP really well. Surprisingly it fits Windows 2000 and Windows ME, too!!!
And you can use 640x480, too!!!

3. Created with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Sliced and Exported with Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Scripted with Notepad... ok? :S

4. The skin is not fully compressed yet due to lack of time, so it's pretty large. It's in the progress... next build
for sure it has to be optimized... now the memory consumption is quite high.

5. Many things are reserved to be completed in 0.64 as there are several skin bugs in 0.6351. They are:
- Drawer may collapse to zero if you resize it. "Minx" for drawer is needed.
- Toolbar shows only one buttons. I reserved a vertical space for a vertical toolbar... as Kevin said that it will be supported in 0.64... mmm
- A bug in the scrollbar. cant fix this still for days...
- Big bug in emoticons. cant fix this still for days... makes me so nervous...

(I know this makes the skin incomplete... but it's the deadline and i cant fix the bug... so let's go for the Microsoft way!!!!)

6. Key Feature: SIX TIMES Full on Region Work! (***Different Regions for Different Windows!!!!***, i.e. it's not just the same-looking corners in every window.) This is probably the most irregular sized set of windows for Trillian.

7. Do you wonder why all those icons and regions were programmed in one line with tabs? (Check out Advanced Skinning Tutorial in future. )



Thoughts...

I havent really decided what the DCC Window should look like... I always think that it should be one of the drawers... but it isn't. I divided types of windows in Trillian clearly by color... only DCC window remains a bit ambivalent.
I'll change the look of the Contact List very probably, too.

Does it look like Windows Media Player 8's Professional skin?
...mmm! I just saw it!! in some sense, kind of... maybe because its designer sets similar aims for WMP. Well, Trillian Professional looks much better, doesn't it?! ... so WMP and Trillian can live happily together ever after! xp

If you try the best you can, If you try the best you cant, The best you cant is good enough~

I really like the ICQTrillian skin to be bundled with Trillian 0.64. (Me votes... ) I can't decide what other skins to be included though... so many.


- Kid at Design Hazard
[link]

(Uploaded on 8 July 2001, Updated on 17 July 2001) To be fair in the contest, please use the 8 July build. But to be fair to the users, please download the most recent version.

Skin updated on 17 August 2001 with the most recent emoticon set (16x16). Thanks folio!