ibute custom font files with your skin and use them in your definition and style files. These fonts are not installed system wide, they are only made available to Messenger and Messenger Plus! windows.

Skins: gradient colors can now be specified in "Color" resources. These colors are to be used in backgrounds only. Note that in the current version of Messenger 9 Beta, horizontal gradients will be displayed vertically.

Skins: a new "Rectangles" resource type has been added in "Replace". You can use it to replace rcrect styles more directly.

Skins: additional flexibility and features added for custom option windows:

• Any number of link controls can now be added in custom option windows. The caption of the control is used as link, http and https is supported. Note that the caption can only contain a link, no extra text is permitted for the web site's address to be detected.
• You can now add a button or a link control with id "AboutWnd" to trigger the display of a second, separate about box for your skin. To id of your about box windows are defined in SkinInfo, OptionInterface\AboutIds elements.
• The About Box window cannot contain any option control. It can, however, contain link controls (as specified above).

Skins: A new "Environment" kind of <*PlusSkin*> tag is now supported. It allows conditions based on the current version of Messenger or Messenger Plus!, or the language of Messenger.

Skins: the interface color used by the current user can now be reset to any custom color of your choice when a skin is enabled. This can be specified in the new Options\Messenger\ResetUserColor element of skininfo and is useful if your skin looks better in a given color. If the skin supports colorization, it is recommended to keep blue as the default in your files and use this setting to choose the substitute a default color on installation.