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Archive Yahoo Messenger Version 4 Editing Smileys How we did it |
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Tuesday, 18 November 2003 |
THIS WAS DONE USING VERSION 4,0,0,953
For quite some time the Wacky B Information inbox has had a steady
stream of emails with regard to how to customize the Yahoo! Smileys...
right behind that (more so since the release of beta 852) was how
to edit the drop down menu to put the ‘secret’ smileys on it...
that's leaving aside the usual "what are the secret smiley codes"
emails. Now on and off I’d picked it up and played with the idea
of editing them... successful I wasn’t but I always felt like I
was close... but I was never quite close enough ;-) so I started
to ask around. All I heard was that it couldn't be done, same
with all I read... so at every opportunity I'd throw out the question
"ever tried customizing the smileys?" to see what came back...
some laughed, most told me what I'd already heard and read, and
some just accepted the fact that I'd got myself another bone...
but then I came across the ones that rose to the challenge...
and over time they've come and gone, each sharing and leaving their
own little piece of the puzzle.... then along came Stephen, and
then Andrew :-)
Stephen happened to pop into the main inbox on the day that it was
my turn to clear the feedback forms... a lucky break! We got to
talking, eventually we ended up online the at the same time (an
amazing feat when you take into account time zones!) and off went
our Yahoo Messengers... we hit it off well and the challenge was
‘live’ once again. Stephen slogged away and quickly chopped back
on the groundwork...the "maybes" were tossed around and a very supportive
sounding board was created where we threw ideas and trials back
and forth via messenger and email.
Stephen had a hex editor and was going through the messenger files
one by one (which reminds me there is NO dummy secret smiley!) I
soon latched onto his train of thought... he sent me the url for
the editor, I grabbed myself a copy, mentioned to a few people what
I was up to and by the end of the day I had 6 hex editors sitting
in my inbox :-O
Loading the files into the editor/s was easy... but as far as I
was concerned everything I checked out looked just like a text file
that had gone through a blender... fortunately Stephen had told
me which direction to head in and before I knew it right in front
of me was the keystrokes for the smileys... I was stoked.
Stephen and I had been playing around with it for quite a few days
straight (he has the patience of a saint!) and between us we had
a good understanding of the basics... then on the scene came Andrew
who landed in my inbox with a nifty wee quirk (that I must get round
to writing up!) anyway the same thing happened, we ended up online
at the same time and off went our Messengers (yet again we defied
the odds of time zones!) I threw the questions at him and away it
went. The pieces began to come together... Andrew grabbed the tail
of it and after a couple of attempts changed the smiley bmp to a
negative
picture and there it was... success!
From there he went leaps and bounds and ultimately he managed to
replace the cool
smiley with the pic of himself
so every time I, or he hit B-) he saw his pic!
Here’s how he did it...
Created a pic, saved the files as X.BMP then copied the contents
to the clipboard. Opened wordpad did EDIT and PASTE then saved as
X.RTF From there, took both the .bmp and .rtf file and dropped them
in the Smiley folder, renamed two of the existing files and replaced
them with the X files... and ta da! It was quick, clean and simple...
that I can vouch for as he did the entire thing while I was on Messenger
with him… I didn’t even have time to make a coffee in between!
Andrew logged off for the night shortly after and I went to try
and change the smileys exactly has we’d discussed... I suffered
complete and total failure! Fortunately Stephen popped online complete
with the perfect [pic
to trial run and there we sat for hours... have to say it was extremely
frustrating and when he logged off for the night neither of us had
any success... but later on that day success
did indeed come my way and I fired of an IM
to Stephen. Ok, so I was little excited ;-)
Here’s how I managed it...
By this stage I’d made a right mess of the smileys and their associated
.rtf files so I reinstalled Messenger over the top of itself, opened
Explorer, made my way to the smileys folder. Once there I renamed
2.bmp to 2a.bmp (at this stage there were no .rtf files for any
of the smileys, Stephen worked out that rtf files self generate
once the smiley have been used for the first time) I then grabbed
Stephens picture of the flag dropped it into the folder renamed
it 2.bmp, then launched Messenger... logged on and hit the now blank
space on the drop down menu... by doing this the rtf file was created,
and there it was... the flag sitting right there in the IM
window.
The fact that the pic wasn’t on the drop down menu wasn’t a problem...
not even sure what happened there but after I’d finished bouncing
round the room I went back the smiley folder and noticed the new
2.bmp file as missing (!!!) but the 2.rtf was still there... so
I dropped 2.bmp back in and it then appeared on the drop
down menu
Stephen ran into trouble too...
Stephen and I caught up in the wee hours of the morning (NZ time..
which was good as at least his head was clear!) and away we went
again... step by step we went through the way Andrew had found success
and the way I had... neither worked! Stephen dropped, dragged, created,
reinstalled, started with a fresh flag etc etc (told you he had
the patience of a saint!) and still no joy.. we decided the pic
wasn’t the problem so this left us with the rtf file... I sent him
the one that was created on my comp... the file size was different!
My file was around 8k and Stephens was about 2k... he dropped my
copy of rtf into the smiley folder and there it was... it
worked! Stephen and I are wondering if it has something to
do with his o/s and his version of WordPad... he's running W95,
I'm on ME and Andrew is on 2000
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 22 November 2003 )
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