Is a Frame & Border skin possible?

[Adder]

Is it possible to create a skin that is usable with any piecemeal setup, that would modify just the frames and borders? I wanted to try this myself, but I can't get EQ2UIBuilder to work with Win98, and I am just beginning to look into XML and am not yet able to decipher the codes in EQ2 XMLs (or most any XML for that matter ).

What I'm looking for is something with the frames and borders modified that could be applied to any mod. I like the frames of the Night Elf mod, as well as Quib's vine borders on his mods. If these two could be combined and applied to any window of any mod, I would be one HAPPY Half-Elf Ranger (or banana as the case may be). If this is possible, other borders could be made with themes for Mages, ShadowKnights, Monks, etc.

Again...is this possible, and if so, would someone please make this mod? (Or at least could someone direct me toward a way to do it?)

[Quib]

Some of the earliest EQ2UI mods were graphical reskins that included little or no XML. Particularly, the work by SaintSinner which I believe is often overlooked because it's in the complete sets download area.

I use a heavily self modified version of SaintSinner's Nature UI that has never been released to the public (and won't be; SaintSinner's work is really great and my fine-tuning was sheerly for reasons of personal taste).

You don't need to know XML to do this sort of reskinning; just a decent image editor and a DDS format plugin. I recently built a new computer with Windows XP but until then only had Win98SE so know your pain with not having UIBuilder. Actually, since I learned how to work with the EQ2UI XML all in notepad, I rarely use UIBuilder at all even though I have a Windows XP machine now.

Quib

[Adder]

Thanks Quib. I thought that looked similar to the Nature UI, but I wasn't sure. I had assumed that SaintSinner's reskins were full UIs, similar to the Fetish fullset type. I guess I should have looked closer.

Are there any programs that use the DDS format natively? If not, where can I get the plugins, or should I ask, where do I get the DDS from? I'm not very 'fluid' with working with graphics, but I'm game to give it a go.

As for the UI Builder, I guess I'm gonna have to break down and shell-out the cash for a new P4 & motherboard and an upper-shelf nVidia so that I can get my main system with WinXP running again (that's my real forte... I'm a puter modder , this stuff that you all do is new to me). I've taught myself some HTML, and have Macromedia's Dreamweaver suite, but have procrastinated on the learning of XML and JScript/Java. I was REALLY looking forward to learning and using the EQ2UIBuilder simply because this stuff looks fun.

Anyway, thanks again for the input Quib (and your mods - I use quite a few of them)... I'll try tweaking the Nature UI if I can find the DDS to use.

[hirebrand]

I use Photoshop and the NVIDIA plugin.. works fine for me. Here is a Photoshop image of window_elements_generic.dds which is a good place to start.

The color boxes are different layers that mark the various types of frames. I used this in my work on my Greenmist skin.