cocoaforge

What are "XTras"? What is the adium xtras site? Why should I go there?

XTras are various addons to Adium to customize it to your liking, for example, you can change what the contact list looks like, the message view, the dock icon, the smilies, what sounds are played when an event occurs, and AppleScripts which can be used to do anything. The XTras site is at http://www.adiumxtras.com/ and has all the XTras available. You can set up an account to post XTras of your own or post comments under a name. You should go there to download all of these XTras and comment about them.

Going to the adium menu, then clicking "Adium Xtras" will also take you there

Should we talk about making X(tras)? Or at least mention more about where to do to find out how to make them?

Yeah sounds like a good idea, as there doesn't seem to be much. However, I think for it to be complete enough for someone to design a contact list style from scratch it could take a lot of documentation, as opposed to just saying "why not try downloading someone else's then modifying what inside using 'reveal package contents'", although we could always just put that.

Yes, you can definitley talk about extra creation. If you dont want to do it in this thread, and youd like to start a new one thats fine, but im cool with either way.

Do it in a new one. This is enough general xtra info, going to lock it.

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In Adium 0.8 and later, XTras can be installed directly from the http://www.adiumxtras.com website by clicking the install link (probably need some info here on exactly what the install link looks like if we use buttons like QuickSilver does)
</tentative>

thats crazy... like installing extensions to firefox right?

Upon reflection, I think we should make "automatic install" an option for xtras authors when they are submitting... checked by default, they can uncheck it if they are submitting the xtra to have multiple items within the archive or whatever... thoughts? [yeah, hijaacking a documentation thread, but this is relevant to the documentation]

What do you think authors need to have in xtras that would make them non-internet installable for? If it's a readme, we could have that functionality within the xtra? xtra.extension/Readme.rtfd or rtf or whatever, button in preferences to read the readme, that might do it.

contact list styles usually have 2 files within a folder, the .listtheme and .listlayout i think thats what evands means, or if you download the milk contact list style(or maybe it was dock icons) it came with menu bar icons also

evands: maybe punt this discussion over to the beta forum? (can this forum software handle splitting threads?)

The_Tick: that (the readme) would require an xtras manager, which I believe is being worked on, but I don't know the status of it.

on the multiple files in an archive question: I could probably make the installer unzip it and search for anything Adium can install inside it, so that in Wengero's example both the .listlayout and the .listtheme would install at once.

Catfish_Man wrote:The_Tick: that (the readme) would require an xtras manager, which I believe is being worked on, but I don't know the status of it.

Ya, something like that. Or we could just have an info button on xtras, perhaps. It's an idea that is sorta from quicksilver, you can see how it is implemented there.