Miranda IM: A Guide to Customization

Introduction
Miranda can be an overwhelming application to customize, but once you know where to look for things, it gets a lot easier. A lot of people compare this program to foobar because of the intimidating process of customization. I tried to do the foobar thing and couldn’t, but I felt like customizing Miranda was much easier. The purpose of this guide is to take Miranda from its bare essentials to something more aesthetically pleasing.

Here is Miranda before:

This guide will get you here:

Here’s a short guide to alternative IM programs:

Miranda

Pros:
- Multiprotocol AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber (GTalk/GMail), Gadu-Gadu
- Highly customizable
- Able to handle a lot of plugins and keep roughly <8MB memory footprint
- Large and active community
- File transfers
- Run it on your USB drive

Cons:
- Takes a long time to customize
- Outgoing text formatting missing
- No Direct Connect in AIM

Trillian

Pros:
- Multiprotocol AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo!
- Video/Audio chat
- Direct Connect in AIM

Cons:
- Arguably bloated
- Limited customization
- $$$ in some cases

Pidgin

Pros:
- Multiprotocol AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, +more
- Multiplatform
- Lightweight, easy to set up and use

Cons:
- GTK is largely disliked
- Very little aesthetic flexibility

If you’re lazy or get stuck you can download a fabricated package I made. I wrote my guide while making this package.
For this guide I’ve mirrored every plugin I linked just in case these websites go down. I suggest you use the originals though since they provide screenshots and descriptions, and so you get used to using the Miranda addons section.

Step One: Getting Started

Download Miranda IM v0.7.8 (mirror) (I prefer the zip archive).

Extract/install the contents into a folder like C:\Program Files\Miranda (If you used the installer it installs to C:\Program Files\Miranda IM)

This is optional but recommended: In the newer versions they changed where your profile.dat is stored. By default it installs it into %APPDATA%\Miranda IM which I think kinda sucks. It’s a lot easier to back up Miranda if everything is contained in one folder. To do this, open mirandaboot.ini and edit the line ProfileDir=%APPDATA%\Miranda IM to ProfileDir=%PROGRAMFILES%\Miranda (or ProfileDir=%PROGRAMFILES%\Miranda IM if you used the installer)

(Your APPDATA folder is C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Miranda IM by default)

Run miranda.exe and go through here, make a profile, and set up your screen names, skip the importing. You’ll come to this semi-ugly and plain screen:

(Note: You will probably get a complaint about not finding “msvcr71.dll” in which you can download it here (mirror) and put it in your Miranda folder.)

Very important! To get to your options dialog, right click on the Miranda icon in the system tray and Go to Main Menu > Options. After clist_modern is installed (later) you can access it by simply right clicking on the tray icon and going to Options. Also, don’t worry about signing online for now because you’ll need to restart Miranda several times and you’ll just annoy your friends.

Step Two: Plugins and Options

This is where all the customization is at. First, you’ll need a font called “ITC Avant Garde Gothic LT Medium” so you can get it here. Extract to C:\Windows\Fonts if you’ve never installed a font before. If you happen to be using the area o4 theme you already have this font installed.

This is a very important site!
http://addons.miranda-im.org/

Now we’ll get downloading some plugins:

IEView (mirror)
RTL IEView Templates (mirror)
Mire clist_modern skin
Modern Contact List (mirror)
Scriver (tabbed IM) (mirror)

Unzip all the contents of ieview.zip to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins keeping folder structure.
Unzip rtlview.zip and mire_skin.zip to C:\Program Files\Miranda as well.
Open clistmodern.zip, unzip clistmodern.zip to C:\Program Files\Miranda
Unzip scriverunidocde.zip to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins
Restart Miranda if it’s open.

Go to the options (read the VERY IMPORTANT part above if you forgot how) and jump down to “Plugins” near the bottom. Disable some stuff here you don’t need. I only use Miranda for AIM and GTalk, so I would disable ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN, and Yahoo. It is important to enable clist_modern, ieview, and scriver right now (selecting scriver will disable srmm). So as of right now you should have the following plugins ENABLED: advaimg.dll, aim.dll, avs.dll, clist_modern.dll, ieview.dll, scriver.dll. Disabling/enabling plugins requires you to restart Miranda, so do so. You’ll notice the contact list looks quite different.

Go to the options and skip down to Message Sessions/IEView:
-Enable BBCodes
-Under the Message Log tab, enable “Use Templates” and browse to “c:\program files\miranda\rtlview\Dynamic+RTL\dynamic 05.1\SimpleBoxes.ivt”. There are several different IEView templates, but I think this one fits the Mire theme best. Leave the RTL field blank. Check “Use Message Grouping” and “Show Nicknames”, you can check whatever else you want. (

Go to the Message Sessions/Messaging option. You can choose your own options for the most part and the defaults are fine, but here’s the options I changed:
- Under the Containers tab, uncheck “Show Status bar” (I think it’s unnecessary)
- I changed a lot in the Messaging tab so you can set it up like this:

- Don’t mind the Messaging Log tab, we’ll use a different log viewer later.
- If you want to use IRC the last two tabs are where you configure stuff, although I think IEView overrides these options.

Go to Customize/contact list skin, here is where we apply the Mire skin.
- Hit browse, find “C:\Program Files\Miranda\Mire\Mire.msf”. Hit apply to see changes. It looks pretty ugly right now…
(Note: If it is looking for *.cln files or anything other than *.msf files, that means you do not have clist_modern enabled in the plugins, enable it and restart Miranda)

Go to Customize/List Text
- For “Standard Contacts” change the font to “AvantGarde LT Medium” size 7 and colored white.
- Select “Second Line” from the drop down box at the top. Uncheck Colour and Italics and change the color to something nice like:

Also change the Selected Text color at the bottom to this blue. Should look kinda like this for “Second line”:

- Choose “Closed groups” from the drop down box, change the font size to 7, and change the color to white.
- Lastly change the selection mode to Full Selection
- Click apply to see changes (if your font looks jagged and ugly then you don’t have ClearType on, check the FAQs)

Jump up to Contact List option on the left at the very top:
- Check “Hide offline users”
- Under Contact List Sorting, choose Status as first, Name as second, and Nothing as third .
- Under the List tab, uncheck “Hot track items…”, check Dim Idle Contacts. Set the “Indent Groups by” to 10.
- Under the Window tab, set the margins to 13 on the left and right, and 10 to the top and bottom. You can also turn off the fading here too if you want.
- Under the Behavior tab, uncheck “Always on top”, check “Automatically Resize window to height of list”. (Note: this will not allow you to vertically resize your contact list manually)
- Under the Status Bar tab, uncheck “Show status bar”.
- To turn off the “My Contacts” at the top of the buddy list (it’s next to the second Miranda icon, the text is very dark), right click on the text and uncheck Show TitleBar.

Go to Customize/Icons (Note: The Mire skin does provide icons, but they are easier to use as a dll package, which I have done for you, which you have already extacted to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Mire)
- Hit Import Icons, find mire.dll
- I set my icons up like this (drag and drop the icons over the old ones):

Main Icons

AIM Icons

Global Icons (Status Icons/Global)

(A little note about your global icons: These control the system tray icon. When you are Online you will see the Online icon; when you are Away you will see the Away icon. If you prefer different system tray icons you’ll have to find them on your own and change them.)

- Apply, see changes.

Go to Contact List/Row Items
- Under the Row Tab, set the Row Border to 2, and the left and right margins to 0.
- Under the Second Line tab, change the spacing to 1 pixel and change the text option to Status
- Under the Extra Icons tab, uncheck everything.

Go to Network/AIM
- Under the AIM Options I checked everything but “Do Not Autoreply When Away”, “Convert Outgoing Messages to HTML”, and “Check Mail on Login”. Leave the Advanced Options alone unless you really want to use them. (I don’t like avatars/buddy icons as you can tell)

Note: I don’t use any of the other protocols but AIM and GTalk, so I can’t help you with other protocols.

Let’s hide some of that ugly crap on the contact list:
- Click the Miranda icon in the top left corner, go to Frames > View Modes > Uncheck Visible
- Then, Frames > Toolbar > Uncheck Visible
- If you don’t plan on using IRC in Miranda, right click on the Chat Rooms group and delete it

How to sign online! Ok, so now you’re about done with this section and you want to see your hard work. Right click the system tray icon and go to Status > Online. I cannot stress this enough: SIGN ON GLOBALLY! This means do not sign onto your protocol(s) individually by going to Status > AIM > Online or Status > MSN > Online. Doing it individually will not sign you onto your protocols automatically when you start Miranda. For now you don’t see the submenus for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. unless you have more than the AIM protocol enabled.

You can rename your contacts and give them an alias. You can do this by right clicking on your buddy and clicking rename. I like to use their first and last name. Also, if you’re like me and only have one group called “Buddies” you can disable showing groups entirely, although it’s up to you. To do this go to Options > Contact List > and check “Disable groups”.

Consistency alert! There is one thing that bugs me about this IEView skin: the font used is Trebuchet and although it looks ok with the other fonts, it’s just not the same. I’ve modded the style.css for for this one IEView skin to use AvantGarde LT Medium. Download the file here and extract it to C:\Program Files\Miranda\rtlview\Dynamic+RTL\dynamic 05.1

So there you have it, a functional and aesthetically pleasing multi-protocol instant messaging client. You can stop here if you’re tired of customizing, but I feel there’s still a lot missing: a decent away message system, sounds, etc… Move onto the next section if you wish to really make this program shine.

This requires a lot of restarting Miranda since we’re downloading and setting up these plugins separately. Just a warning: you’re probably going to annoy your friends by signing on and off frequently. You should globally set yourself Offline (it will keep you offline as you restart Miranda) if it’s a problem but you won’t be able to see some of the plugins in action immediately.mToolTip
This plugin allows you to hover over a contact and show defined information about them. I have mine set up to just show idle/away time and away message.
Download mToolTip (mirror)
Download Variables (mirror)
Extract mToolTip to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins
Extract only variables.dll from the unicode folder to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins (This may have created a unicode folder in your Plugins folder: move the Variables.dll out of the unicode folder and put it in your Plugins folder)Go to your options, and go to mToolTip. Set up the options like this:
(the blue color is the same blue you used for the 2nd line of text on the buddylist; nevermind the border colors)
When you choose Font & Text Color, make sure to choose AvantGarde LT Medium as the font.Under the Advanced Options, choose the AIM protocol and paste this in:

%lname|%%%%|%tab( %id|%%%%| )
%line%
%%Away message:
%%%smsg|%%%%|
%%Idle time:%tab%idlesince|%%%%|

Hit Save.

Notes: Again, I only use AIM so you’re going to have to figure out the rest if you use other protocols, but for the most part this string should work with most protocols. Also, if you don’t use aliases for your buddies you’ll notice that the screen name is listed twice in the tooltip. To fix this, delete ( %id|%%%%| ) from the first line of code.

PopUps
These are the little notifications you get in the corner of your screen when someone changes their status (only with NewStatusNotify, which is covered later):

Download PopUp (mirror) (Yes, I am aware there is a PopUp Plus, but I could never get it to work right, but this works wonderfully) and extract to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins and restart Miranda.

Go to Options/PopUps and set it up like this:

(Yes, that’s the same blue as we used before. Also, I have my notifications set up in the upper right since I have my taskbar at the top. You should position the notifications wherever you please.)

Under Advanced Options make sure “Use Multiple Threads” is checked (keeps Popups from crashing when deleting/adding users from contact list) and check Away and Offline to the right. Note you’ll be missing two options (Away System and Status Notify) as defined in the last screen shot. We’ll get to those later.

NewStatusNotify
This integrates with PopUps to show when a user changes their status. (Ex. sCrEeNaMe69 has signed Online)

Download NewStatusNotify (mirror) and extract to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins

Now check under PopUps/Status Notify. You only need to change the colors for Offline/Online/Away (unless some other protocol makes use of the others). I set it up like this, you can use different colors if you want:

(You can change the Timeout to whatever you want, 2 seconds is enough for me)

Now go to Status/Notify and set up the options like this:

Hit the Configure button and check Away on both sides.

SimpleAway
Finally, a decent away system with predefined messages (I used to advocate New Away System, but this is leaner and easier to use).

Download SimpleAway (mirror) and unzip simpleaway.dll to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins

Go to Options > Status > Status Messages
Select “Away” from the drop down box and configure the rest of the options like so:

KeepStatus
Signs you in automatically after a disconnect. Download (mirror) and extract to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins
In the options go to Status/KeepStatus and in the Basic tab check “Check Connection”
In the Advanced tab check “Set protocol offline before a connection attempt” and “React on login errors” with a delay of 900 seconds.

MetaContacts
This is only necessary if you’re using more than one protocol. I use AIM and Google Talk and so do some of my friends. So instead of the contact show up twice in your buddylist, you can drag and drop contacts on your buddy list on top of each other and combine them. Download (mirror) and extract this to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins

History++

Miranda logs all of your conversations by default, however the default log viewer is pretty ugly. History++ makes it much better looking and in addition you can export your logs into txt or html or whatever the hell you want. Download (mirror) and extract the dll to C:\Program Files\Miranda\Plugins and extract the icons folder to C:\Program Files\Miranda. To bring up the history, right click on a contact in your buddy list and click on View History.

Sounds
I like to have sounds, but I hate those awful AIM bloops and bleeps. I fully support Wurt (mirror), which I believe a fellow goon made (extract the Wurt folder to C:\Program Files\Miranda). You can go through the Sounds page and look for other sound packages if you want. To set up sounds go to Options and into Customize/Sounds. If you don’t use IRC, uncheck everything under Chat. I use message_incoming.wav for both Focused and Unfocused windows. For new sessions I use message_queued.wav

Smileys
I don’t often like seeing smileys but I happened to come across a decent one.

First download SmileyAdd (mirror) and extract the smileys and plugin folder to C:\Program Files\Miranda. I like AdiuMSN (mirror), so download that or look for other ones that will work and place the AdiuMSN folder into C:\Program Files\Miranda\smileys. Go to Options > Customize > Smileys and set up the options like so:

Final Thoughts

Well if you’re reading this, congratulations. This is quite a task to undertake and I hope the guide was easy enough to follow. I spent a couple of days doing this so there are bound to be errors. Point them out if you see any or get stuck, because I may have missed a step. I’ll try to keep this post up to date if I find any problems. Also, if you have a problem you’d rather not post here, feel free to PM me or contact me on AIM (see profile).