Built at 3 AM because some of us never fully recovered from the early 2000s.
A single-file HTML nick generator with full MSN Plus! color tag support — the [c=#RRGGBB]text[/c] syntax that was, objectively, the pinnacle of human civilization.
If you don't know what MSN Messenger was, I'm so sorry for your loss. You missed an era where:
- Your entire social life ran through a 400×500px window with a butterfly logo
- Custom display names were a form of high art
- Having a good nick with ıllıllı decorations and colored letters made you an elite being
- The "nudge" feature was considered acceptable social behavior
The good news: MSN lives again thanks to Escargot, a project that brought back the WLM/MSN servers so you can relive the glory days with full client support. Yes, really. Go install it. I'll wait.
This generator exists because Escargot supports MSN Plus! color tags, and apparently at 3 AM on a weekday I decided the world needed a proper tool for this. Was it necessary? No. Was it worth it? Debatable. Did I do it anyway? You're reading a README about it.
All the classic character substitution styles from the original webestools/MSN Plus! era:
| Style | Sample |
|---|---|
| Normal | Leprechaun |
| Alpha | αℓρяєcнαυη |
| Thai | lєקгєcђคยภ |
| L33t | l3pr3ch4un |
| Circled | ⓛⓔⓟⓡⓔⓒⓗⓐⓤⓝ |
| Flip | uɐɥɔǝɹdǝן |
| …and 10 more | all equally cursed |
Every single decoration from the webestools original, faithfully reproduced:
•?((¯°·._.• your nick •._.·°¯))؟•
ıllıllı your nick ıllıllı
(¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.-> your nick <-.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)
▌│█║▌║▌║ your nick ║▌║▌║█│▌
★·.·´¯`·.·★ your nick ★·.·´¯`·.·★
…and 32 others. You're welcome.
Plain text. No tags. For the minimalists and the cowards.
One [c=#RRGGBB] color wrapping the whole nick. Optional background with [a=#RRGGBB]. Toggle whether the decoration gets colored too.
Click individual letters to assign colors. Click and drag to select a block of letters, then apply a color to all of them at once — because clicking 20 letters one by one would be insane, and we're not completely insane.
Toggle includes decoration characters in the editor if you want full per-character control over the entire output string.
Pick a start and end color, choose interpolation step (every 1, 2, or 3 letters), and the generator smoothly interpolates RGB across the whole text.
[c=#ff0080]L[/c][c=#cc0099]e[/c][c=#9900b3]p[/c][c=#6600cc]r[/c]...
Toggle includes the decoration characters in the gradient range, so the whole decorated nick flows as one continuous gradient.
Full bilingual UI — English (default) and Italian. Toggle in the top-right corner. All labels, hints, and toasts switch instantly.
- Style grid shows your actual text in all 16 styles, updating as you type
- Output visual renders the colored nick in real-time
- Gradient has a live color preview bar
The generator produces MSN Plus! compatible color tags:
[c=#00cc44]Leprechaun[/c]
With background:
[a=#000000][c=#00cc44]Leprechaun[/c][/a]
Per-letter / gradient — consecutive characters with the same color are automatically collapsed into a single tag block:
[c=#ff0080]Le[/c][c=#cc0099]pr[/c][c=#9900b3]ec[/c][c=#6600cc]ha[/c][c=#3300e5]un[/c]
Full example with decoration and gradient:
[c=#ff0080](¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.-> [/c][c=#cc0099]L[/c][c=#9900b3]e[/c][c=#6600cc]p[/c][c=#3300e5]r[/c][c=#0000ff]e[/c][c=#3300e5]c[/c][c=#6600cc]h[/c][c=#9900b3]a[/c][c=#cc0099]u[/c][c=#ff0080]n <-.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯)[/c]
It's a single HTML file. Zero dependencies, zero build steps, zero npm, zero webpack, zero suffering (beyond the existential kind).
# Option 1: just open it
open nick-generator.html
# Option 2: serve it locally if you're feeling fancy
python3 -m http.server 8080
# then go to http://localhost:8080/nick-generator.html
# Option 3: drop it on any static host, it works anywhereThen:
- Type your nick in the text field
- Pick a text style
- Pick a decoration (or don't)
- Choose a color mode
- Copy the MSN output
- Paste it into your Escargot / MSN Plus! display name
- Feel the 2004 energy flow through you
Tested with:
- Escargot (https://escargot.chat) — the whole reason this exists
- MSN Plus! — the original, if you somehow still have a working setup
- Any client that supports the
[c=#RRGGBB]tag syntax
The plain text copy (no color tags) works everywhere else.
- Single file — everything is inline: HTML, CSS, JS. No external dependencies except Google Fonts (VT323, Share Tech Mono, Exo 2). Works fully offline if you swap those for local fonts.
- No frameworks — vanilla JS, 0 KB of node_modules
- Color compression — consecutive characters with the same computed color are automatically merged into one tag block, keeping the output as clean as possible
- Drag selection — mousedown + mousemove range selection in the per-letter editor, because clicking each letter individually would be a war crime
- Gradient interpolation — linear RGB lerp between start and end color, grouped by N letters per step
Because it was 3 AM.
Because Escargot exists and deserves proper tooling.
Because normal people go to sleep, and I am not a normal person.
Because that era of internet culture had a chaotic, maximalist, deeply personal aesthetic that got steamrolled by flat design and minimalism, and sometimes you just want your nick to look like ★·.·´¯·.·★ αℓρяєcнαυη ★·.·´¯·.·★ in [c=#00cc44].
No further justification will be provided.
Do whatever you want with it (GPL V2). It's a nick generator. It has no commercial value. It has tremendous sentimental value.
If you use it on Escargot and make a genuinely beautiful nick, that's reward enough.
Made with sleep deprivation and nostalgia by Leprechaun