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Addon Spotlight: TipTac

Welcome to the Father's Day edition of Addon Spotlight. I honestly tried to think about an addon that would match the holiday theme for all of thirty seconds before deciding to just write about an addon I've found to very useful. (Although perhaps you got your Dad some tools, or your Dad is a tool, so take it for what its worth.)

TipTac is a tooltip mod that adds a load of features to the little informative frames that appear when you hover over characters and objects in the game. As I've implied before, I enjoy quick and easy visual references to important information. This includes a character's class, health and reaction. (in the case of NPC's)

TipTac provides another way to discern details; a redundancy I embrace for the sake of easy targeting and planning.

Per tradition, here is the author's own description of the addon:

"TipTac is a tooltip enchancement addon, it allows you to configure various things such as changing the tip anchor, the font, the scale of tips, plus a lot more.

It can also show a special tip window for units instead of the normal one, which allows for extra customization, such as having it show buffs, debuffs, health and mana bar, this can of course be disabled if you prefer the normal tip.

To open the option dialog, just use "/tip" without any parameters. Use "/tip anchor" to show the anchor frame and position it as you want.

You can always get the latest release of this addon on either WoWInterface.com or Curse.com."

Most of the major features are mentioned in the description, but let's talk about what you're getting with TipTac.

One of the first things I noticed, and fell in love with, was the ability to see, in the tooltip, who my target was currently targeting. (This comes in handy when it's you.) I want to point out that this is done without having to actually target someone you just have to hover over them. It's also a handy way to keep tabs on who is targeting what, as you can enable an option to display who is targeting the unit as well.

Other information that can be displayed in the tooltip includes:

  • DC, AFK and DND status

  • Title

  • Guild Name

  • Realm Name

  • Health, Energy, Rage and Mana bars (with percentages)

There are also a few other details available in the TipTac tooltip. You can have a unit's name and the border of the tooltip colored by your target's class. The background can be colored based on the unit's reaction, as well as an optional line of text for reaction. (Hostile, Friendly, Neutral, etc.) Elite, Rare, Rare Elite, Boss and Normal status are also displayed. Target buffs and debuffs can be shown above and below the tooltip, which provides another great way to study a unit without actually targeting it.

Finally, although it seems to be a bit buggy sometimes, if you are able to inspect a unit (friendly players or enemy players in non-contested territory), TipTac will give a quick breakdown of their talent spec.

You can also change where the tooltip is displayed via the "Anchor" option, which allows you to get pretty specific about where tooltips are located. You can also use the /tip anchor command to show the tooltip anchor and move it around your UI.

For the most part, the remaining options are visual tweaks to the tooptips scale, fading and general appearance of the addon.

If you require a steady stream of information like I do, this addon can help configure a large amount of pertinent target information into an easily readable format. Let me know what you think of this one, and if possible, remember to say something nice to your Dad today. Dismissed.

**I wanted to thank Dugarax of Addict on Archimonde (US) for letting me use him for the screeny, and for crafting my Red Belt of Battle!**

Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.