Addon Spotlight: Minimap mayhem

In the shadow of an ominous sense of addon doom, I wanted to talk about a problem that some of you may relate with. I have issues with cluttered user interfaces, specifically a messy minimap. I should really consider myself blessed that this one can be near the top of my list. Either my life is boring or I am very much a control freak.

I've recently taken it upon myself to combat the rude nature of a cluttered minimap, only to find myself somewhat frustrated by a lack of viable options. I'm going to guess that many of you many be screaming Ace right now. To that, I say stow your bilge, my pretties. The Ace solution fails, which simultaneously surprises me and makes me sad.

In my efforts to enforce my Spring Cleaning initiative, I recruited MinimapButtonBag to wipe up the little buttons that surrounded my minimap. This little Ace addon did the job about as perfectly as possible, with one glaring flaw. The little "addon that could" was a memory hog; a beast that defiled my allocated addon memory. The fact that it was stomping around with the same clout as my beloved AtlasLoot Enhanced and the godly QuestHelper irked me to no end.

So, I forced myself to move on. I found TidyMiniMap, which did nearly the same thing, but didn't quite make all the evil buttons "piss off", as the British would say. My next attempt found me configuring the needy little MinmapButtonFrame. In essence, it does the same thing as TidyMiniMap, although I had to configure it on every alt I roll. These two really just take the buttons and put them somewhere else where I can see them and lack what I would consider basic features. This is where you, my friendly reader, come into the battle.

This screenshot shows MinimapButtonBag peaking at almsot 12MB, and running "normally" at 7.65MB. This is not, of course, a personal attack against the developer. This is visual evidence of why I'm struggling with this addon's "great in theory, not in practice" nature. I am using the version that was updated one week ago, straight from the Ace factory floor.

As an addon enthusiast, I ask for a solution, perhaps you know where to find it. I want to hide the pesky addon buttons around my minimap (toss in the default Blizz buttons too, they suck.) I don't want to pay for it with a ridiculous memory footprint, I don't want to reconfigure it on every character, and I don't want to see some alternate version of the buttons. Maybe this is a tall order, as I would have expected the Ace version to unquestionably meet the need. I guess I could configure each addon to hide the minimap button, but that flies in the face of the all-encompassing nature of my addon approach.

So those are your orders, addon soldier, educate me. My ignorance lacks the promised bliss, and rather than rely on an Internet search engine, I will put it out to you in hopes that you all can remedy my minimap woes.