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AddOn Spotlight: MazzleUI
This is a big one, and one I've been waiting for for quite some time (about six months, I'd say). I don't usually bother even looking into compilations of mods, since I've found I can always put together a more satisfying solution myself, but MazzleUI may well prove to be the exception. Here's how Mazzlefizz, the author, describes it: MazzleUI is a comprehensive, customized user interface for the World of Warcraft that attempts to be clean, symmetrical, provides lots of information, use minimal space and be highly efficient. Sounds great, right? However, for most of MazzleUI's life, it's been in closed beta. MazzleUI 1.0 was just released today -- I saw the news when I woke up, and haven't done anything but install and play with it since. I'm just taking a break to tell you all about it, and then I'm sure I'll be diving right back in
Keyword Manager 1.1 adds major keyword management features, more
Keyword Manager from Bullstorm scored a license purchase from yours truly the day we found it, and the feature-packed iPhoto keyword plugin recently had an unassuming but handy upgrade to v1.1. Clicking on the "What's New?" heading at Bullstorm's site reveals a strong list of new features, including: Address Book auto-completion Share keywords between photo libraries Alphabetic sorting of keyword lists Preferences windows Built-in software update If you've been looking for an easier-to-use and more powerful way to wrangle your iPhoto library, I highly recommend giving Keyword Manager's full-featured demo a try. One of its most useful features, besides highly streamlining the tagging/keyword assigning process, is its ability to filter keywords in a search. This is something iPhoto is sorely lacking, but Keyword Manager makes it easy to pick keywords to both search for and exclude. This feature alone is easily worth a good portion of the plugin's $19 USD (€19 in Sweden and EU) for a single license.
Reader UI of the Week: January 15 - 22
Welcome to Reader UI of the Week, your new weekly feature on what your peers are using in the world of AddOns and enhancements to improve the World of Warcraft experience. Each week we'll look at one reader-submitted entry, and expose you to new ideas for your own UI setup. As we're just starting this week, we'll start with my own UI. Character Name: Wyahld Screen Size: 1680x1050 - 20" Widescreen Monitor General Theme: Uncluttered - I need room to see the game while I'm raiding or in a party. I didn't like the default action bars that took up so much screen real estate. I don't like the lack of info in the default unitframes. AddOns Used: Bongos, Titan Bar, X-Perl Unitframes, CT-mod Core, CT BuffMod, Bagnon, TrackerDial, Call of Elements I've had a lot of UI themes over the years, but I've come around almost full circle to realize that simple is best. If I can leave my screen mostly uncluttered, then I find myself focusing on the game rather than any extraneous information. So this is my shammy, he's level 40 now and leveling quickly. The only add-on that really has an impact on gameplay is Call of Elements, which is a great tool for setting up totems. So, gather up your UI screenshots, as well as your Character's Name, the Screen Size, your General Theme, the AddOns you're using, and a little blurb about it. Once you've got all that, submit it to readerui at gmail dot com. Oh, and feel free to rip my setup in the comments, and give me advice on making it better.
Forget Me Not - Safari session saving
Forget Me Not 3.0 is a good example of the 3rd party plug-in and add-on support for Safari that is slowly but surely growing. FMN is a basic a session saver plug-in for Safari that can reload any tabs that were open the last time you quit Safari. It isn't quite as powerful as, say, Tab Mix Plus for Firefox, but it does a good job of bringing this increasingly popular feature to Apple's darling browser.Forget Me Not can be had from Jim Fowler's site.[via Daring Fireball]
WoW Insider Best of 2006: Blizzard's Best and Worst
This is the final entry in our year end awards. All this week, we've looked at the best Azeroth had to offer this year-- from Guild, Server and Class, through Friend, Enemy, and Instance, all the way to Player and Addon of the Year.And today we're taking a final look at the company behind it all in 2006. WoW looks like a completely different game right now then it did last January-- PVP is completely different, the endgame instances have almost doubled in size and number, items have sprouted up like adds in UBRS, and the classes have almost completely new talents across the board. Blizzard did a lot to this game this year, but not all of it was great. So today we're taking a look at the best change Blizzard made this year, and the worst. Best and Worst Blizzard Moves of the Year are after the jump.
Best of 2006 nominations: Player, Addon, Best and Worst Blizzard Move
Today's the final day of asking for your nominations for our end of the year awards. We're choosing the best of 2006 in ten different categories-- we've gotten your nominations this week, and next week we'll be posting our choices for Azeroth's best of the year. Thanks to everyone who's commented already, and please comment throughout the weekend on your choices for all the categories.Today, we're asking you to nominate the Best Player of the Year, the Best Addon of the Year, and the Best and Worst Blizzard Move of the Year. For Player, yes, we realize there are seven million players out there, and it is extremely hard to choose just one of them-- if we could recognize all of you, we would. But we're trying to find one player that has really stood out in WoW this year-- won amazing victories, raised the profile of the game, or really embodied what WoW players are all about. We're looking for a hero among heroes, someone who embodied Azeroth in 2006.For Best Addon, we're looking for the Addon that most affected the game this year-- either an Addon that really moved the game along in terms of interace, an addon that was invaluable to players of all types, or an Addon that stood head and shoulders above the others in terms of functionality and polish.And finally, we want to know your choices for Blizzard's Best and Worst Move of the Year. What's the best thing Blizzard did for the game this year-- the best and most satisfying change they made? And on the flip side, what's the absolute Worst thing they did to the game this year, that sent players running for the hills (and for the competitors)?Finally, if you haven't posted your nominations for the other categories yet, as I said, we'll leave those comments open all weekend, so please post them for us to read. The WoW Insider staff will deliberate over the weekend, and all next week, we'll announce the WoW Insider Best of 2006. Thanks for your input.Previously: Nominations for Server, Class, and Guild; Nominations for Friend, Enemy, and Instance.
AddOn Spotlight: Bongos
I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's default action bars in the WoW Interface. I find them to consume far too much screen space, and I never could get used to scrolling between bars for different tasks. As a result, I've been trying different action bar replacements since I learned that the UI was customizable. After going through CT and Discord, I happened across Bongos.Bongos positions itself as a simple and quick action bar replacement, and in this mission it succeeds with flying colors. Upon installation, the entire default action bar area is replaced with a small stack of 10 action bars, a pet bar, a class bar, your bags, the main menu, and a few other bongo elements, depending on your choice of installed pieces.Looking for the latest version of Bongos? Check out our Patch 3.0.2 addon list for all your latest update! Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.
AddOn Spotlight: AutoProfit
One of my favorite little add-ons, AutoProfit does one thing and it does it well. When you click the stacks-o-gold icon that it adds to vendor windows, it automagically sells all your gray items (aka vendor trash) to the vendor. It's customizable, so you can tell it to hold on to certain gray items or conversely to sell certain non-gray items (Fish Oil, anyone?). It also tells you how much all your junk loot adds up to when you mouse over the sell-all button, and let me tell you, there's nothing like making a few gold in junk rocks off elementals in the Badlands to make late-40s grinding feel a little more pleasant. Since getting this little baby, manually clicking on 37 items after having moused over my entire inventory to seem what's salable seems like such a chore. This is one of those "should be in the default UI" things. Download it at Curse; it's updated for 2.0.1.
Curse Gaming site revamp
The new patch is coming this Tuesday to a realm near you, and when you run off to find updated versions of your latest addons, you may be in for a surprise -- because favorite addon site Curse Gaming has undergone a complete redesign. (If you're trying to find the addon section of the site from the main page, it's a big purple button on the right.) Their addons section looks quite a bit different and no longer sorts addons by familiar categories -- instead, there appears to be one giant list of addons, which is searchable by labels attached to the addon. For better or for worse, the new layout is going to take some getting used to -- and I can only again encourage everyone to go and download addon updates in advance of Tuesday's patch!
The coming addon apocalypse
While we've talked about this before, but with the announcement of the patch 2.0.1 rollout, it's worth a reminder. On December 5th, 2006, you'll log on to World of Warcraft and download the 2.0.1 patch -- and then all of your addons will stop working. I know what you're thinking, "But Elizabeth! There are addon issues with every patch! How will this be any different?" Well, WoW 2.0 completely changes the LUA code that current addons are written in, or, as Blizzard puts it:WoW 2.0 represents a major change in the UI code, and as such ALL AddOns will need to be updated before they will work, if for no other reason than the Lua 5.0 to Lua 5.1 changes. Some AddOns will be more seriously affected, and a few will have to be redesigned.Tobold predicts -- not inaccurately, I think -- disaster. As everyone begins to realize their addons are no longer functioning, they'll rush to Curse Gaming and WoWInterface. These sites, always sluggish on or around patch day, will all the worse for the complete failure of every addon that currently exists. Some addons will be abandoned by their authors, as the work to rewrite them would be too great. Others will be abandoned because the ability to make them functional will no longer exist. And yet others will simply take time to rewrite and not be immediately available.So what's to be done? Well, you could always stop using addons. Or take a week's vacation from the game. Or if you aren't willing to do either of those, check up on your addons in advance -- look them up and see if there's a WoW 2.0 version already available. (If you don't remember where you downloaded it from, use the search functionality on Curse Gaming or WoWInterface to find them.) If not, WoWInterface has lists of mods that are confirmed to work with the 2.0.1 patch, so perhaps you can find something you could live with (don't try to use any of these with the live game, however -- they won't work). So while everyone else you know is tearing their hair out in frustration trying to find working addons while Curse Gaming is down, you can be sitting back in your chair, sipping a martini* and raiding the night away. * No, the patch does not ship standard with martini. You're on your own Mr. Bond.
AddOn Spotlight: Buttons, more buttons!
For me, the first real push to use addons came when I discovered I had no place to put new skills on the default toolbar. Yes, you can add several additional rows of buttons in the default UI (via interface options) but their location and size are set. I didn't like the amount of space they took up, so I looked for more flexible options. As I imagine many are struck with the same difficulty at some point in the game, today I'll go over the most popular button mods -- and maybe you, too, can twink your interface to perfection!
AddOn Spotlight: LootLink
Regardless of how long you've played, I'm sure you've run into LootLink at some point or other. LootLink is an in-game item database that's populated as you encounter new items in Azeroth. It's searchable, and the items within the database can be linked in game to other players. (Yes, this is how you end up with countless linkings and relinkings of every new and awesome piece of gear in the game.) However, besides the infinite amounts of fun you can have with this mod by playing around in the dressing room or teasing your friends with epic items, there's some good utility to this mod as well -- though perhaps it's just my poor memory that makes me say that.Have a favorite mod, or a unique mod you can't live without? Send us a tip and maybe it will wind up in our next AddOn Spotlight!
AddOn Spotlight: TheoryCraft
I'm always a fan of more data. The default interface only provides very basic information about your spells and abilities, and as the base abilities are modified more heavily by gear, it becomes impossible to determine what exactly your abilities are doing for you without the help of a calculator and several pages of notes. This is why I like the TheoryCraft mod that I ran across on Curse Gaming, which gives at-a-glance info on what all of my spells hit for right on my toolbar, as well as providing more detailed tooltip information. And, while I'm looking at it as a caster, it provides equal amounts of information for physical damage-dealers, giving an average damage per attack (and other statistics) based on equipped gear. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go back to switching out gear and staring at numbers...
X06 Korea: 360 gets 100 GB hard drive?
At the X06 event in Korea, it has apparently been revealed that Microsoft is releasing a larger hard drive for the Xbox 360. How much larger? 100 GB in total. The image above was taken from a slide presentation, though our evil robot overlords at Joystiq note that this item seems to have been missed by Gamespot's coverage of the event (anybody here read Korean?). Frankly, we find the image a little dubious. A standard 20 GB 360 hard drive only says "HDD" on the side and makes no mention of capacity. True, Microsoft would probably find a way to differentiate the products visually, but why lose the "HDD" lettering? Then again, we all knew they'd release a bigger drive eventually, and now is as good a time as any with the PS3 launch only a month away. We'll go ahead and echo Joystiq's concerns here. What happens if Microsoft starts bundling these with Premium 360s? Will 20 GB premium owners be screwed? Also, how much will this cost? Similar drives go for $200, and we doubt the average gamer wants to throw that kind of cash around just for more space. Assuming this rumor isn't bogus, what do you think?[Via Joystiq]
AddOn Spotlight: Lizzy's interface
My horde priest, Lizzy, is the level 60 I play most often (though frequently, time limitations mean I'll end up playing alts for a half an hour here or there), but the interfaces of all my characters are mirrored off the needs of this one priest. I try to keep things simple -- which makes patch day a lot easier. So if you're curious as to what all is cluttering my screen, keep reading!
Search TUAW from your Firefox toolbar
Reader Paul Stamatiou just earned a special place in our hearts by creating a TUAW search plugin for Firefox. Installation is a snap - just run over to the plugin's home at Mozdevo.org and click on it - and you can satisfy your urge for all things TUAW anytime you want, right from Firefox's search bar.I'm using the Firefox 2.0 beta 2 for everything these days, and the plugin works just fine for me; I would imagine it works for 1.5.x as well, since that's the *official* release. No matter which version you use though, thanks to Paul, you now have one more tool with which to be no more than one click away from TUAW.
Saft v8.3.5 released
Hao Li is at it again with a new version of Saft, quite possibly the Safari plugin that deserves to go the route of CoverFlow. If you aren't familiar with Saft's extensive and constantly evolving feature set, check out our past coverage to get familiar. This latest v8.3.5 update features: New feature: Option to block auto-completion in the location field Improvement: Customizable format of the dated download folder Improvement: Nicer tab thumbnails This is a free upgrade for registered users and is available from Hao Li's site.
HD-DVD add-on pr0n
No, not High Definition pr0n, HD-DVD hardware pr0n. My apologies to our RSS readers who clicked through hoping for the real thing. Now, for all of you hardware people out there that have been dying to see the USB ports on the new HD-DVD add-on, look no further. Mmm...those are some nice ports. Look at the back o' that box. Ooh, that's a nice wireless adapter mounting bracket, too. Yeah, that's nice. Follow the read link for a (tiny) shot of the interface. Now, can we get a real price please?[Thanks, Pete]
Major Nelson's podcast on the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on
Once again, Xbox Live's Major Nelson has hosted some high definition experts from Microsoft on his weekly podcast, this time three members of the team behind the upcoming HD DVD add-on for the console. Unfortunately, there wasn't much new or interesting information about the upgrade beyond what is already available. The Toshiba-manufactured drive connects via USB 2.0 and outputs video through the Xbox 360's AV connectors, it will support the various interactive menus and iHD features, including the ability to download additional content from the internet. No price still, although they did state it would be the cheapest HD DVD player available. Whether they were referring to its price by itself, combined with an Xbox 360 Core System (>$200), or a Premium System (>$100) remains to be seen. Much like the previous podcast with Amir M., they were noticeably bolstered by the positive reviews HD DVD has received in comparison to Blu-ray and are very confident about its viability.Given an opportunity to comment on any potential issues due to not having HDMI or DVI outputs they totally ignored potential problems with ICT and only chose to comment on the issue as pertaining to video quality. While we can certainly appreciate analog HDTV connectors as much as anyone and the budget Playstation 3 shares the same restrictions, we'd like to hear more on how this player won't be rendered useless by copyright protection before we buy.
Groupcal 3: manage your Exchange calendar from iCal
Are you a Mac user living in an Exchange world, forced to trudge through Entourage? (Don't get me wrong: Entourage is fine, but 'trudge' is just a good verb for dramatic effect.) Well trudge no longer with Groupcal 3, an addon for iCal that allows you to access, manage, edit and synchronize your Exchange calendars and tasks. Also on the feature list are: subscribing to coworker's free time, sending/receiving meeting invites, sharing/publishing calendars through .Mac or WebDAV and even syncing with an iPod or Palm through iSync.Groupcal 3 is a Universal Binary, a demo is available and a single licenses costs $55. As you might expect, multi-license packs are available starting at 5 seats, moving all the way up to 500 and 1000 pack licenses. [via MacMerc]
