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Addon Spotlight: Glance, a multi-use top bar
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Keeping your interface neat and tidy while still retaining a lot of your precious information can be a tough feat. Some poor souls never get away from a disaster UI, started and finished in sadness, shame, and wreckage. Do not fret, young ones. There are addons that can help you be neat and tidy without too much work on your part. I promise. Glance was an addon that I first discovered while trolling through the comments on my various columns, as am I known to do. My readers are a steadfast bunch, always willing to show support for their man and recommend some great tools to players in need. Well, as it turns out, I am one of those players in need. A few weeks back, I got an email that asked me what was an easy way to get into LDB bars and addons, and I didn't really have a great answer. The first thing that popped into my head was the concept -- the bar addon works as a dock for other LDB plugins. It didn't feel right explaining the whole thing in that way, so instead I went looking for an addon that resembled LDB but didn't take the setup some LDBs require. That addon is Glance.
iOS and Mac App Store back down
Update 2: Around 2 p.m. ET, we started getting a number of reports that both stores are back down again. Update: As of this morning (Thursday 6/2) everything seems to be back to normal for both the iOS and Mac App Store updates. Having trouble updating to the new versions of GarageBand and iMovie for iOS, or seeing the Twitter for Mac update download over and over again in the Mac App Store? You're not alone; we've seen several reports of issues getting apps updated properly, starting earlier today, and it's hitting our team as well. No word yet about what might be causing the issues, but hopefully they're just transient growing pains; we'll check again in a couple of hours.
Reader UI of the Week: Mar's UI
Each week WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. As promised, this week is non-widescreen addon/UI week! Often requested and often put to the side, I receive a lot of e-mail from readers about configuring user interfaces for non-widescreen resolutions and smaller monitors. The secret is that there really is no difference between configuring for a widescreen or non-widescreen monitor -- it's all about knowing how things fit together. On this week's Reader UI of the Week, we are going to take a look at Mar's UI. Mar has asked for some pointers on getting her interface right, so let's see if we can help out and, at the same time, give some awesome design pointers on configuring a user interface with less space.
Reader UI of the Week: Jake's Larger UI
Each week WoW.com brings you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@wow.com. This week on Reader UI of the Week I've decided to focus on helping people in need of user interface tips for smaller screen resolutions or the need to have buttons larger, as you will see in just a short time. It's kind of like Dear Abby, except with more video games and less mouthy grandmas. The Community has been great in its response to sending in your user interfaces, so keep them coming! Without further ado, let's go a user interfacin'...
Essential addons for Patch 3.0.2 [Updated x6]
Let's take a look at what addons are working for patch 3.0.2. First a simple rule taken from the UI forums post done by Kaydeethree: "Any 'Wrath beta' compatible mod will work in 3.0.2." With that said, there is a long and comprehensive listing of 3.0.2 compatible addons over on WoWWiki. But the fun doesn't end there. The next step is obtaining all those new addons. I've compiled a large set of the essential addons and linked to at least one direct download source after the break. Each download source is either trusted beyond doubt – or tested and confirmed to be virus free. Finally, you'll want to combine the addons into a nice looking UI. Check out our special edition of Reader UI of the Week for a look at five complete 3.0.2 compatible UIs. We're posting this list now, and will continue to update it throughout the day. Begin your addon downloads as quickly as possible to avoid hangups later in the day when download servers become overloaded.
The Ace2 revolution in World of Warcraft mods
The 'Heal Plz' blog over at TenTonHammer has up an interesting look at the realm of World of Warcraft UI mods. Author Xerin notes the sometimes slow update schedule for popular mods (TitanPanel has been AWOL for some time, for example) and the problems that can create. In contrast, the 'Ace2 revolution' continues apace. Ace2 is, as the author explains, a backend element for WoW UI creation. It's specifically a set of libraries that mod authors can use to increase portability and compatibility between their creations and the work of others. The Ace Wiki has further explanations on the benefits of using Ace2 (if you're a mod author) as well as a comprehensive listing of Ace mods for us consumer/players.Xerin further highlights a few mods well worth using (like FuBar and Cartographer), and offers a few more reasons why you should consider Ace mods the next time you restart your UI from default. I am a huge fan of both of those. I've also gotten quite a lot of use out of the Ace version of ScrollingCombatText, Decursive, and Ratingbuster.What about you, Massively? Any mods (Ace or otherwise) you can't live without?
AddOns for the beginning player
There isn't a web site on the planet that loves it's readers more than WoW Insider does. So when Brenda from Florida wrote to us and told us how much she loved World of Warcraft, and asked us for opinions on what "essential" add-ons she would need to get started, there was no choice but to respond and offer up this recap of addons for beginning players.There are hundreds of add-ons out there, and as your journey progresses through the game you will find new ones you like. This is just, as Baloo from The Jungle Book would say, the simple bear bare necessities.Lightheaded - Since they inflated the experience benefit in the last patch, using Lightheaded to quest brings experience so quickly it will make your head spin. Lightheaded adds quest information from the comments on the Wowhead.com database site to your quest log. All the information you would have to tab-out for is at your fingertips. I heartily recommend using Doublewide in concert with Lightheaded, which will put your quest log in two panes instead of one to make it fit more easily on the screen. It's like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that go great together. If you want to learn more about Lightheaded check out this awesome article (with accompanying awesome screenshot) from our own David Bowers.Cartographer - You need Cartographer. Cartographer is essentially "the" map add-on as far as I'm concerned, You'll find all the great features of Cartographer on the page I linked, but the most important Cartographer feature to a new player (who uses Lightheaded) is that when you click a set of coordinates in Lightheaded, it will show you a floating arrow on your screen that points the way to your destination. (As a free tip, I will also mention that you can ditch the arrow and clear all waypoints by typing /noway. Yes, I know you can do it with the mouse, but... I'm one of those weird keyboard people.)
Reader UI of the Week: AareDub
Have you missed us? We're sorry for the extended break, but as you now know, we've been slammed under helping to get Massively off the ground. (Speaking of which, if you haven't been over there, you do know we're giving away a Murloc suit, right?) But we're back now with lots of Reader UIs to show you -- so on we go with this week's featured UI, courtesy of AareDub from the guild <Sonic Death Monkey> on Eitrigg.I have to give credit to Taeo for giving me the inspiration. I saw a very crisp UI and thought, "I can do that." I've always tried to re-arrange my UI to allow for the most viewing space possible, but Taeo's UI just made something click for me. It only took me a few days to complete, but it took a month or so for my server transfer cooldown to get me back in a raid for some screenshots.Curious? Join me after the break for more from AareDub!
AddOn creation site needs your help
WoWAce is a set of libraries heavily used by developers to create many of those nifty AddOns we know and love like FuBar and Grid. Unfortunately, their Wiki site lost its data and the latest usable back up is over two months old. Everything since then has been lost.In an effort to reconstruct the lost pages, they have pulled HTML copies of those pages from Google Cache and now they need your assistance. You can go to their Rebuilding page and help them convert the HTML into Wiki format and repost it on the site.If you have some spare time, head on over and help them get back on their feet so they can continue to help developers create those AddOns we can't live without.
Addon Spotlight: QuestsFu
In previous weeks we've looked at Lightheaded, which helps you understand how to do your quests, and Fubar, which can present all sorts of information concisely. Today's addon is a Fubar plugin that can work with Lightheaded to show you everything you need to know about your quests without having to click a lot of buttons or obscure your screen with your entire quest log.QuestsFu presents you with a handy quest list in two ways. First of all, you can hover over its space on your Fubar and it'll give you a collapsable list of all the quests you're working on in a tooltip. In addition, you can have QuestsFu put up its own little quest tracker to replace Blizzard's standard tracker. The advantage to either of these color-coded quest lists is that you can just click on any of the quests themselves to open up a little window with all the quest information in it (pictured on the right). This is great for when you're in the middle of a quest and you don't want to stop moving, but you still forgot where exactly you were supposed to go or what the quest rewards are.If you have Lightheaded installed too, then you can arrange an additional Lightheaded comments popup on the other side of your screen, and get hints about your quest without opening the big old quest log. There are other quest managers out there, but this is my favorite because it feels so light weight, looks so attractive, works together with other addons so nicely, and also has such nice features, above and beyond what I've already mentioned: Edit the questlog on the fly, adding or removing quests with ease. Display quest levels, difficulty, zones, and objectives clearly. Put objective info into monster and item tooltips Show the quest level before you accept the quest Show other party members' completion of quest objectives (if they have the addon too) Optionally (I have this turned off) notify party members in /p chat when you complete a quest. Check out QuestsFu at WoW Interface.
Addon Spotlight: Fubar
Fubar is one of those addons that I didn't know I needed until I tried it out. It lets you display information in a bar at the top and/or bottom of the screen -- all the numbers and meters that you want to always have handy, without having to click on anything or hover your mouse for tooltips. Fubar itself provides a framework for the Fubar modules (downloaded seperately) to display this information for you -- anything from your durability to your current experience (with rest) to the time of day (both in your time zone and on your server). I personally find one of its most useful features to be that it can show you how many of your guild mates and friends are online at any given moment, then let you hover your mouse over the number to see a tooltip list, with clickable names for whispers or invitations, just like a regular IM program. To be honest, I actually tried out its competitor, Titan Panel, long before I had heard of Fubar, and then switched to Fubar because it feels more flexible and lighter on my system. Fubar is made with Ace, which usually helps addons feel smoother somehow; the difference between Fubar and Titan is what made me go looking for other Ace addons. Also, the other thing I love about it... is that it's called "Fubar!" and most of its companion module addons end in "fu", as in "QuestsFu" and "MoneyFu!" I just love my addons with a extra helping of humor sauce.
Creative's 60GB Zen Vision:M now shipping?
While everyone was focused on the hubbub surrounding the launch of the Zen Vision W and settlement with Apple, Creative quietly went ahead and gave the Zen Vision:M a bump in disk like we've been expecting. The new 60GB player is available in either black and white (only) and appears identical to its 30GB sib albeit with the inclusion of a USB hosting capability -- a slick, convenient way to quickly transfer data off USB-enabled devices (think your digital cameras snaps) without a PC. Unfortunately, while the Creative website has plenty of deets on the 60 gigger, the Creative store makes no mention of the new player at all. Fubar. Anyway, expect this to get sorted in hours or days with the price to mirror that other 60GB player pretty closely at around $399. [Thanks, John]
