Editing WoW:User interface customization guide (section)

== World of Warcraft user interface customization guide ==
The interface of ''World of Warcraft'' is built from XML files, which describe the look and layout, and lua files, which contain scripting functionality. This document is a short introduction into modifying these files to customize your interface. Customizing the interface is a very technical endeavor, (although Lua is an extremely simplistic language, comparitively speaking) and you should not attempt it unless you have a good working knowledge of XML and Lua. 

No official support exists for modifying the WoW interface. If you break it, you get to keep both pieces. =)

With that said, there are a number of websites devoted to user interface customization (add-ons) available, such as [http://www.wowinterface.com/ WowInterface] and [http://www.curse.com Curse]. These sites have customized interfaces and add-ons for almost every conceivable need, so it is extremely unlikely that you will need to create an add-on from scratch yourself. If you find an Add-on suitable for your needs from one of these sites, you will find using them much easier than attempting to create a new add-on yourself.

To get started, download the [http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=21466 World of Warcraft Interface AddOn Kit] and use that application to extract both User Interface Data & User Interface Art. This creates three new directories called:
"Blizzard Interface Data (enUS)"
"Blizzard Interface Art (enUS)"
"Blizzard Interface Tutorial".

The art folder contains all of the graphics used in the built-in UI. They are generally [[BLP_files|BLP files]], which are a simple container DirectX-formatted texture data. The [[BLP_files|BLP files]] page lists several tools for converting between BLP and other image formats.

The data folder contains all of the [[Lua]] and [[XML]] files which are used to describe and program the UI.  Editing these files will not do anything - they are there to show you how the Blizzard UI works, and a reference for examples of algorithms, syntax, using the game API and much more.

The Blizzard Interface Tutorial is where you start.  After you complete the tutorials, you should have enough knowledge to create a basic addon.  From your addon, you can make whatever changes to the Blizzard UI that you want.