Editing WoW:Secure Execution and Tainting (section)

==Protected frames and secure templates==

WoW 2.0 also introduces a new Frame concept, protected frames, which act like normal frames out of combat, but when in combat cannot be programatically shown, hidden, re-sized or re-anchored, nor can its attributes be changed. Once a frame has been declared protected it cannot be made unprotected, and protection is inherited from templates. You can still initiate user moving or sizing of protected frames while in combat, you just cannot use lua to move them. Secure code is allowed to bypass this restriction. 

The control restrictions on protected frames also get applied to their parents and any frames they are anchored to. This is important when anchoring a protected frame to another normally non-protected frame, as it can lead to unexpected and often undesired behavior. This propagation is temporary, and re-anchoring or re-parenting the frame out of combat can release the restriction. 

Protected frames are important because they form the basis of the Blizzard action and spell buttons, but also because they allow for some new secure button templates. Since normal AddOn code is tainted, it cannot change targets or perform actions directly, however WoW 2.0 contains a number of secure templates which can be inherited by AddOn code. These secure templates provide one or more secure handlers, usually OnClick, that use frame attributes to perform actions. When a secure template is inherited then any handlers it defines remain secure unless they are overridden by the inheriting frame (or another template). 

The secure templates are configured using the new frame attribute methods, these can only be used outside of combat, and set a named attribute to a specific lua value, discarding the value's taint.