WoW:UI FAQ/AddOn Author Resources

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A general list of AddOn author resources for AddOn development in World of Warcraft.

Note: The UI FAQ posted here is originally from Blizzard's UI & Macros Forum and WoW Interface.

Books

• World of Warcraft Programming - The first published WoW development guide and wowprogramming.com companion site, "World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons!", that also provides an alternate API reference, forums history, working code snippets.
• Beginning Lua with World of Warcraft Add-ons - Another early published WoW AddOn development book by the author of Deadly Boss Mods.

Resources

• WoW development portal here - Broad set of documentation for Lua APIs and events, Frame XML, and AddOn structure and development.
• Blizzard Interface Customization Tools - The Interface AddOn Kit for extracting built-in resources from the WoW archive files to use as regular files so that you can view them.
• Go-hero.net - http://wow.go-hero.net/framexml/builds - Available FrameXML Builds (.lua, .toc, and .xml viewer) from build to build
• Lua Manual - http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/ - Official Lua Manual (version 5.1 used by WoW) [See also: alternative manual interface
• Lua Wiki - http://lua-users.org/ - Wiki for Lua - useful for more in depth descriptions of Lua syntax, etc.
• WoW Programming (BLP2PNG) - http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info6127-BLP2PNG.html http://wowprogramming.com/utils/blp2png - This utility allows you to convert BLP files to more editable PNG files via the web.
• WoW Programming Art Browser - http://wowprogramming.com/utils/artbrowser - A site that allows you to view all of the standard Blizzard artwork (and download it) via the web. (Find new link)
• WinMPQ - http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=3990 - MPQ is Blizzard's compression format -- this program allows you to extract data from these MPQ files.
• BLPConverter - http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14110-BLPConverter.html - This allows you to convert BLP files, which store the artwork for WoW.
• Development Help Addons: WoWWiki.com, WoWInterface.com
• WoWBench WoW API Emulator: WoWBench

Lua Editors

See the Lua editors page for a more complete list.

• EditPlus - http://editplus.com/ - Fairly decent editor w/ most of the options you'll need while scripting in Lua, there is a plugin for Lua syntax here. This is a trialware program -- eventually you will have to pay.

• Lua Eclipse - http://www.ideais.com.br/luaeclipse/ - Eclipse is a highly advanced and extensible editor and development tool. Though it mostly shines for Java development, there are several plug-ins for other languages. Lua Eclipse is such a plug-in. Unfortunately, work seems to have stopped on that plug-in and it is far from finished. It still works well with current versions of Eclipse (Oct 2006), but it mostly gives you syntax check and highligting.

• UltraEdit32 - http://www.ultraedit.com - My editor of choice. Lua syntax highlighting file available @ http://www.capnbry.net/wow/downloads/lua.txt courtesy of capnbry.

• BLua - http://blua.sourceforge.net/ - This is an editor being developed exclusively for Blizzard's flavor of Lua, and when complete hopes to THE complete IDE for Blizzard Lua, however, development on this project stalled in 2005.

• SciTE-WOWInterface - http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info4989-SciTE-WOWInterface.html - This is a re-package of the popular ScITE editor (based on the scintilla editing component). You can find more information about SciTE at http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html. Some of the customization is from the package at http://gisdeveloper.tripod.com/scite.html , but those just amount to some configuration files that have been altered. I've adjusted some of the preferences and added the bulk of the WoW API with prototypes and descriptions as pop-up calltips (you can see a few examples in the attached screenshots).

• http://luaforge.net/projects/lualangpack - This is a lua plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 supporting syntax highlighting, hidden code regions / auto outlining and Lua projects.

• http://www.sjbrown.co.uk/index.php?code=lualite - This is a lua syntax highlighting plug-in for Visual Studio 2003.

• Notepad++ - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ - has Lua support, really nice free editor

• http://smultron.sourceforge.net/ - Lua editor for Macs

• TextMate - commercial (not free) text editor for MacOS X with support for many languages, including Lua (using the Lua bundle). Information on installing bundles.

• Addon Studio for World of Warcraft - free version of Visual Studio tailored for creating World of Warcraft mods, with Lua syntax highlighting, TOC generation, a FrameXML editor, IntelliSense, and other features

XML Editors

• XMLSpy - http://www.altova.com - This is probably the best XML editor out there, and there is a free version available. Unfortunately many of the things that make it so great are not present in the free version. There is a 30 day trial of the good version.

• Liquid XML Editor - http://www.liquid-technologies.com - Another good commercial xml editor that is available for a 30 day trial period, includes intellisense, validation and other important features.

• XMLMarker - http://symbolclick.com/ - Completely free and pretty decent tree based XML Editor -- probably the best of no-cost editors out there.

• Peter's XML Editor - http://www.iol.ie/~pxe/ - Another decent, completely free XML editor.

• TextMate -http://www.macromates.com - Me boss (Mister Fizzwidget) tells me I should be lettin you know 'bout his favorite editor, wit' all kindsa good voodoo for XML, Lua, and other lingos you be programmin' and scriptin' with. It be good and hackable, too, so it be easy to add support for other languages: Lua support be a third-party addition, which you can get from here: http://phrogz.net/tmp/Lua.tmbundle.tar.gz - TextMate's lua support bundle is also available now in the subversion repository of bundles hosted by TextMate's author: macromates.com/wiki/Main/Bundles/

Tutorials

• Nevir's Tutorials - Nevir has a pair of tutorials that I found very useful when starting my WoW UI modding adventure. (Note: This resource does not exist anymore; for the sake of possible restoration/mirrors, this has been left up for posterity's sake.) Archive of the addons can be found here.

• WoWWiki HOWTOs - WoWWiki has a number of writeups here on how to accomplish specific tasks; some basic, some advanced.

• Farang's Frames Tutorial - An excellent beginner's guide to creating GUIs for your addon.

• Code Snippets at WoWProgramming - Code snippets to aid in quickly developing WoW AddOns. The rest of the site provides an expanded API reference, utilities, forums, and a helpful community.

Viewing & Converting Screenshots

• IrfanView: http://www.irfanview.de (free for non-commercial use)

• EyeBrowse: http://www.eyebrowse.co.uk (freeware)

• Paint.net: http://getpaint.net (freeware)

Additional

• IRC:

irc.freenode.net

#wowuidev

• Guilds, Draka Server (US):

Alliance: Load on Demand

Horde: Register for Save

(contact someone in the IRC channel listed above for guild invites)