WoW:Cosmos (AddOn)/What is Cosmos

Synopsis

Cosmos is a collection of interface modifications (a collection of "AddOns") to the standard World of Warcraft user interface (UI).

How does Cosmos work?

Blizzard has provided a very flexible, yet safe, system that allows users to provide their own Interface Customization. This system uses XML and the Lua scripting language. See the Introduction for a brief summary on how this works.

Cosmos takes advantage of this system by providing a set of AddOns, and a few common libraries to make writing other AddOns a little easier. These all sit in your <game>\Interface\AddOns folder (located in the WoW game directory on your computer) - they are simple text files, which are read in by the WoW program. As such, they are totally benign.

INSTALLATION:
Cosmos comes with an optional executable (.exe) file you can use. This .exe file is used to update the files in your AddOns folder, and also to upload information to Thottbot if you explicitly chose to enable this AddOn in the Cosmos in-game menu. If you don't explicitly enable Thottbot, this won't happen. You should only run .exe files which you trust.
If you don't trust the Cosmos developers, or you want more direct control, you can install all the files manually from the zip file instead of using the Cosmos.exe file.

What does Cosmos do?

Cosmos itself is just a library and collection of individual AddOns. The specific functionality depends on which AddOns are included at any time. Please see the Cosmos AddOns page for a list of what's included, and further details on what each of these AddOns does.

Popular examples are the various toolbar AddOns, which provide additional toolbars to use (along with keybindings for them), QuestMinion to show more info on your current quests and progress with them, and DPSPLUS which provides a detailed breakdown of your DPS, but there are many many more.

What does Cosmos look like?

There's no simple answer to this, as Cosmos itself can be configured to each person's needs. Some of the Cosmos AddOns may give screenshots of what that particular AddOn looks like - for example, Clock, QuestMinion and MooBuffMod.

How do I use Cosmos?

Please see Cosmos Questions for more advanced questions on Cosmos and information on how to get Cosmos installed. The Cosmos Beginners Guide will then show you how to configure Cosmos from within WoW.

See Also

Cosmos
Cosmos AddOns
Cosmos Questions
Cosmos Beginners Guide
UI Questions
Cosmos Forums