MaelosUI
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Over the past few weeks I have resumed working on the UI. Those of you who visit the site from time to time will notice the completely new layout. This is all in preparation of a new version of MaelosUI I am planning to release in the next few days. The new version will be completely functional with the WoW 2.4 content patch and designed specifically for widescreen users. In fact, only two resolutions will be supported: 1920x1200 (my current resolution) and 1680x1050 (scaled down, but still works great). You can see previews of the UI in the screenshots section.
Some folks may ask the question of why the UI stopped being maintained in the first place. The answer was that my UI evolved some time ago, to the one I am releasing soon. So, the effort to maintain something I was not using myself (v1.5.x) was far too great. From this point on, I plan to release what I am using. I do not plan to change it significantly, but if I feel a new addon better replaces something currently being used, it will be replaced in the UI. Since I'll be releasing exactly what I am using, it'll be more finely configured, better tested and significantly more maintainable for me; avoiding a situation where my own interest is lost.
I will make every effort not to break anyone's UI during an upgrade to a new version of MaelosUI, while also balancing the need to stay with current/maintained addons. If an author stops releasing new versions of an addon, I will pull it out of my UI as soon as a suitable replacement exists. For example, I feel Parrot is superior to SCT and will likely switch once ckknight releases a working version for 2.4. It's my intention to continue to release the a UI that mirrors what I happen to be using for as long as I am playing the game. As a raider I tend to prefer keeping things the same for as long as it makes sense to do so, because you start to expect certain visual cues that are thrown off with changes.
Since the 2.4 patch mods have been changing extremely quickly, with several releases of key addons everyday. As such, I'll likely be releasing rather frequently after content patches such as this until the mods stablize. The version of MaelosUI I am currently using performs quite well and is at about 30MB at startup for a fully featured UI. Check back here in a few days for the release.
If you have been using “Ace mods” for the past year, you have no doubt noticed there has been an explosion of libraries and dependencies with all your favorite and new addons. At a high level it is important for users to know that Ace3 and Rock are two completely different addon frameworks spawned as a result of what ends up being, in my opinion, implementation semantics. Fundamentally both frameworks achieve the same goals, with slightly different pragmatic approaches in regards to the functionality contained within individual libraries.
Here is where my rant begins. At the end of the day, mod users will be the ones who suffer as a result of this split more than anyone else. Where we once had a certain guarantee of consistency with essentially anything considered “Ace”, we no longer do. Of particular annoyance, at least for me as a compilation maintainer, is the shift in profiling mechanisms in Ace3. Rather than the Ace2/Rock approach of all addon configuration applying to a “default” profile, Ace3 addons initialize themselves with hard coded default profiles. This default profile is copied into a per-character, per-server profile.
What does this mean? First, it is a pain for compilation/UI maintainers to deal with because the configuration we create becomes user-specific. For you, it means that when you make changes to an addon’s configuration for one character, it does not apply to your other characters. If you either need to copy the profile from the character you changed to your alt, or reapply it manually. Before, if you wanted a different configuration for one character all you needed to do was select a different profile for that one case. Basically, the default was applying to all characters versus the Ace3 assumption of “every character should have its’ own configuration”
I have been trying to work with addon authors to make a subtle change to the standard, with limited success. Antiarc, the author of Omen, was extremely responsive and understanding of the issue and almost immediately made an adjustment to solve the problem I was running into in respect to MaelosUI. I have not had as much success with my request to have SCT modified in a similar way. For the time being I’ve had to make a 3-line change to the SCT code to get profiles to work the way they need to for any compilation to apply a maintainers’ defaults (i.e. me). kgPanels, which is the only other Ace3 addon in MaelosUI, was built to behave much like Ace2 mods in respect to default profiles. I’ve request the Ace3 library maintainers to change the “standard” for dealing with profiles to follow kgPanel’s Ace3 implementation, which has been shot down thus far.
This probably got more technical than most WoW mod users care to know about. Either way, this is something I’ve been working on the past week so I figured I’d post it for anyone who happens to be interested in the addon community.
There is really no point keeping old, irrelevant news around on the front page so I've removed all of it. From this point on you can expect to see updated news regarding the MaelosUI project and user-relevant information about WoW patches and their impact to your addons. In addition, I'll provide a heads up as soon as I know about any addons being replaced in the UI and the reason.