The basic chat interface in WoW is pretty limited. It's easy to miss what's happening in the chat window while fighting, for example, and there are many other ways in which the chat windows are not very user-friendly.
Prat helps solve a lot of these usability problems, and since it's modular, you can turn its features on or off easily. New functions are being added over time, too. Here are a few of the things it can do:
- Enable mouse scrolling in the chat window.
- Abbreviate the channel names (from [Guild] to [G], or just the green color, for example)
- Add keybindings for various chat channels.
- Add a slash command (or keybinding) to whisper to your current target.
- Add timestamps to the frame (so that you know when someone sent a message).
- Color player names according to their class, and add their level beside their names.
- Toggle the chat buttons on or off, or move them about.
- Turn on chat logging.
- Move the chat input box (the Editbox) to a different location.
- Copy text from the chat frame.
- Shorten existing commands to your own personal alias comands. (eg: "/say "Get ready, I'm pulling now!" could be shortened to "/pull". This is like a macro, except that it is executed with your own shortened command instead of a button to click on, which is handy for things you say or do often, while out of combat.)
As for that problem many of us have, where, in the thick of battle, someone will say something like, "WAIT! DON'T PULL!" or "Help me! I'm being attacked!" and you miss it because you were looking at the fight, not at the chat window: a recently developed addon, blandly named "PitBull_Prat", helps solve this problem by working in conjunction with
PitBull and Prat together, by adding the text of what you and others say to a colored speech bubble right next to that player's unit frame in your interface (as you can see in the screenshot above). Since you're more likely to be looking at your friends' health bars to keep aware of how the battle is going, hopefully this will help you to see what their saying in time to help them too. Click here to download
Prat and
PitBull_Prat from
files.wowace.com, and remember, PitBull_Prat will only work if you have both
PitBull and
Prat installed.
Tags: addon, addon spotlight, addons, AddonSpotlight, chat, edit box, EditBox, interface, joystiqfeatures, pitbull, prat, pull, unit frames, UnitFrames
Filed under: Tips, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Jul 22nd 2007 at 8:50PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Eugene Feb 3rd 2008 3:21PM
What character unit frame mod is that? Looks nice!
Wizardling Jan 11th 2009 6:31AM
I don't understand why people like Prat. It can't do anything useful like separate channels into separate windows and remember which channel msgs should go to based on which chat window I'm in. There's no way I can see to log channel messages to disk, and just generally NOTHING USEFUL. Am I missing something?
Tekkub Jul 22nd 2007 9:44PM
So you only review Ace addons nowadays?
BSChim Jul 22nd 2007 10:52PM
The last AddOn review I read was for Lightheaded and Double wide, both of which aren't ace
David Bowers Jul 22nd 2007 11:40PM
I try to review addons for you according to how useful I find them for myself. I don't much care whether they're Ace or Discord or whatever. I also try to present them in some order, varying functionality from week to week, especially if (like today) they function in concert with addons I've covered earlier (like PitBull), or if they're great addons that you can't find much info about elsewhere (like PitBull and PitBull_Prat). If you have a particular addon or group of addons that you recommend I test out and write about here (assuming I like it myself of course), please do mention it in a comment, and I'll see what I can find.
CB Jul 23rd 2007 1:31AM
What's wrong with reviewing a system (ACE) that uses a number of libraries to help developers create their addons?
Personally, if the addon works and I have a need for it, I don't care what it's created with
Keya Jul 23rd 2007 2:35AM
90% of my server´s players use Ace by now (at least it seems like that)
One reason was the usability-death of ct-mod at patch 2.0 (was it?)
Frank Smith Jul 23rd 2007 5:46AM
ok, what's the font in the screenshot? :D
Frank Smith Jul 23rd 2007 6:04AM
(edit: not the chat bubble font, the unit frame one)
Tyler Jul 23rd 2007 6:05AM
While most of you have stolen the subject matter to talk about ACE BS....
The topic of this is appealing. The add on seems very useful. I only question how much memory usage it will suck up. RAM = life. write that down.
Pinqvin Jul 23rd 2007 6:45AM
Well I have many add ons on my wow folder (about 100 I suppose), including Prat. With all those add ons my maximum memory usage never goes above 50mb so I think it's quite low. As for only Prats memory usage, I have no idea but I think its pretty low since everything it does is pretty simple yet effective ^^.
Vyasa Jul 23rd 2007 10:06AM
I didn't know about PitBull_Prat, thanks for the heads up.
marvel Jul 23rd 2007 9:36PM
i have a question: i have this add on installed but the chat bubbles arent coming from the people who are saying them when i am in a party. how do i fix this?
thanks
David Bowers Jul 24th 2007 12:39AM
@marvel, sorry I'm not having the same problem you are. For me I just installed it and it started showing up the bubbles for me in party naturally. My guess with what's happening is that you happened to get a buggy build. With files.wowace.com this sort of thing happens now and then, since you're always getting the latest bleeding edge version of the addon. You might just try clicking on the download link I provided for you again and seeing if the latest version has fixed the bug.