Addon Spotlight: Minimap mayhem
by Sean Forsgren 
Mar 15th 2008 at 3:00PM
In the shadow of an ominous sense of addon doom, I wanted to talk about a problem that some of you may relate with. I have issues with cluttered user interfaces, specifically a messy minimap. I should really consider myself blessed that this one can be near the top of my list. Either my life is boring or I am very much a control freak.I've recently taken it upon myself to combat the rude nature of a cluttered minimap, only to find myself somewhat frustrated by a lack of viable options. I'm going to guess that many of you many be screaming Ace right now. To that, I say stow your bilge, my pretties. The Ace solution fails, which simultaneously surprises me and makes me sad.
In my efforts to enforce my Spring Cleaning initiative, I recruited MinimapButtonBag to wipe up the little buttons that surrounded my minimap. This little Ace addon did the job about as perfectly as possible, with one glaring flaw. The little "addon that could" was a memory hog; a beast that defiled my allocated addon memory. The fact that it was stomping around with the same clout as my beloved AtlasLoot Enhanced and the godly QuestHelper irked me to no end.So, I forced myself to move on. I found TidyMiniMap, which did nearly the same thing, but didn't quite make all the evil buttons "piss off", as the British would say. My next attempt found me configuring the needy little MinmapButtonFrame. In essence, it does the same thing as TidyMiniMap, although I had to configure it on every alt I roll. These two really just take the buttons and put them somewhere else where I can see them and lack what I would consider basic features. This is where you, my friendly reader, come into the battle.
This screenshot shows MinimapButtonBag peaking at almsot 12MB, and running "normally" at 7.65MB. This is not, of course, a personal attack against the developer. This is visual evidence of why I'm struggling with this addon's "great in theory, not in practice" nature. I am using the version that was updated one week ago, straight from the Ace factory floor.
As an addon enthusiast, I ask for a solution, perhaps you know where to find it. I want to hide the pesky addon buttons around my minimap (toss in the default Blizz buttons too, they suck.) I don't want to pay for it with a ridiculous memory footprint, I don't want to reconfigure it on every character, and I don't want to see some alternate version of the buttons. Maybe this is a tall order, as I would have expected the Ace version to unquestionably meet the need. I guess I could configure each addon to hide the minimap button, but that flies in the face of the all-encompassing nature of my addon approach.
So those are your orders, addon soldier, educate me. My ignorance lacks the promised bliss, and rather than rely on an Internet search engine, I will put it out to you in hopes that you all can remedy my minimap woes.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Tricks, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
crt4 Mar 15th 2008 3:14PM
Most of the addons I use have a FuBar component, which replaces their minimap button. For the others, I simply go into their options and disable the minimap button. If you absolutely have to have a button to access the addon's control panel, create a macro with the slash command to open the addon. You can even use one of the mods that hides a button bar until you mouse over an anchor to keep them hidden most of the time.
As far as your 'KISS' addon approach, which is simpler, properly configuring your existing addons (by removing the minimap button in their options) or adding yet ANOTHER addon into the fray to do something that's already available?
If you use SimpleMiniMap, it has an option to disable all the blizzard supplied buttons (zoom, time, voice chat, battlegrounds, etc) The only one I keep enabled is the battleground button so I can control my queues, though I'd love to find a FuBar plugin for that as well. I have to leave a space empty on one of my action bars so the icon is visible. (my minimap is surrounded by button/cast/fu bars)
crt4 Mar 15th 2008 3:22PM
Another thought, after I read the phrase "ominous sense of addon doom". Here's what I've done to prepare for 2.4:
1) Go to your character selection screen, click Addons and make a list of all enabled addons, so you know exactly what you were using.
2) If you use any ace addons, get the wowace updater, configure it and make sure it works. (I run it every day before logging in, fwiw) There are updaters that update non-ace addons, but I haven't messed with them. I use a mac so I'm limited to a few programs. But that also means I'm not worried about a keylogger, which is a problem with these third-party programs.
On patch day, I prefer to (first backup) then wipe my addons folder clean. You lose your layouts, so it's a tough call, but (especially on big patches, such as 2.4) it makes for a clean slate. Then I run the ace updater and have it install all my previous addons. Finally, I make rounds to the websites of non-ace addons looking for updated, compatible versions. I run ALOT of addons (over 100, well over if you count each fubar plugin as its own) and it doesn't take me too long to get back up & running.
If you don't wipe your addon directory, you can save yourself some time by not having to reconfigure your addons (unitframes, action bars, castbars, etc can take forever to get right) but you may run into some incompatibilities.
JohnC Mar 15th 2008 3:50PM
try battleground_fu
i think that does the job your looking for
Depherios Mar 15th 2008 4:12PM
I agree with crt4, I have no minimap icons at all. Even though I run over 150 addons. My Battleground icon is moved to the far upper left hand corner of my screen over Fubar. Fubar itself contains most of what would/could be minimap buttons. And the rest I just use the slash commands.
Tabi Mar 15th 2008 4:38PM
Please, do not wipe your Interface/AddOns folder and then re-download all your addons on patch day. Places like wowace.com, are already going to be under tremendous strain on patch day. You'll just be making the problem worse, and for no gain -- the game itself does not save addon setting in your AddOn folder. All that's in there is the code for the addons themselves, and WoWAceUpdater will take care of making sure all of that is up to date.
Bandwidth costs money, and WoWAce is not a for-profit business, it's just a group of people who enjoy writing addons and sharing them with the WoW community.
If you really want to start with a clean slate, it would be much better to wipe your WTF folder, which contains all the saved settings used by your AddOns.
Todd Mar 15th 2008 3:19PM
I'm still in love with SimpleMinimap from Ace.
WyldKard Mar 15th 2008 6:02PM
I highly recommend SimpleMiniMap also, which is part of my personal compilation. The buttons that it doesn't remove can be disabled from within the respective addons they represent.
Huenor Mar 15th 2008 4:28PM
Wow, you are totally wrong about minimap button bag. You are using an old version from a website other than wowace. The version you should be using was updated 7 days ago and is available from wowace.com under the name MBB. From your post i must assume that your old copy was using about a megabyte or more of memory. Well i just installed the new MBB and its using 65kb. Might wanna make sure that you are you using the right version of an addon before you start trashing it :P
Jorus Mar 15th 2008 5:31PM
I recently discovered a rather nice addon called Minimap Button Frame, downloadable from Curse which does exactly what it says on the tin. I don't find it to be a memory hog and it's very flexible, allowing you to customize the layout and location of all the buttons.
Additionally, as mentioned above, Simple Minimap is an awesome addon and should be part of any UI addicts repository!
bkellner Mar 15th 2008 6:27PM
I'm using SimpleMinimap and Minimap Button Frame, I think you just need to configure MBF correctly in order to take advantage of it's full featureset.
I have all my minimap buttons in a row, and really tiny. I have them placed anywhere on my screen, and at 0% opacity, I can still access all my configurations by mouseover and reading the tooltips, and have memorized where some vital button locations are at. I usually place them all in a row, in a corner that I don't use often (ala the top right above the minimap.)
The only button my minimap has is tracking icon, and for coords I use SL_coords.
Perrins Mar 15th 2008 6:31PM
theres one i found in a compilation pack that i like using. its called Earth. im not sure if it works with all addons but it has decreased the clutter alot. i will try some others and maybe totally remove all the clutter :)
RogueJedi86 Mar 15th 2008 6:37PM
I use Minimap Button Frame from Curse, and the only problem I have with it is that it hides the Sun/Moon time of day thing on minimap, I have check Hide and then uncheck it to show it. Otherwise, I like it too. Saves on the minimap real estate, with only things like Enchantrix and CTMod not going into the MBF box.
ED_Jorus Mar 15th 2008 7:54PM
@12 I realise that some people still rely on the whole sun/moon icon clock but if you migrate to using TitanPanel aswell then you can still have a clock, albeit a digital one, in your top right corner.
RogueJedi86 Mar 15th 2008 8:10PM
I have a timer on Fubar, I just love the sun/moon to know if it's actually day or night outside in the world. :)
Purity Mar 15th 2008 9:49PM
I use Minimap Button Frame. It is not a memory hog (for me)...please uncheck the box that says active button collection. That should solve your memory problem. It only needs to be checked to collect NEW buttons then immediately uncheck it since they are now found. This may not have been blatantly apparent in its instructions.
Very happy with this addon and that skinner skins it and makes it pretty!
ED_Jorus Mar 16th 2008 3:12AM
@14
I find windows works best for that...and not the Micro$oft version either!
Jay Mar 16th 2008 3:34AM
OT: What is the name of the addon that's being used in the screenshot that shows Latency, Framerate and Addon Memory?
Ravenswing Mar 16th 2008 7:47AM
Sean, you cannot simply say that Ace 'fails' (and quote a wiki article on failing) without explaining why. I get the feeling that your view of this failure is that Ace does not take every single button from your minimap and drop them somewhere nice and simple without you having to do anything at all.
As crt4 said back at the start of comments, if you can actually be bothered to look at the config of each addon once and switch off mini-map buttons (which most addons with FuBar support do automatically anyway), then your problem is solved. I know mine is.
That said, I don't spend more time tuning my addons to perfection than I do playing. :p
AlmtyBob Mar 16th 2008 9:07AM
I can't believe people still use Simple Minimap. SMM has been bugged almost to the point of being unusable for a long while. It was a good addon, but it's no longer being maintained.
Instead I highly, highly recommend Chinchilla. You can find it at:
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/Chinchilla
It's an extremely customizable minimap mod developed by the author of FuBar IIRC. It has every feature you could ever imagine and many you couldn't. For example, here's a screenshot with Chinchilla in the top right:
http://www.ramenite.net/newcombat.jpg
As for the MBB problem, I had read something that the memory usage can sometimes read incorrectly due to the way the dependencies work in Ace. I use it and have no issues with memory usage.
Bayard Randel Mar 16th 2008 4:19PM
Question: Has anyone found an addon which replaces the tracking button with a fubar menu?