Yes, you read that name right. I'll be doing Addon Spotlight while Sean is away for a little while. Don't worry though as The Creamy GUI Center will still be around for all your in depth addon needs, and I'll do my best to keep Addon Spotlight's tone and feel as close to Sean's as possible. Today in the spotlight is a duet of addons inspired by Apple OSX. Apple has always had a polished interface, with all sorts of options added with a graphical flare that sets it apart from others. Let's see if we can spice up our WoW UI with dock and dashboard addons that hope to bring some of that flare to WoW.

With so many addons and user interface elements taking up screen real estate, many players are stuck wishing they had a bigger monitor as they try to make room for them all. Today's Addon Spotlight features two addons that each offer unique ways to deal with this problem.

Dock

Dock is an addon that tries to replicate the dock found in Mac OSX. For Windows users who might not be familiar with the dock, you can check out how it works and see if it might be beneficial to you by trying the excellent freeware program Rocket Dock. Basically the dock acts as a program launcher, but with some nice eye candy thrown in. As you mouse over the contents of the dock they shrink and grow with animated effects.


The dock addon for WoW does all this too, and is quite the feat as the author was able to mimic the animations pretty smoothly. Instead of putting program shortcuts on the dock, this addon let's you drag an interface element onto the dock. When you move your mouse over the contents of the dock they grow in size so you can see them better, and with one click the contents move back to their original spot. This is a unique way to deal with too much stuff on your screen. Practically anything can be moved to and from the dock, chat windows, the minimap, DPS and threat meters and more. You can have more than one dock at a time, and the docks themselves can have multiple tabs. You can also hide the docks and have then appear when moused over or with a key binding.


Overall the dock addon might be just the solution you're looking for to hide parts of the interface you don't need to see constantly, and yet still have them accessible. The addon is still considered in beta though so you may encounter some bugs, and smooth animation effects can vary depending on the specs of your computer.

Dash

If Dock is overboard for your needs and you'd like a slimmer memory footprint Dash might be right up your ally. Once again this addon is inspired by features found in Apple OSX. Imagine an invisible layer over your WoW playing field that you can move addons and other interface doodads to. This layer and everything on it is only shown when you hold down a hotkey, or move your cursor to a certain corner of your screen. It's a simple but elegant solution to hide some clutter, and yet it's still easily accessible.

There you have it folks. Between these two addons you should be able to find a solution that works for you. And dare I say if not, it may be time to cut back on a few addons. Blasphemy you say? I know, it's hard! So many cool addons, so little monitor space...

Tags: addon, addon spotlight, addons, AddonSpotlight, dashboard, dock, osx

Filed under: Add-Ons, Features, AddOn Spotlight