Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsAddon Spotlight: OSX Me Up
by Matthew Porter 
Oct 9th 2008 at 7:00PM
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...
Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.
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...
Are you an addon-addict? Is your User Interface a living work of art? Welcome home, my friends! Every week, Addon Spotlight profiles a different addon, brings you mod-related news and dishes out free addon advice. See out what's been said and done in the addon community by checking out past features or our addon and UI directory.Filed under: Add-Ons, Features, AddOn Spotlight
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
equiraptor Oct 10th 2008 9:43AM
I wouldn't go as far as Pudds, but... I do not use the Dock. I'm an avid OS X user - it's my preferred desktop OS. But I use Spotlight or Quicksilver (click the Quicksilver tab) for application launching. Like Pudds, I wouldn't voluntarily install the Dock anywhere else.
Lemons Oct 10th 2008 2:37PM
@ Joe
What is this "one click access to launch a program" you speak of? Oh wait, they have that in windows: it's called AN ICON!
I wish us poor Windows users had something that "shows which program is currently running." Oh, wait, it's called THE TASKBAR!
You're making the dock sound like it was the first to achieve these astounding feats. Well it wasn't, and quite frankly the dock just isn't that great, and I have no intention whatsoever of ever adding a "dock" feature to my wow interface, thank you.
Cy Oct 9th 2008 9:29PM
I'd have to agree that the Dock addon doesn't really seem too useful for WoW. There's just not much in the game that seems useful to dock away like that.
But I absolutely love Dash. I typically throw my combat and quest logs on there, along with damage meter windows and a few other things that I don't want on my screen all the time, but are great to pull up with just a press of a button.
durendul Oct 9th 2008 10:09PM
not going to lie i would never use this add on seems some what clumsy all the same it dose exactly what it is supposed to do with is no simple feat im impressed one way or the other
Presbutan Oct 9th 2008 11:47PM
I'm just sickened by the fact there all those chat windows taking up so much room on the screen.
Yada Oct 10th 2008 2:51AM
Let's see...better frame rates...better graphics...better multiprocessor usage...no keyloggers...no viruses...faster patch downloads...smoother play...more lifelike colors...As it happens I have a state of the art HP and a state of the art Mac Pro sitting side by side with WoW installed on both. Basically there is no comparison—Mac OS X wins hands down.
Once you go Mac, you never go back. Nuff said.
Yemeth Oct 10th 2008 3:40AM
The dock isn't the best OSX feature. In fact, it's often worse than the windows task bar... saying this as a mac user.
Crowlei Oct 10th 2008 5:46AM
Why turn this into a rant about Mac/Windows?
What i wanna know is : Does this work in WotLK?
If it doesnt - why bother?
If it does, i might try it out.
BCM Oct 10th 2008 8:17AM
Mac > PC
Ayatsumi Oct 10th 2008 9:21AM
Yeesh, lol.
First off, @ yada -- there's no such thing as a 'state of the art HP' computer. Just the fact that you claim 'state of the art' about the cheapest, low grade excuse for a prefab PC you can get shows how very little you know. HP makes absolute crap that they market for cheap, not for performance.
FWIW, I'm a 'real' IT tech (15+ years of experience), and I support both Mac and PC. I also use both as my daily machines (MacBook Pro w/ 2 gigs, 512mb 8600 video, etc) and the PC pound for pound is a better gaming platform. I dualboot my Mac into Windows for dualboxing because the Mac software for keystroke cloning is a joke. Also, 'mac graphics are better' is something that only a complete idiot who knows nothing about hardware would say. My PC with a lower grade video card gets better FPS and nicer graphics overall because of the lower performance overhead of running XP compared to OSX. My Mac has better *overall* hardware, but less software overhead on XP makes a difference in how many resources are available to the game. It's not all about shiny buttons and having an Apple logo on your case, noobs.
On topic: Mod looks overall not really useful. Plus, the article was a travesty - a video of one mod, but barely a paragraph about the other? It reads like you got tired of writing it halfway thru and just called it a night, lol.
Falcrist Oct 10th 2008 9:24AM
^This!
Glasfeena Oct 10th 2008 9:38AM
Hopefully Steve Jobs won't come after the creator for IP violations...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/08/1224224
ieatdeadkids Oct 10th 2008 11:24AM
Trolls FOR THE LOSE!
I am a person who makes a living off working with "PCs" (any x86 mac is now "a PC" too, people - something Microsoft doesn't understand). Fixing, building, helping people use. I work in an educational environment.
I recently picked up a 24" iMac using my educational discount (16gB iPod Touch gratis = win) and had it BTO with the GeForce video card, and I must say that the machine is simply win. I was never a Mac user until I bought it (I may have drooled at my friends 20" iMac for a while after the Intel switch)..
Finally took the dive.. and I haven't used my "old PC" in 3 months. Haven't even turned it on, in fact, I unplugged it completely.
It's not to say I don't want to have my Windows still - but OS X is mindblowingly excellent.
I'm not here to try to convince people to go Mac, but if you've ever wanted one, and money isn't a barrier to getting one (hey, it keeps it out of the hands of many trollboys which is good for the community!), what are you waiting for? .. it's always been Apple's plan to sell the hardware and software together, that's how they manage to make money (selling $1k systems for $2k, but making and supporting a great, stable OS, where it has everything "great out of the box") - fresh installs are easy, the updates are amazing, great communities for free (and "free") software ..
It's just embarrassing to go back to working on a PC.
Besides, any Mac built in the past 3 years Bill's operating systems and you'll realize why the machine "costs moar". You "get moar".
My next purchase? A Mac Pro tower, dual quad cores, for a hobby musician, and lifetime gamer.
So all the fanboys who talk trash about Macs, OSX. I must say, get a real job, experience the difference, and maybe you won't have such a hate on for it.
On topic, these mods look great, but the "dash" one is fairly out dated, are you sure that there's no branch that's been updated.. this year? It's very exposé-ish (with the corner hotspots), not just "dash"y.
I'll try them out, but I can't say I'll keep them, until I see them in action. I wonder how it will interact with a mod such as Prat.. If Prat was programmed well (which it seems it was) I don't think it will be an issue.
Thander Oct 11th 2008 2:18AM
I disagree because most of the "cool" features OS X has over Windows can be nullified with all the open source software these days.
They got triple-boot Windows/Mac/Linux computers my last year of college. For programming, Linux was always the best. For gaming, Windows was always the best (4GB network space for each student). I never had a need to use Mac. I don't do any of the multimedia stuff besides play music sometimes. Windows and Linux handle those fine. There is nothing on the Mac that I really need.
Tseran Oct 10th 2008 4:02PM
I worked with a fellow WoW player here at my current job. He was the tech who only knew Windows, I am the Mac specialist. By the time he left, he knew Macs too and had bought an iMac G5. His home system which he used to play WoW on is now gathering dust while he plays on his iMac G5. He tells me it runs faster, better frame rate, better graphics, and is more stable then his old custom built for gaming Windows box. I built my own Windows box when I first got into serious raiding on WoW, as my old OLD G4 wasn't cutting it. When it started being more trouble then it was worth, I bit the bullet and got a 24" Core 2 Duo Extreme iMac. I haven't looked back, and now my Windows box is collecting dust.
Now, looking at the addons, I am not impressed. As a previous commenter said, Prat is a great system. They may be inspired by the dock, but they are poor imitations. Kinda like they were Microsofted.
Depherios Oct 10th 2008 7:57PM
It's worth pointing out that Dash hasn't seen development in some time and it's future in WotLK is unsure. Although I haven't tried it on beta (I stopped running it, as it was just making my addon addiction worse by allowing me to hide them away) somebody may have to pick it up.
Halian Nov 7th 2008 10:07AM
I personally play WoW on a Imac, its better on here then any other gaming computer i have ever used. it kicks PC's ass anyday.
so Phazzer maybe... just maybe you should try using a Imac before you knock them out of the wow gaming arena they are simply amazing machines, especially my 24" Imac the screen and gameplay quality is out of this world.
-Halian