Every weekend (ish), Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

The addon world is currently abuzz with reactions to Blizzard's new addon policy (briefly: you can't charge for addons or solicit donations for them in-game). I'm not going to go there in this column, since it's been pretty well covered around the blogosphere and in any case I don't want to ignite a flame war.

However, I do want to talk about an issue related to the developments surrounding the new addon policy. The author of Outfitter (and GroupCalendar) has chosen to cease publishing those addons (in protest, asapparently). I rely on Outfitter on all of my characters, and I'll be sad to see it go. But if it isn't going to be updated any more, it's time to start looking for replacements.

Every weekend (well, almost every weekend), Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

Before I get started, this addon is useful to one class only: Priests. Not only that, it's only useful to healing priests, since all it does is make it easier for you to keep track of your Prayer of Mending (sorry mages, wrong PoM).

Still here? Good. I've tried many different mods to tell me who my PoM is on and how many charges it has left, since it is a lovely spell and I like to use it to its fullest, which means I need to know when the darn Spirit Wolves have snagged it again so I can recast it on somebody useful. I used MendWatch all throughout Burning Crusade, but it had some annoying bugs when Wrath hit and I started hunting around for something more stable and easier to read. I quickly found PoM Tracker, and it's worked like a dream for me ever since.

Every weekend (well, almost every weekend), Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

Mounts and vanity pets are a bigger part of many people's WoW than ever before. They don't take up any space in our bags (yay!), there are achievements for them (meh!), and there are a lot of cool ones to find (even if the raven mount keeps eluding me and the rest of my guildies). However, Blizzard's interface for these summonable beasts leaves a lot to be desired.

Livestock is here to fill that gap. It aims to handle all your vanity-pet and mount related needs, with the following features:

• Buttons to choose a pet or mount to summon
• Buttons to summon a random pet or mount
• Can ensure that you always have a pet out (i.e. resummon on zoning in to an instance, ressing, etc.)
• "Smart mount" feature to choose flying/ground mounts as appropriate
• Keybindings for all important function

This last feature is the one that makes it viable for me; if I have to click to mount up, I'm not going to use your mod.

Every weekend, Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

It just occurred to me that I've been really focusing on bar mods in the last few Spotlights (Dominos and AutoBar, specifically). To complete a trio, today I'm going to do it again with QBar. QBar is a simple mod, with a simple goal. Its reason for being is to show you any clickable quest items that may show up in your inventory, on a movable bar.

It has the following functionality:

• Positionable anywhere on your screen
• Scalable
• Can show/hide tooltips for its buttons
• Can expand horizontally or vertically
• Can ignore particular items if desired
• You can bind a key to the last used quest item. This is my favorite feature; just one click and then alt-Q (or whatever binding you set) does it from there.

Last time on Addon Spotlight, we looked at Dominos, my current favorite bar mod for all my spells and abilities. Of course, like any good raider, I also have bar spots for my various consumables: bandages, potions, elixirs, buff food, and so forth. But it's a pain to manually reconfigure all that every time I get a new item. Fortunately, I don't have to: AutoBar does it for me, and means I never have to hunt in my bags for a scroll or a quest item.

In short, AutoBar adds one or more bars to your screen, each full of buttons for various categories. For instance, the default "main" bar has slots for:

• Hearthstone (and related abilities, like Death Gate or Scroll of Recall)
• Health potions
• Mana potions
• Buff foods
• Mage foods
• Elixirs (battle and guardian)
• Mounts
• Tradeskills
• Quest items
• Trinkets

And probably some more things that I'm not remembering right now. AB shows the most recent item you've clicked for each category (in some cases) or the best item (in others), and other options in the category appear on mouse-over.

Many people who don't otherwise use mods much use a bar mod, since Blizzard's default bars are quite limited. Back in the day it was Flexbar or Trinity; nowadays it's usually Bartender or Dominos (but oh, how I miss Flexbar). Dominos is the successor to Bongos, so if you used Bongos in the BC era, you'll probably be at home here, although it's missing a few features that the author found troublesome and not worth it. It's also the bar mod I use on all my characters (along with Autobar, which I'll discuss in a future Spotlight).

The goal of Dominos is to be simple to configure, yet powerful enough for most situations. It also uses the default action bars, so any bars you have set up already in Blizz's interface will port over fairly seamlessly, and things like tooltips work just fine. It also works just fine with vehicles, which are prominently featured in many Wrath quests. Most of the options are hidden away in the bars' individual configuration frames, which are accessible by right-clicking a bar while in config mode (/dom config). A bar can be made as many buttons as you want it, they can go horizontally and vertically, any size you want - all the options you'd expect from a modern bar mod.

I play several characters often. I also like to keep track of people I pug with who play well, friends who are not in the guild, etc. The built-in friends lists works pretty well, especially now that it supports notes, but it is kept separately for each character, which makes it difficult to keep track of everybody at once. Sounds like a job for an addon!

A job for Friend & Ignore Share, to be specific. F&IS is a low-configuration, drop-in solution to my problem. After it's installed, your friends lists will automatically be synchronized between all your characters. Also, by default, your alts are all added to your friends lists for easier mailing auto-complete. Ignore lists are also synchronized, as the name suggests, although this is responsible for some "player not found" errors at log-in (players need to be online to be added to the ignore list).

I have to say; at first I was not a fan of the new Achievement system. Feathers in my cap didn't intersest me on Xbox Live, and even Warhammer Online's achievement system didn't do much for me during my short stint as a Marauder. I don't think I could attribute my newfound obsession to any genius on the part of Blizzard, but I do have to admit that I've fallen for achievements in World of Warcraft. Perhaps it has something to do with the massive amount of time played, or a sense of having been there and done that. Naturally this led me to start mixing my passion for achievements with my passion for addons. This week, we're going to take a look at a few addons specifically built to enhance or simply the new system.

Let's start with one bearing a name alluding to one of my favorite movies. Urban Achiever replaces the default Achievement UI. It adds a search feature, making it easy to find an achievement amongst the many available. It also replaces the tracking feature, while even automatically tracking time achievements when they begin. Players can track up to five achievements at a time. In the end, this one is really a matter of preference.

That's right, Atlasloot Enhanced has been updated to include the Northrend instances and raid. Personally, I've been waiting to be able to browse and try-on the gear from the new dungeons and raids since the expansion launched.

Atlasloot Enhanced is absolutely one of my must-have addons, and I've watched it grow with loving admiration since the day I realized I could see what my toons looked liked wearing Sunken Temple loot.

For those of you not using this one, it's a wonderful way to spend your time while waiting for your groups to get situated, double check drop rates on certain items, or even link items from your wish list for typically uninterested group-mates. (Go ahead and take advantage of the captive audience.)

Although we've featured this one before, Atlasloot Enhanced has some great features for the curious player, and in light of all the new content, I thought we'd review some of the reasons to install and use this very useful mod.

Usually when we come to you with addons to highlight in one of our features, it's because we think it'll enhance your game play in some way. Well not today. Today it's all about the eye candy, or dare I even make this pun, the WoW factor. (Snap!) You've just gotten your interface ready for Wrath, so today we'll gonna trick that ride out. Can't begin our adventures in Northrend with a boring interface can we? You've seen some of the amazing interfaces in our Reader UI of the Week feature, so after the jump we'll take a look at 3 addons that help add that artistic flare to your interface.

Ho boy, what an exciting time to be a WoW player. New talents, crazy zombie plagues, even an infestation of Headless Horsemen tormenting towns. And of course our favorite patch mini-game, updating addons! By now the dust has settled and we have a better understanding of how the patch affected our addons. Hopefully the worst is over and it'll be smooth sailing as we install Wrath soon. This week in the Spotlight we'll look at new, updated, and retired addons as we rebuild our interfaces in preparation of our adventures in Northrend.

Well, BlizzCon is over and while there were few surprises, I'll have a review and analysis of interface and addon news from BlizzCon in a special Creamy GUI Center tomorrow. In the mean time we have the big 3.0 patch today to deal with. So this week on Addon Spotlight we'll take a look at how to securely and safely update your addons using the Curse Gaming Client. Let's get to it!

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.

The new Recruit-A-Friend program has taken the World of Warcraft community by storm, perhaps more so in the dual- and multi-boxing circles. I'll admit that while I advocate enjoying the leveling process and experiencing the lore through quests and in-game events, once you've hit 70 a couple of times, the magic tends to wane. With the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, we've had some time to re-evaluate our WoW experience. For many of us, finishing up some alts has become a way to prepare for the expansion. I've had a number of alts since I started playing, but have only managed to ding two paladins and a rogue. Each time I play in a battleground I see a member of another class do something crazy cool and ponder rolling whatever class it is.

With the RAF program in full effect, I decided that dual-boxing with the 300% XP and Summon Friend ability would be the most efficient way to get my alts Wrath-ready. This How-To is specifically for players using Macs, but in essence many of the principles remain true for PC users.

Welcome to a special preview edition of Addon Spotlight. I've been playing around with dual-boxing and wanted to shared this addon with you all, as it adds some great features for anyone running two toons. Rather than succumb to expansion apathy, I've been attempting to level my alts via the ridiculous XP bonus given to players who have recruited a friend. Besides, who doesn't want a new Zhevra mount for their Belf-about-town? Regardless, some savvy developers have come up with some mods to help the aspiring dual-boxer.

This is the only in-game addon I use when I'm burning through the levels via the Recruit-a-Friend program. The developer has combined a lot of great little tools into the package. Once I started using TwoBoxToolkit I noticed a significant increase in efficiency when dual-boxing.