Chronic UI Turf War: we lose
Update 4/21/2012
Someone is now posting a forked version of ElvUI called ElvUI-Repooc which is apparently accepted and more or less approved by Curse to distribute in the slot formerly used by the original ElvUI. This is unprecedented if they did it without permission. For an example of what I mean, look back at our review of HUD addons a while back – and all the different versions of DHUD and the confusion that can cause. Curse has never, to my knowledge, allowed someone other than the original account holder to post a fan update or whatever in place of the original so that it showed up in the updater as an upgrade.
I can only assume some bad blood exists and that Curse has decided it’s worth compromising whatever principles they have in order to thumb their noses at the TukUI/ElvUI team. Like I said, WE lose.
I am not installing the Repooc fork. I am replacing ElvUI completely. I am not saying that the Repooc fork might be malicious. I am saying that everything about this is unusual. You be the judge as to what you install.
If anyone has more information – especially regarding the legitimacy of the Repooc fork – I’d love to hear about it.
After updating ElvUI tonight, the following greets us upon login.
As Flora would say, what the HELLS is going on? And, a few seconds later, she’d start taking bets on the inevitable pissing contest that either immediately preceded, or will immediately follow this move by the ElvUI folks.
On the record: if you tie your UI to one of these “amalgamation” UIs (i.e. UIs consisting mostly of someone else’s work but with enough secret sauce to make it worthless without constant support), you lose. Plain and simple.
I don’t give three shits for any issues that the ElvUI folks have with Curs ((I have many, myself.)). Likewise, I don’t care if Curse has applied their usual FUD filter to anything that ElvUI did. What I am saying is that where ElvUI and Curse are concerned, right now, you lose.
More to the point: where you become dependent on one huge UI addon (e.g. ElvUI, TukUI, Carbonite), you are vulnerable to mayhem. As so clearly documented right here and right now.
I had thought we’d make an attempt at elegance and elected ElvUI as our weapon of choice to make our UI consistent and less ugly than usual.
I was wrong to do so.
Seriously, if you want to optimize your UI, avoid things like this.
In the near future, I’ll document one example ((Emphasis on EXAMPLE here.)) of how to do this sort of thing.
Lemons. Lemonade. Rum. Why’s the rum gone?
Posted on April 21, 2012, in Addons. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
Not All Hunters 
You, oh wise one, are so right. Don’t beat yourself up, though. You weren’t the only one to be mistaken.
I’m fed up to the eye teeth with prima donna developers leading people on a not-so-merry song and dance – and ElvUi has been the worst of them all.
Besides, there never was much wrong with Bartender4 (if you don’t mind that it’s 100% glitchy inside the Darkmoon Faire, but, y’know, I can handle that: I just don’t go to the Faire).
At least, I have to tell myself that, because I simply can’t go back to the hideously insufficient, bulky, archaic-looking standard Blizz ui.
Now, now, it’s no good people getting their knickers in a knot of self-righteous indignation to defend these little ‘programming princesses’, with their, “but they developed these programs free of charge, you know, you should be grateful!”, comments.
Oh really? In that case, here’s my message of ‘gratitude’ for them:
Go practice your 1st year student skills on someone else’s time and sanity, sunshine, and leave serious gamers alone.
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Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what was going on between the two? Illy wants gossip!
Thanks for the comment on Bartender. I had considered playing with it since I was starting fresh, but if it’s got problems, I know for a fact that Dominoes does NOT, so I’ll probably stick with that. That’ll save some time, thanks.
I’m not going to rush to the defense of the ElvUI team, but I will point out that Curse has more than once engaged in skeevy behavior. They are very good at spreading FUD as fact and getting their way. As a result we have far fewer useful UI distribution sites, and that’s not cool.
What I’m saying is that there are prima donnas on all sides 🙂
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I so wish I did have some gos for you, but alas, I’m just another unimportant end user who’s fed up with being on the pointy end of their ‘bitch-stick’ and tanties (aussie for ‘tantrums’).
I love bartender and don’t have any problems with it other than the Darkmoone Faire – it just has a bit of a spaz attack, but I can do without the Faire – it’s a small price for me to pay.
Not familiar with Dominoes, although I have heard of it.
At this point, I’m a just a wee bit jaded at the prospect of trying something new. *sigh* My time is already being wasted having to set up Bartender, X-Perl and all the other helpful addons I used to have, all over again, thanks to certain precious princesses over at ElvUi.
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I was dubious about Dominoes at the time, too – I had been using Bartender but after some patch or another it died and there was no sign of a fix (glad that got rectified). The setup was intially fairly alien to me, but eventually I got used to it and learned to make it work for me. Otherwise the two are pretty much equivalent. Both support ButtonFacade (or whatever it’s called these days), both support that button timer addon, both deal well with tons of buttons. Just the setup process is different. So if you find yourself in need, you could do a lot worse.
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Ok, you’ve talked me into it….it is a bit of a pain, not being able to go to the Faire and participate in the fun because BT4’s action bars don’t seem to make way for the ‘action bars’ of the various Faire activities, which is a shame. It’s probably an obscure setting I’ve not noticed.
Will take a deep breath one day soon and dive into Dominoes. Glad it supports Button Facade, too. 🙂
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Gah…
I’ve been tied up in the D3 beta and Mists beta lately and have hardly even logged into live, so I have so far missed the snarky note from Elv. As much as I hate to say this, I’ve done exactly what you warn against: I’ve let myself become dependent on ElvUI. I suppose I could take the downtime between Cata and Mists as an opportunity to rebuild my own UI from scratch, but I love the plug-and-play aspect of ElvUI and I doubt I’ll find that elsewhere. The prospect of burning down my UI and starting over from scratch just makes me want to cry.
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Well, who could see this coming? I’ve been building my own for years, and at the precise moment I go for a prebuilt, BOOM.
If I were so inclined to try again (and I’m not), nUI looks interesting and up to date. And IF you want, ElvUI are still updating – just keeping it on their own website now.
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File 404 – Care Not Found.
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Trollerific.
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lol
I’m sorry….was the best I could do, given my underwhelming interest in ElvUi these days 😛
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