Add-On of the Week: Prat 2.0

        Prat Summary

When I wrote about ClearFont2 about 3 weeks ago, the natural follow-on would be an add-on to allow you to modify the layout and presentation of your chat window(s). Prat does that, and more.

I know most players, to conserve screen space, use only one chat window. While the default UI allows you to name the various channels you may be logged into, and to color-code them as well, Blizzard also includes a lot of info that can be shortened or eliminated. On the other hand, many people want to see additional info–such as timestamps on some chat messages (for instance, how long ago has that question to you in /guild been sitting there while you were perusing the Auction Hall?). 

Prat is nothing if not configurable:

You can enable/disable different modules from the minimap button:

The important thing to keep in mind is that to use the Prat menu shown in the first screenshot, you need to enable the applicable modules in the minimap button menu (and this function can be moved to FuBar as well). For modules you use often, it’s handy to click the "Favorite" radio button, so they’re more readily accessible.

Something especially useful, if you’re putting a lot of channels into one window, or if you want to be sure you don’t miss messages in a particular channel, is to assign sounds to certain channels. Most of the available sounds are relatively un-obnoxious, which is a Good Thing:

Here’s just a small sample of what Prat can do for you. Note the first line on the left. I have Prat configured to shorten the Guild channel name to "[G]". The speaker’s level is shown, and his name is color-coded to show me he’s a hunter. The next 3 lines are with Prat disabled. On the right, I know channel 1 is the Trade channel (also because of the color coding). One thing this doesn’t show is time-stamping, because in these channels, I really don’t care about that.

Another very cool feature is the ability to copy chat (not enabled above): Prat will put a button in the upper left corner of the selected chat window(s). At any time, you can scroll up (if you need to), select however many lines you want to copy, then click the copy button. You can then selectively copy from within the subsequent window, to paste anywhere you like.

Other functions include using the mouse scroll wheel to scroll your windows (and, optionally, remove the window navigation buttons from the chat windows); identify alt characters in chat messages; move the text edit box (the box into which you type messages) anywhere you’d like–for example, on top of a chat window, rather than below Chat 1; toggle text fading, and vary the fade timing. You can also use the slash command "/tt" to "tell target", and you can easily copy any URLs pasted to chat.

If you want more control over how, where, and when chat messages are displayed, Prat is definitely in the "very nice to have" category. And of course, being an Ace2 addon, bugs and enhancements are always being worked on by a very active development team. (In fact, the version I linked from WoWAce above, was updated less than a minute before I grabbed it this morning!)

If you have any questions about Prat, head on over to the WoW Ace Wiki…or, if you’re really brave, ask me and I’ll try to answer them.