First off, what is Fubar?
Fubar is a World of Warcraft Addon that adds a small bar (or bars) to the top or bottom of your screen. On this bar, you can add certain Fubar specific plugins that can do certain tasks. Tasks can be as simple as displaying your ammo count, or as complex as a readout of your performance (Latency, Frame Rate, Memory Usage). Many addons, especially ACE addons, come prepackaged with Fubar capability. This can allow easy access to their menu options in a menu format rather than slash commands or fullscreen menu frames.
Here is an example of my own UI. You can see Fubar displayed along the top of the screen.
Fubar itself doesn’t come with many plugins. Later on in this article I’ll cover what plugins I use for fubar. For now let us go over the actual properties of Fubar itself.
Right clicking on the empty bar brings up the main Fubar settings menu. It automatically takes you to the first bar’s menu. Here you can choose where you want the panel located. I have mine attached to the top, but you can choose the bottom or even detach the panel entirely to place it where you want on the screen. If you choose to lock the panel, you will no longer be able to drag the plugins around on the bar. If there were multiple bars, you could use this screen to remove any unwanted bars as well. This is also the screen that you use to select what addons appear on this specific bar. In the dropdown boxes, a yellow checkmark means it is already on this bar, a gray checkmark means it is on another bar, and no checkmark means it is not on any bar. Some plugins have specified a category that they belong to, but be warned not all addons have done so. I almost always use the ‘all’ dropdown so not to miss anything.
In the list on the left, you can see other menus you can go to. Clicking on the main ‘Fubar’ at the top of the list takes you to a rather important menu. Checking “Auto-Adjust” means that it will automatically move the default blizzard frames so that Fubar does not overlap them. Auto-Hide means that the bar will be hidden until you mouse over the bar’s location. When you check Overflow, this means if you put too many addons on a single bar, the extra addons will then go onto the next bar so they do not overlap. The rest of the options are pretty self explanatory. Play around with the fonts, spacing, and positioning until you find what suites you best.
One thing I will point out is the Profiles. This is really only needed for those who have multiple characters. Some addons are class specific, and using profiles allows you to have different setups based on character, server-faction, or class. If you plan on having different setups for each of your characters, before you change any of the settings in Fubar go into the profiles and pick which profile you want that character to have. The nice thing is, once you have one profile setup, when you create a new one you can copy from the first profile and then adjust as needed. Very timesaving.
After you get some plugins installed, each plugin has it’s own fubar options. Once the plugin is on your bar, simply right click on it. Most addons will have a menu that pops up with different options. Read the instructions for each plugin to know how they all work. What I will mention is that they should all have a few specific options, sometimes in the main menu, sometimes in a submenu. These options allow you to choose how the plugin is displayed on your bar. Each plugin will have an icon as well as text, and you can choose which you want shown or hidden. You can also choose where on the bar you want it to be anchored to: Left, Right, or Center. As you can see in my UI pictured above, There are some that I simply have only showing an icon and anchored to the right. If you have too many plugins, you might not want to have them anchored differently, or they will over lap and you’ll have a very hard time trying to use them. If your plugins overlap, temporarily make a new bar to move the extra plugins to until you get things properly arranged. Speaking of arranging things, one very awesome feature of Fubar is the ability to rearrange the order of your plugins by drag and drop. One warning though, you can’t change the anchor point by drag and drop. Set the anchor point, then drag it into whatever order you want.
To get you started, here are some of the plugins I use for fubar:
- FuTextures – @WoWI or @Curse – while not exactly a plugin, this adds new backgrounds to Fubar. The one pictured in my UI is from this addon.
- Broker2Fubar – Many addons do something similar to adding Fubar suport, but it goes for something called Broker. This addon translates the Broker support into Fubar. Some addons that use Broker are: Altoholic, ArkInventory, Atlas, ButtonFacade, BrokerEmote, and Omen.
- AuditorFu – This plugin monitors your money. It keeps track of not only how much you have on your character, but how much all your characters have. It also keeps track of how much money you spend and where. Wondering where all that gold you just got went? Maybe you’re spending too much time at the Auction House. I’ve tried quite a few money addons, and think this is by far the best.
- AuldLangSyne – A one stop friends and guild monitor. You can set notes to people in your friends list and when they log in it will show the note. I love this also for the fact it can sort people by many different things, including which zone they are in.
- CAfu – aka CalendarFu – Allows one click access to the new ingame calendar from Fubar. As you can see form my screenshot I removed the big calendar button from my minimap, and because I have this I can still access the calendar. The only drawback is that it doesn’t flash when I have an incoming invite. Does display any events that you have listed for that day.
- DurabilityFu – Monitors your gear so you know how bad off all those wipes have gotten you too. Also gives estimates for how much repairs will cost, and has options to auto repair at an armor vendor.
- LocationFu – Displays what zone/subzone you are in as well as your coordinates, what levels the zone is for, what instances are in the zone and their levels, and recommends what zones are appropriate for your level.
- ProfessionsFu – Shows what level your professions are at, one click access to that profession’s tradeskill window, and links to ProfessionsBook if you have it installed.
- RicoXPFu – Only good for people still leveling their character. Gives all sorts of nice details about your XP progression, and can even have a miniature XP bar displayed along the Fubar bar.
- VolumeFu – Control your game volume quick and easy. Double click the icon to mute all sound, or use the menu to raise/lower specific volume controls, as well as turn on/off specific audio settings.
There are many more Fubar plugins, but there are basic ones that I think anyone might be able to make use of.
