Useful Information / Tools / Links for Developers
 

Resources:

Chat with other developers and UI enthusiasts on Discord.
https://discord.gg/87BDFhEc

Blizzard's UI Add-On Development Policy
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1021053914

Wowpedia is the wiki dedicated to everything World of Warcraft, including its API.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Portal:Interface_customization

The companion site to World of Warcraft Programming, wowprogramming.com is a great resource on the game's API. It includes function lists, widget handlers, listings of CVars and events, etc. It also is home to a FrameXML browser to view the game's Lua and XML code, an artwork browser, a web-based Lua interpreter and a BLP converter.
http://wowprogramming.com/

The official manual for Lua, Programming in Lua is available online at this site.
http://www.lua.org/pil/

Lua-users is a reference site created by and for Lua programmers. In addition to the wiki, there is a great tutorial reference.
http://lua-users.org/

You can extract the interface files and art yourself by following these instructions.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Viewing_Bliz...interface_code

To view 3D models outside of the game, WoW Model Viewer is a tool used by many Michinima artists.
http://www.wowmodelviewer.org/

To view 3D models inside of the game, the addon rIngameModelViewer will allow you to browse through them.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...delViewer.html

To find the path to a specific sound, Bluspacecow has compiled a list titled Sound commands for every sound from searching through the MPQ files.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...verysound.html

BLP2PNG will allow you to convert images from BLP/BMP/TGA -> PNG and from PNG -> BLP format.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...7-BLP2PNG.html

BLPView (Windows) and BLPLook (Mac) will allow you to preview BLP files right in the file browser of your OS - Windows Explorer folders or Quick Look on Macs.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...0-BLPView.html
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...1-BLPLook.html

Vladinator created a web-tool to turn Lua scripts you may find on the internet into a downloadable addon, complete with TOC file.
http://addon.ziuo.net/


Lua Editors:

Basically, any text editor can be used - even Notepad or MS Word. But here are some editors/IDEs that other authors have used.

Notepad++ is a free editor which supports syntax highlighting in many programming languages, including Lua and XML.
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Edit+ is free for 30 days on a shareware license. Lua syntax highlighting may be downloaded in the User Files section.
http://editplus.com/

LuaEclipse is a plugin for the free Eclipse IDE platform.
http://luaeclipse.luaforge.net/

UltraEdit has a free trial. You can get Lua syntax highlighting by downloading a Wordfile from their "Extras" section.
http://www.ultraedit.com

SciTE is a free editor that supports Lua and XML highlighting.
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html

Smultron is available on the Mac App Store and offers support for both Lua and XML.
http://www.peterborgapps.com/smultron/

BBEdit and TextWrangler are both from Bare Bones Software. BBEdit is full-featured and has a free-trial, while TextWrangler is its "little brother" and is free to use.
http://www.barebones.com/products/

For an in-game editor and interpreter, there are a few choices. WowLua has the benefit of a command line, while _DevPad can auto-run scripts to serve as mini-addons.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...66-WowLua.html
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...3-_DevPad.html


Tutorials:

The article Getting started with writing addons on Wowpedia is a good place to get an idea of how to begin.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Getting_star...writing_addons

For specific tutorials on wowpedia, see the HOWTOs section.
http://www.wowpedia.org/HOWTOs

I found the tutorials on lua-users to be quite helpful.
http://lua-users.org/wiki/TutorialDirectory



Please feel free to add your own resources to the thread!

• General resources
  • Wowpedia's Interface Customization portal has tons of documentation, examples, and tutorials.
  • WoWProgramming's Docs section has lots of documentation.
• API functions (UnitName, GetSpellInfo, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Events (PLAYER_LOGIN, UNIT_ENTERING_VEHICLE, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Widget API (frames, buttons, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Secure templates (action buttons, unit frames, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• WoW widget script handlers (OnClick, OnEvent, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Console variables (game settings)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Data types (unitID, actionSlot, etc.)
  • Wowpedia
  • WoWProgramming
• Blizzard UI code
  • Ketho's GitHub repository (also for beta)
  • WoWProgramming (also artwork)
• Blizzard UI localizations
  • Phanx's GitHub repository
• Lua functions
  • Wowpedia
  • Lua 5.1 reference manual
  • Programming in Lua
  • Lua-users wiki
• Tutorials and other info
  • How to localize your addon
  • How to get started with Ace3 libraries
  • List of things addons and macros can't do
  • Blizzard's official addon policy
• Lua editors and other utility programs
  • Notepad2-mod is a lightweight text editor with Lua syntax highlighting

Definitely some duplicates on there but I don't have time to go through and sort it out right now.

Regarding editors. I'm currently using SublimeText 2. It is avalable for Mac OS and PC.
http://www.sublimetext.com/

UltraEdit is one of the best editors you can get for Windows.

I do not recomand the windows notepad for French people and I think it could be the same for German.

By default, the windows notepad use ANSI character encoding instead of UTF-8.

If you save the addon lua files with ANSI encoding, you have to replace special character in string, for example :
é is replaced by \195\169
è is replaced by \195\168
etc

And NEVER open any files in WTF folder with the windows notepad. It will convert the file under ANSI character and the game WOW is unable to read the file. All your addons will be reseted. :eek:

So use other editors, but always use UTF-8 as default character encoding.

BTW, my favorite editor is JEdit

Don't forget about WoW API for Dreamweaver. :)

Iriel's Secure Headers Guide
http://www.iriel.org/wow/docs/Secure...20-%20pre1.pdf

Docs

• Lua 5.1 Cheatsheet
• Iriel’s Field Guide to Secure Handlers (it's a later version than the one Zork posted)

Editors

• LDT:Koneki - Lua Development Tools (open source - eclipse based)

WoW API Changes Summary

• http://www.wowpedia.org/API_change_summaries

Yet another FrameXML browser:
http://wow.go-hero.net/framexml/

This one has links to FrameXML function definitions in each place the function is called. It also has some other neat features detailed in the tour page:
http://wow.go-hero.net/framexml/about

Need some textures/artwork? No problem Blizzard got you covered.

Blizzard Press Kits
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company...presskits.html

.

JetBrains IntelliJ family Lua support
 

Any of the IntelliJ based editors (PyCharm, IntelliJ, etc) can use a Lua code plugin.

http://www.jetbrains.com/

Two updates to the list in the original post:

the BLP2PNG converter has been marked obsolete by its author. The author of that tool refers to the "BLPNG Converter" tool which can be found here: https://www.wowinterface.com/downloa...Converter.html

The web tool to turn lua scripts into downloadable addons, http://addon.ziuo.net/, no longer works. There's a similar tool that does the same (if it isn't actually the same tool) on http://addon.bool.no/.

New site Warcraft Wiki
 

Some of the information on wowpedia is no longer being maintained?

Warcraft Wiki is a fairly new site with some great information.
A couple links that I refer to a lot are: World of Warcraft API and API patch changes

Wiki.gg replaced WoWPedia (by the same people) due to "stuff". The old site will just get more stale over time but won't go away any time soon (due to more "stuff")