Warcraft AddonStudio
 

It's so awesome!

It uses Microsoft Visual Studio (free) and it makes creating addons easier than WoW UI Designer!

It even has options to create the addon to Ace. And a lot of easy options.

http://www.codeplex.com/WarcraftAddOnStudio

Download Instructions:
1. Install .zip at the "Releases" Tab.
2. Open folder, open setup.exe
2. A. if you don't have Visual Studios, it will install that, which will take 20min or so. then restart computer (go to step 2. B.)
2. B. after you installed Visual Studios, you open setup.exe again, and install the WoW Addon part of it
Note: If you have Visual Studios, opening setup.exe will just download the WoW Addon part.

Even though I am no fan of Visual Studio, I'm going to have to check this out. If a dev from MS is willing to make and support something like this, it has to be halfway decent at least. I'll post some thoughts after trying it.

Atleast I like it. But for Info I have done only 1 addon: that Hello World addon what was in the tutorial. :p I was thinking of starting to learn some lua and xml, so I can make my own mods, but I just dont know anything about them.
Could someone tell me where to start learning? :)

EDIT: + What programs I need in making mods?

wowwiki.com is a good site for code
LUa.org place for LUA
I learned xml from the xml for dummies book

as far as tools all you really need is a solid text editor, for windows I like notepad++ and mac I prefer smultron

A similar thread is on the WoW UI & Macros forum. People have tested it and found it's kind of buggy.

Read on: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...66286997&sid=1

I understand basic syntax and currently program in VB, ASP, PHP and the likes but have never tried lua. I currently use VS2005 and like it for the most part, will using this kill some of the learning curve? Are there examples or anything that come with it to mod for WoW?

Would you suggest learning basic lua before attempting to MOD WoW?

I personally prefer to do it by hand, but it's a nice tool nonetheless.

I know this thread is a bit old now but -
It's been in 1.0.1 for awhile, fixed some things
It's 2.0 Beta should be ready shortly

[I'm getting on board with 2.0 :D]

Um... I have a problem with version 2.0...everytime I start a new project, and go Basic Warcraft Addon, an error shows up... it says:

The control Microsoft.WowAddonStudio.FrameXml.Conponents.UiControl has thrown an unhandeled exception in the designer and has been disabled.

Exception:
Unable to load "DLL Squish.dll"


And it won't let me do anything.... I've tryed reinstalling and redownloading, but it just won't help. Anyone, please, knows how to fix this problem?

I used Addon Studio for making CritterTalk. It's very handy though I'd love a better support for adding folders to the projects. Some minor problems like that but overall it's very, very good.

I use AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft and it makes even writing lua code much easier because of the simple - but useful - syntax highlighting. However, it could be better in some areas, but it definitely gets the job done. I personally like how it groups everything in a project and auto-generates the TOC file as well.

A Heads-Up!
 

I'm not knocking Addon Studio at all, I used v1.0 a lot and am excited to see v2.0 progress, but recently I found another alternative.

While we wait for Addon Studio v2.0, Check out WOW UI Designer, it seems very stable & has some nice features more dedicated to WoW, like the actual project file is the Toc file, simple. handles custom frames nicely too. :)

For more check out its own forum here at WoWinterface.

I was aiming for the Visual Studio package because is much closer to C# from my point of view... but I should try this UI Designer also.

I just recently made my first mod (which I will upload next weekend) using the Microsoft Visual Studio. I found that it was great for the XML frame building. I was able to make my frame look exactly how I wanted quickly. After I got my frame together it bugged out on me. (I later figured out that it had put an offset on my main frame of like -1000,1000.

Other than that, it worked great. The coloring of the Lua was good, but I ended up testing the majority of my code in WowLua ingame.

As far as designing the XML frames, I am not sure with my limited knowledge of XML it would have been possible for me to complete my addon as fast as i did without the graphical interface.

(sorry for the wall of text)

cool it's a nice tool