Upcoming 1.8 Changes

[Cairenn]

As tracked by Iriel, here:

This thread will attempt to consolidate the UI changes for the 1.8 release of WoW in one place.


Updated 10 Oct 05

Saved Variables
* SavedVariables strings will no longer be truncated at 1020 characters.

UI Elements
* You can resize the WorldFrame to be smaller than the whole screen and the game will render into the appropriate area (i.e. we get viewport support!)
* A simpler form of SetPoint is now valid - Frame:SetPoint("POINT", xOfs, yOfs) - which uses the frame's parent and the same relative point.
* NEW Frame:HasScript("HandlerName") - returns true if the specified handler is valid for the frame.

Events
* New event PLAYER_LOGIN - Triggered immediately before PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD on login and UI Reload, not NOT when entering/leaving instances.
* New event PLAYER_LOGOUT - sent when the player logs out or the UI is reloaded, after PLAYER_LEAVING_WORLD, but before variables are saved.

Bug Fixes/Behavior Enhancements
* UI resizing will be completed before PLAYER_ENTERING_WORLD fires, rather than immediately after.
* The UI element metatable __index method no longer crashes with a nil key [not that you should ever have been passing one in, Tem 8-)]
* SimpleHTML has various bug fixes involving adjacent HTML tags, and non-HTML |H links will work again.
* ALT-TAB out of game and back again will no longer reset UI scale.
* The FCF_OnUpdate memory leak issue (blinking non-active chat tabs) is fixed.
* ReloadUI() should no longer cause client crashes occasionally (especially in high population areas).
* (MAYBE) Setting the world frame or minimap to "TOOLTIP" strata should not crash the client.
* (MAYBE) Relocating an EditBox without an explicit width should not crash the client.
* Setting negative (zero?) font heights will result in a LUA error instead of a client crash.
* The raid dots shown on the world map will once again have the correct names associated with them.
* ## DefaultState: disabled will work again.
* Frames will pick up the correct (current, not XML defined) initial size when starting manual resizing.
* Crash to deskop when loading on-demand addon with non-demand dependency fixed (After 2005-10-05)

Addons
* You'll be able to include references to FrameXML files in your .toc file (e.g. ..\..\FrameXML\Fonts.xml) to get default virtual frames during on-demand loading. (Note non-virtual frames do attempt to re-create themselves -- Several important FrameXML virtual frames have been moved to their own files to make this less painful)
* New TOC field ## SavedVariablesPerCharacter: - Sytax same as ## SavedVariables:, data goes into WTF\Account\<ACCOUNTNAME>\<Character>\SavedVariables\<Addon>.lua - An addon can have both types of saved variable.
* Non Load-on-demand addons will not be loadable with LoadAddOn() with reason "NOT_DEMAND_LOADED".
* New IsAddonLoadOnDemand("name" or index)
* The game will create the Interface\AddOns folder if it doesn't already exist.


FrameXML Element Names
* FrameXML/BonusActionBarFrame.xml - Second texture element will have a name (Probably name="BonusActionBarTexture1")

Load-On-Demand UI Components
* The following UI components will be supplied as load-on-demand blizzard UI addons: Blizzard_AuctionUI, Blizzard_BattlefieldMinimap, Blizzard_BindingUI, Blizzard_CraftUI, Blizzard_InspectUI, Blizzard_MacroUI, Blizzard_RaidUI, Blizzard_TalentUI, Blizzard_TradeSkillUI, Blizzard_TrainerUI.
* These blizzard UI components will not appear in the addon list (The addon API functions can query them by name but not by index, they are not included in the addon count)
* The UI will seamlessly load these on-demand when needed via the following functions, which can be replaced or hooked if you wish to replace those components with your own: AuctionFrame_LoadUI, BattlefieldMinimap_LoadUI, ... etc.
* The following UI templates have been broken into their own files for On-demand loading use: AuctionButtonTemplate.xml, CharacterFrameTemplates.xml, ClassTrainerFrameTemplates.xml, HonorFrameTemplates.xml, PartyFrameTemplates.xml, QuestFrameTemplates.xml, WorldMapFrameTemplates.xml

LUA Core Functions
* Provided access to rawequal, rawset, rawget

[Cairenn]

Updated 10 Oct 05