This is a guest post on Fubar by Avatar
Many people are familiar with the addon Fubar, If not what it does is it creates an informational panel at the top, bottom or both areas of your gaming area. It is here that you can provide quick links to other add-ons. So Fubar seems like the Windows taskbar, but what can you plug in to it? What is essential?
Now there are a ton of plugins for Fubar, I will cover a few essentials that have served me well over the years and have made my gaming life much easier.
MoneyFu will show your character’s total cash on hand on the Fubar panel. By hovering over it you will get a detailed breakdown of money gained and spent during a given session, today, yesterday, a week’s time. Also you can see your total gold across all characters. Also by right clicking on the gold details on Fubar you get some additional options like resetting the current session, or changing how it’s displayed on Fubar. Resetting the session is especially useful if you have just done a bunch of dailies for example but want to track repair costs from raids vs. how much money you earn from killing bosses. For those trying to figure out where their money is, or where it’s going this quick easy to use plugin to fubar can prove invaluable.
FactionsFu is exactly what it sounds like, it places an icon on your Fubar panel, and when hovered over it shows your current standings with different factions. One of the best features not seen on the screenshot below is when you are trying to level a faction; you will see your gain to the right of the percentage. Once again there is functionality built into the plugin to where when you right click on the icon you can change how things are displayed to you, and customize to your taste.
PerformanceFu is a nice little plugin that shows you everything from your framerate, latency to addon memory useage. By hovering over the information you get a detailed breakdown of your FPS increase, what your latency is at, how much your addon memory is increasing or decreasing. This gives you a quick overview as you play to see how your addon memory is being managed but also providing the oh so critical FPS and Latency numbers at your fingertips to help diagnose problems and let you make on the fly decisions on whether you can afford to enable Projected Textures or not. This also shows your top 3 addons for total memory usage.
DurabilityFu will display your current average state of gear. You can also customize it in the options to show all items and their individual health and the approximate cost of repair for each, which will also total it up. Think of it as a check for the meal. You see what you are going to pay before those nasty vendors swipe your WoW –Visa to take your hard earned gold. This is nice to help you guage when you do need to repair, or if you just need to swap in another piece of gear to not hold up the group. This plugin puts just a bit more information regarding your gear’s durability at your fingertips.
NameTogglefu allows you quick access to the Names menu under Interface. By hovering over the icon that is installed onto Fubar, you can turn on and off different tags like your own name. When is this useful, well not often I will tell you that, but for pictures where you want your name showing, or want to see someone’s title for only a few and easily turn it off. It may not be “essential” as the title of the article says, but I find I use it more often than not especially for guild kill shots on raid bosses, so I can turn off the clutter of guild names and get my own name showing. A must have if you are a raid leader and taking team shots for a webpage or just your personal collection.
These 2 addons are very similar, and all they do is put some icons up on your Fubar panel. They will display a count of total friends online and same with guild members online vs. total count of guild members. When you hover over either of these you get a quick detailed breakdown of who is online, where they are, level, zone, etc. I have found this invaluable as I hate pulling up extra menus if I do not have to, and here you can just hover over these icons and get a quick glimpse as to who is online without bringing up the social menu.
Conclusion
These are some of the Fubar Plugins I have personally found to be essential to improve my WoW experience. There are a ton of Fubar Plugins out there and I urge you to explore some of the the extensive library of addons that work within the Fubar panel, as there are items like TopScore, Professions, Skills, and much much more.
Here is a quick search from Curse.com revealing over 100 addons related to Fubar:
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
Another alternative to the last plugin presented is AuldLangSyne and its plugin, AuldLangSyneFu. It provides the same functionality in a more compact display, plus allows you to view guild notes (and notes about friends, set with ALS) in the mouseover display.
It’s still up to personal preference, though. :)
Stop´s last blog ..Thermaltake’s Level 10 Chassis
What is this, 2008? Fubar is obsolete, almost nobody develops for it or even supports it anymore (including its developer ckknight), and you should not use it.
Use databroker plugins and a databroker display like Ninjabar, Chocolatebar, Dockingstation, etc, instead.
There’s even a handy way to export yourself out of the obsolete Fubar framework.
http://www.wowace.com/addons/fubar2broker/
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I’m surprised you left out GroupFu. Quick access to all group manipulation such as instance difficulty and loot modes, plus it has a very handy /roll tracker that I use pretty much every night.
And yes, while Fubar may be a little out of date with its lack of Broker support, just adding Broker2Fubar brings it back up to speed.
What Rodalpho said.
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Thanks for the feedback, yes Fubar may be a little “out of date”, and ignore that it was updated in August, and hasn’t needed much of an update because one of the things I have enjoyed about it from my long stint with only wowace addons was that it almost never broke or had issues.
So yes there are many other bar addons, but call me nostalgic I still enjoy my Fubar.
Avatar´s last blog ..Lucky Charms: Its Magically Delicious…
It’s great that you enjoy fubar. I used it for years myself. But you’re telling people to use it, and that’s bad advice, because it’s a dead project.
I used Fubar for about a year including half the stuff in this post, but I have to agree with Rodalpho. The last few patches Fubar has been doing stranger and stranger things and a few addons for it have stopped working. So I switched to a databroker (Fortress) and I’ve never looked back.
Gobble gobble.
BobTurkey´s last blog ..The perfect gearing tool!
“Many people are familiar with the addon Fubar, If not what it does is it creates an informational panel at the top, bottom or both areas of your gaming area. It is here that you can provide quick links to other add-ons.”
So reading these comments I quickly forgot that this article was NOT about fubar… A very big mistake on my part, and seems that others have made the same mistake. I went up and looked over the article again and the part I quoted popped out at me. This article is not about Fubar..it is about PLUGINS!
That being said, I have to say this article was very informative . The breakdown of these different plugins was great! Simple and to the point so even the most basic gamer can understand.
As far as Fubar being out of date… just because there are new things out there does not mean the old should be thrown out! Obviously if people are still downloading it and using it means the author of it must have done something right. Like the old saying goes “If it isn’t broke then don’t fix it” !!
The problem isn’t that Fubar is not being updated — addons often can work long-term without constant patching. The problem is that the addon is not always functioning as intended (i.e. broken) for many players, making an article on its utility somewhat questionable.
Fubar plugins, however, are still functional with other data brokers, provided that you get an additional plugin. Perhaps prefacing the article with the advantages of data brokers and how to get these particular plugins to work with ANY data broker program would have alleviated comments of this type.
Windsoar´s last blog ..The Impact of Badges
Old fubar plugins will indeed work in databroker using the fubar2broker addon, but most have been rewritten to work with databroker, and you’re better off using addons with native databroker displays whenever possible as again, even its developer will tell you that fubar is dead as a doornail. Go ask this question on the wowace.com forums and see what they tell you.
Yeah, I agree with many of the other commenters. This is simply the worst time to be introducing players to FuBar. Addon developers like myself are trying desperately to ween our users away from it, and general support for it is falling by the wayside.
Instead of this article, it would have been better to have a really user-friendly guide to LibDataBroker. Explain that there is a generic framework for replacing FuBar, and that players are free to use whichever “display” addon they like best, et cetera.
I’d love to help with an article about LDB ^^
Indeed, an article about LDB, its displays and maybe the transition to it for former Fubar-users would be really great.
I appreciate the feedback guys, as this is my first article here. And my intent was not to focus on Fubar, and I see how I can fix that for next time. My intent was to focus on the plugins.
I will definitely be looking at LDB and the other suggestions made.
Avatar´s last blog ..Unholy Death Knights: From the Lich to a Niche
I still use Fubar as well. None of the other bar addons (ninjabar, fortress, ETC) have the ease of use and simple customization that Fubar has. Even Titan Panel lacks the simple drag an place feature of Fubar.
Show me an add-on that is broker based and makes a top and bottom bar, with the ability to easily move the plug-ins and I shall use. I don;t have the energy to wrangle 35 little boxes around hat all have thier own settings, or messing with bars that do not allow me to re-order the plug-ins easily.
Chocolatebar is my LDB display plugin of choice. It lets you drag and drop displays around.
Tekkub is libdatabroker’s developer, alongside dozens of other tiny yet awesome addons. If he offers to write a post you should take him up on it.
I used Titan Panel when I started playing wow back in vanilla, then I moved onto Fubar and those two type of addons are almost a core part of the wow gameplay experience to me…
Until a week ago. I finally have rid myself of Fubar after weeks of broken tools and the fact that most Ace addons have their own gui nowadays, theres no need for the Fubar gui. Since then, my memory usage has dropped by 20-30+ and I have not lost one bit of functionality. Of course I had to replace it and SLDataText has replaced the main functions of Fubar (information, stats, etc.). I highly recommend it if you are tired of Fubar.
fubar? certainly you mean Fortress…. what is this ‘fubar’ you speak of… i think the history texts mention something of that nature….
;)
[...] What are they thinking over at No Stock UI. I just don’t get it. The last post was on Fubar plugins…. seriously? A quick scroll down the comments was pretty much a wash as people stood on the [...]
Another “Rodalpho for president” vote here. Why would this site (of all places!!) even be discussing a mod that was outdated a year ago? If your article were really nostalgic, as you said, and was about “the good old mods,” that would have been very different than this! Recommend stealth-deleting this article, we wont tell :)
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@tekkub I’d love to see a guest post from you on any of your addons!
FuBar is depreciated. Even it’s creator has switched over to LDB.
That said I kept FuBar around a lot longer than I really wanted to beause there were plugins I really liked. I was able to finally transition away from FuBar a few weeks ago and gained approx 10 FPS; not an insignificant increase.
I just wanted to comment again because I think I was a bit harsh before.
/hug!
The article is well written and I like the selection of plugins you have showcased. As mentioned the topic is a little dated, but that’s not the author’s fault. I can’t wait to see where they shine the spotlight next. :)
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I’d love an article about LDB, as I find it confusing. I currently use Fubar, including most of the plugins above, but I’m not even sure what the ‘main’ addon to download is for LDB.
I still haven’t transitioned to LDB, because the last time I tried it (around patch 3.1 release) they didn’t have equivalents for some of my favorite plug ins. I check Tek’s github page and Curse’s LDB page about once a month to see how it’s coming along. I have been considering trying the FuBar converter, but I haven’t heard much from people using it, so I’ve held off. I’m not what you’d call a first adopter, heh.
My list of must-have fubar plug-ins includes:
guildfu
friendsfu
babelfu
moneyfu
garbagefu
questsfu (poor thing has been dying a slow death)
volumefu
kungfu
experiencefu
heyfu
factionsfu
and
durabilityfu
I also use a plugin for VuhDo and one for Omen. The rest stay in a button bag.
@ Abedabun
There are several “main” addons for LBD’s to plug into, but Chocolate Bar might be a good choice since it is a bar setup very similar to fubar.
@Arduanne
You might try checking out WoWInterface LBD section — they currently list about 215 different plug-ins, including Statblock Quests which I used for awhile.
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Thanks Windsoar – I’ll check that out this weekend :)
Windsoar, do you have any recommendations as a replacement for Kungfu (http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info4868-FuBar-KungFu.html)? I’m still not finding anything in a broker plug-in that works like this.
I found replacements for most of the others, although some of them I have to use multiple broker plugins to get the same functionality.
I’m going to have to play around with displays to get what I want also. Carousel, Fortress, and Bazooka look promising right now.
Oh, and I switched to Smooth Quests when 3.2 hit and Questsfu was acting up again. It’s not as feature rich, but it gives me the must haves (quest levels, sounds for quest progress and completion, and output to MSBT).
@ Arduanne again :)
I haven’t tried this one so I cannot comment on its usability or display, but it looks like the same functionality
BasicBroker Skills
(http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11818-BasicBrokerSkills.html)
I have tried Ara Broker Tradeskills and found it very useful when I had a c/d profession
(http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info12108-Ara_Broker_Tradeskills.html)
It definitely IS a change when you change any addon, no matter whether its a “replacement” or not, but from what I understand, addon developers greatly prefer writing for LBD modules because the end-user can select the display that works best for them, and the author doesn’t have to re-compose their addon for every display choice.
I did have some suggestions, but the moderation board ate them. I went ahead and just made a post for you — see the clickie.
Windsoar´s last blog ..Replacement for Kungfu (Fubar)