Can We Talk ?

Okay, so there's not much to talk about when it comes to your chat box. Some people's chat looks the same as it did the day they logged in. Others, well, let's just say, it looks like they're playing a text based game.

For me the chat box does it's job well, so I prefer to use an addOn that's more ball peen than sledge.

Enter Low Memory Chat . At a stunning 2k, it gets all the basics done, hide chat buttons, scroll with mouse wheel, abbreviated channel names, sticky chat, working arrows, edit box on top, timestamps, and a few more minor changes. Down side, no options. You can remove a few of the pieces from the addOn folder if you don't like them since they are in there as modules, but not much more than that. My only complaint is that it didn't play nice with a few other common chat mods, but if this is the only change you make it'll work great.

If you need something a bit more... robust: Prat . Prat is an ace based, module oriented chat mod, so you can pile it on or pare it down. It does just about anything I could think of for chat, but it really is nice to be able to whittle it down to just the parts you like and not pay the memory cost to have all the stuff you don't want. Chat sounds is my favorite in this addOn, never miss a whisper in the flood of trade spam again!

Trinity Chat moves into a more complex realm, but is still pretty simple to configure. It offers cool ideas like acronym filtering (want SV to show up as steam vaults ?), an english filter ( want no wai to show up as no way ?), and private channel creation. It will also save channels you've created, with their password, between sessions. It also allows for linking in private channels if the other person has the addOn running as well. It does all the other basics and more, so raid & guild leaders may want to check this out!

If you like chat management without the other stuff Cirk's Chat Manager will get the job done. Cirk's allows for creating and managing private chat channels. You can also rearrange the numbering for any channel. If you join/leave channels a lot you know what this means, no more trying to find the healer channel every time you join a raid. You can also easily see a list of every person currently joined to a particular channel. A healer avoiding the channel ? Someone in a channel they shouldn't be ? All easy to find. It still does the basics as well so no need to add in anything else usually.

Chat is one of the few addOns that I don't think there can be a winner since everyone needs something different. If you like the ability to click the word invite in a whisper to add someone to your group, to have key words highlighted in chat or shown on the middle of your screen, or even move you edit box totally away from chat itself, these are all doable. Give a few of these a try and see what fits best for you !

AddOns tested:
Chat Frame Extender 2 (80k)
ChatMod (140k)
Cirk's Chat Manager (263k)
Custom Chat (58k)
IDChat (75k)
Low Memory Chat (2k)
Phanx Chat (519k)
Prat (2.92m) (with default modules running)
Trinity Chat (344k)