Multiple chatframes, UI is cluttered

[JonBoy2001]

At the moment I've got three chat windows. Bottom left of my screen has Guild/Raid/Party, Bottom right has Trade/General/Notifcations, and I've got the third above the Guild one for a custom guild raiding channel for our healers. (Using WoWIM for whispers)

I'd like to consolidate them, and feel that the current Blizzard blinking notification isn't enough to catch my attention. I've got an addon for playing a different sound depending on the channel, which is cool, but sometimes I just don't notice it.

I'm trying to clean up my UI a bit and these three windows are the biggest eyesore, offsetting other addons and cluttering my screen or forcing me to make things smaller.

I'm open to suggestions and different ways of thinking about my chat frames. Ideally I'd like just one window, but be able to see the tabs blinking better. Maybe even switch tabs or include/exclude different channels depending on combat? Any addons around that do that?

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

Weak Auras can be configured to trigger off of chat events - that makes it possible to do have damn near anything you want in response to somebody sending you a message.

For simple things (play a noise when you get a message from person x,y,z or in channel a,b,c) to more complex things (make a firework burst in the middle of the screen and display the message if it's from your girlfriend), to the very advanced: display a list of all the messages you missed while in combat once a boss dies or during a bosses RP event when you can't attack anyway) you can have it do almost anything you'd like.

The limitation will be your ability to write the lua for the 'complex' things or your desire to fiddle with the UI to do the 'easy' things. The WA forum people are very knowledgable and might be able to whip up custom trigger/untrigger events for you if you explain exactly what you want and ask nicely.

[JonBoy2001]

I'm more interested in consolidating my chat frames in some intuitive way than using Weak Auras. (which I'm pretty proficient in and love )

I get what you're saying though, and that's not quite what I'm looking for.

I keep thinking about it, and the switching of chat tabs depending on combat is what I would like to do. *Goes off to wowprogramming.com*

[tordenflesk]

I just left General and Trade and installed npc-silencer and my chat window's nice and relevant again. You could just shovel those of to a separate tab if you for some odd reason feel the need to have them.

[JonBoy2001]

I'm thinking of having the healer chat available in the guild tab and raid/party tab, and a seperate tab for 'junk' then switching between the Guild tab out of combat, and the raid/party tab in combat, or in an instance, I dunno now, hrrrmmmmm.

That's a good idea Kilz. I like that train of thought.

[Deleted]

I have WIM showing guild, raid and party chat in addition to whispers. I need something to pop up whenever someone writes in chat, otherwise I would miss half of it. I have it pop up on top of my regular chat frame. so it doesn't take up additional screen space.

[The_Butcher]

I have WIM showing guild, raid and party chat in addition to whispers. I need something to pop up whenever someone writes in chat, otherwise I would miss half of it. I have it pop up on top of my regular chat frame. so it doesn't take up additional screen space.

How do you have WIM handling other chat frames besides whispers?

[Deleted]

You can enable them under the Chat tab in the settings.