Fitzcairn's Macro Explain-o-maticBETA

Updates Coming Soon!

After a long time away, I've come back to play WoW actively again.  And of course, that means needing to write macros again as well!

The site has entirely decayed due to back-compat breaking updates to Google App Engine, Google Apps--even Blogger (thanks, Google), but I am in the progress of updating everything to work again.

Unfortunately, all of the saved macros folks have made throughout the past 5 years of operation are--as far as I know--irretrievable.  I will work on attempting to restore this, but in the meantime am focused mostly on getting things functional.

What I hope to get done over the coming weeks (in priority order):

1. Site back up at http://macroexplain.com.  A bonus would be restoring saved macros.

2. All macro parsing logic, spell data, etc updated to the current version of WoW.

3. A complete facelift to the site.  This thing has kind of looked like crap for a long time, and the code powering it is... well, let's call it "creative" and leave it at that.  In my defense, IE6 was a thing back when I wrote this, and Bootstrap/jQuery didn't really exist... so, time to use the latest hotness!

4. Rewrite of backend functionality to scale better.  I've actually released the current code powering this site (cringe) to my github, and will be updating that as I go.

So, stay tuned--and my apologies for the lack of updates for so long!

~Fitz

Updated for 4.0.6 + more

I've made some major and long-awaited updates. Most of them are under the hood, but several will be visible on the site.


Notable changes:

- Changed my underlying data model, and refreshed all WoW spell/item data. Since becoming an addon author I've stopped grabbing this from other sites; there are much cleaner/easier ways to get it. All spell/item hovers from wowhead should now be working again.

- Updated the armory link for macro authors to work correctly, which will be reflected on all view pages.

- The interpreter now handles Druid (form) format when entering spells--i.e. "Mangle (Bear Form)" will now be dealt with correctly. Thanks to Jesterx for pointing this out.

- Updated how character inventory ids are handled to be much cleaner and (more) correct. You should no longer get occasional weird error messaging when interpreting /equipslot macros.


Known issues:

- Not always accurate when interpreting spells that are self-buff only vs. castable on other characters (and thus subject to @target modifiers). Still working on this.

- It turns out that /use can be substituted for /cast for most spells. Not sure if this as a recent change or not. Why have the /cast command in the first place, then? Right now, if you try and /use a spell, the interpreter will gently remind to you to use /cast. As this doesn't always reflect in-game behavior, I will make a change in the near future to allow /use and /cast interchangeably where appropriate.

- [Update: fixed!] problems with empty parameters in /castsequence commands (i.e. "/castsequence Spell,,,Spell").

I'm sure there will be some rough edges as users find things I've missed. I'll be watching the error logs closely the next few days, but if you find a problem and have time, please reply to this post. All bugs/comments/questions are appreciated.

Thanks!
Fitz

Coming Updates

Hey folks -

I've been working hard on a couple of other projects (KeybindTrainer, KeybindViewer, and the KeybindTrainer Website). I've noticed this site is in dire need of a data refresh and a few other upgrades.

My next set of "todos":

- Update all spell/item data so the hover tooltips function again.
- Update the macro grammar to reflect changes up through 4.0.6
- A few small bugfixes I've seen in the logs.

Thanks for the comments, and glad this tool has been useful to so many people!
Fitz

Updated for 4.0.1

Hey all, been working through issues 4.0.1 has caused for my addons. However, those are mostly sorted, and this project will resume active development soon. Need to get it out of beta before Cataclysm.

In the meantime, I've updated the engine for 4.0.1--did not see many macro changes in this patch. Please let me know if something is broken/etc.

Thanks!
Fitz

Development Still Ongoing!

Just a small post to say that I've not stopped all work on this project--travel and a few other things have slightly interrupted the pace of releases.

Things appear to be pretty stable for now--logs look good. I've got a few things in the works I plan to release before Cataclysm hits. :)

Fitz

UI Code Revamp, RESTful Macro Interpretations

I just pushed a major update tonight. Among the notables:

- You can now query any saved macro explanation and get back a JSON or XML response. See the Tools section for exactly how to do this.

- Complete revamp of the UI scripting. Amazing what a little knowledge can do for code efficiency. I've gone from hating to grudging respect for Javascript.

- Many, many bugfixes.

I'm working on several other updates and new features, including a complete UI revamp (the HTML this time!). Please comment on this post with any bugs you encounter. Thanks!

Fitz

New! Explain-o-matic tooltips for Your Site!

Finally pushed one of the major new features I've been working on today: macro tooltips!

These work just like wowhead, mmochampion, or any of the other major WoW fansites--include my javascript library, and all links to saved macros magically gain mouseover tooltip goodness.

The look of the tooltip may change as I tweak the site; however, anyone who includes my script will get any/all changes, bugfixes, and new functionality for free.

Also in this update are fixes for a few longstanding UI bugs, such as handling for long macro commands.

Try it out, and please let me know what you think!
Fitz