I'm just not a fan of Blizzard's default action bars in the WoW Interface. I find them to consume far too much screen space, and I never could get used to scrolling between bars for different tasks. As a result, I've been trying different action bar replacements since I learned that the UI was customizable. After going through CT and Discord, I happened across Bongos.Bongos positions itself as a simple and quick action bar replacement, and in this mission it succeeds with flying colors. Upon installation, the entire default action bar area is replaced with a small stack of 10 action bars, a pet bar, a class bar, your bags, the main menu, and a few other bongo elements, depending on your choice of installed pieces.
Typing /bongos brings up the configuration screen. From there, it's a simple matter of turning on and off what you want to have on your screen, setting the size and transparency, and moving the bars to where you want them.
By default, bar 1 will change with your stance (rogues and warriors, I'm looking at you), and the easiest way to load up your skills is just to shift stances, and then drag and drop the skills you want to use in that stance into the action bar. This allows for a very clean interface with a minimal number of buttons, if you're into that sort
of thing.
You can also choose to hide the menu and your bags, really allowing for some leverage in cleaning up your UI. Take a look at this screenshot, the bongos bars are in the bottom right corner, freeing up a lot of space for other mods and UI elements.
I've noticed something quirky in my usage of Bongos, and this may or may not apply to you depending on your play style. I'm a big fan of putting my main actions as 1 to 6, shift-1 to shift-6, and ctrl-1 to ctrl-6. This way I can have 18 different actions or macros attached to keys within easy reach. To do this, I set my Key Bindings for the secondary action bars (Blizzard's left and right bars above the main action bar). I expected Bongos to set 1-6 on bar 1, shifted numbers on bar 2, and controlled numbers on bar 3. It doesn't. Bar 1 is alright, but shifted numbers went to bongo bar 6, while controlled numbers are on bongo bar 5. A little weird, but I just turned off visibility for bongo bars 2-4, and moved bars 5 and 6 around, so that my bottom bar is 1, middle is 6, top is 5. Again, your mileage may vary, and you can actually set key bindings for each of the bongo bars separately through the Key Bindings interface.
You can avoid this little headache by using Bongos' "Bindings" option from the Bongos config menu. All you have to do then is mouseover any button and press the key you want to assign to that button. This is a fantastic new feature that only lets me add accolades to this great AddOn. (Big thanks to Elizabeth Harper for pointing this out to me!)
So, while there are some quirks, I've found Bongos to be incredibly easy to use compared to something like Discord Action Bars, though not as infinitely customizable. If you're looking for a clean, low-memory replacement for the default action bars, you can do no better than Bongos.
Post your experiences with and questions about Bongos below and I'll do what I can to help you along.
Download from: http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/2003/bongos/
Current Version: 6.12.13
Category: Action Bar Replacement
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-14-2006 @ 4:11PM
Ahko said...
This add-on rocks!! I host it for my clan on Thrall on our clan website. Im very impressed with it and I also highly recommend it to everyone.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:20PM
Mat said...
Sounds interesting. Does it work in 2.01?
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12-14-2006 @ 4:21PM
Gist said...
8.4 FPS... ouch. And you're only on the giants. Think of the hell which is Razorgore's FPS...
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12-14-2006 @ 4:26PM
Flit said...
Wow, I really like those different health/mana bars for yourself and your group. Is that part of bongos, or is that a separate addon? (i'd rather see class than what my friends look like.)
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12-14-2006 @ 4:29PM
Ehrgeiz said...
"Sounds interesting. Does it work in 2.01?"
Yes it does and it works well!
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12-14-2006 @ 4:29PM
Paul Sherrard said...
@Mat: You bet, the newest Bongos works great on 2.0.1
@Gist: That was on my Mac, which has sucky FPS when raiding. It's a bit better now in 2.0.1 :)
@Flit: Those are PERL bars, which I'll be covering early next week, so come back then :)
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12-14-2006 @ 4:34PM
Mat said...
Awesome. I'll give it a try tonight!
Thanks!
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12-14-2006 @ 4:40PM
Amandrel said...
I
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12-14-2006 @ 4:48PM
Sideshow said...
The only thing I don't like is the bland XP bar. I enjoyed Discord's (I think it was their's) XP bar, because it let me know how much I had, needed, and how much I had in rested, etc. But, other than that, it's working really well for me.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:48PM
Deam said...
Sorry but bongos has way to many, and clutters just a bit more than I'd like.. also if you change a button, it likely changes another button somewhere else as well like they are connected. I prefer Bartender3 ..believe it's ace.. and Fubar + any fu plugins.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:50PM
Amandrel said...
(sorry, don't know what happened to my comment @8...)
I *love* Bongos.
I discovered it post-patch, when FlexBar and CTBarMod bit the dust. I remapped my key-bindings the other night, using ESDF and the surrounding keys, and I've got the buttons laid out on the screen just like the keyboard to help me learn the mappings.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:52PM
Paul said...
I used bongos, but I recently switched to Trinity Bars and have found them much more customizable. You might want to give them a try over Bongos.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:53PM
Wasyl said...
@Paul: Have you tried X-Perl instead of regular Perl? X-Perl is ridiculously awesome.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:55PM
Freehugz said...
bongos was giving me all sorts of problems on my druid so i just went back to default for the first time since i started wow, and i realized that i didn't really need any bar plugins.
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12-14-2006 @ 4:57PM
ChrisM said...
You forgot to mention that you can modify a bar by reducing the number of buttons it has horizontally all the way to be a single colum. This is very usefule for scooting things to the sides of the screen. Another function you can do to the bars is limit how many buttons there are per bar. I used 2 of my bars to make single buttons and scaled them to a large size. This helps a great deal with opportunity type spells if they aren't bound to a key or for those potions/mana gems that are used in the heat of battle.
I have 3 large buttons on my screen that I use for PVP as a mage. 1 is a large mana gem button for when I'm in the heat of battle. The other two are for my mount and slow fall. In arathi basin I can click slowfall and thing my mount very quickly and fly from lumber mill to blacksmith. Or you can dismount and click slowfall instantly for that last second divebomb.
I have had a bug show up where one of my tool bars shifts a bit to one side. When that happens I just load my previously saved profile for the easy fix. Just remember to save the profile after you have made any significant changes so you can always easily load it.
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12-14-2006 @ 5:09PM
Sava said...
I love Bongos. I used to use Discord, but since it's nowhere to be seen, I decided to use Bongos. I love how easy it is to set keybinds.
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12-14-2006 @ 5:39PM
Apocolipto said...
Logitech G15 with macros.. need i say more
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12-14-2006 @ 7:18PM
Rafite said...
I settled with Trinity Bars untill Discord is back up on it's feet.
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12-14-2006 @ 9:35PM
Void said...
You will never find a better bar mod for 2.0
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12-15-2006 @ 9:34AM
Jorane said...
I was a firm believer that nothing could be better than Discord, but Bongos comes awfully close. I really like the ease with which you can move bars around, but I especially like the simplicity of key binding. It can't get any easier than hovering the mouse cursor over the button and pressing the desired key to be bound.
Like Wasyl said, if you combine Bongos with the X-Perl frames, you'll have a very sharp, attractive, easy-to-use, and simple-to-customize HUD. I couldn't be happier with Bongos, and honestly, I doubt that I'll go back to Discord, just because I've got everything I need now.
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