Some of you may remember me gushing over MazzleUI back in the day, when it first came out of private beta. In short, it's an extremely coherent and well-designed UI compilation, that aims to be lightweight and efficient while still being complete and feature-filled. However, its long-suffering author, Mazzlefizz, quit WoW at a certain point, and MazzleUI started to become plagued with incompatibilities as WoW went through its normal patching process. No more! Docevl has come and rescued this lovely UI from the dust, and it's now all patched-up and ready for 2.4.2. I just installed it myself and it worked pretty faultlessly.

Of course, I did have to bring over a few AddOns from my previous UI (13 of them, in fact), since Mazz isn't meant to be all things to all people, and I have several that I've gotten very used too that aren't included (like MetaHud and TBag). And there are a few things you'll probably want to change from the default configuration:

• Set the text size to Large or Mr Magoo, unless you keep a magnifying glass by your monitor (or it has fewer pixels per inch than mine).
• Be sure and prevent it from yelling garbage about "mazzlegasms" (seriously) by setting the appropriate menu to "Bite your lip and keep it in" at the end of configuration. Those around you will thank you.

I actually ended up going back to my cobbled-together UI after not too long with Mazz, because I prefer something that uses minimal screen space and I don't need all the machinery that Mazz brings. I've also gotten very used to my setup. But if you want an all-in-one package, this is one of the best ones out there.

Each week Matthew Porter contributes The Creamy GUI Center, a column aimed at helping you enhance your WoW experience by offering an in depth guide to addons, macros and other tools we use to play WoW, along with commentary on issues that affect how we all play.

Welcome readers! Right off the bat let me thank you all for putting up with my sick on the 4^th post, and for the well wishing. I really appreciate the kind words. Luckily this week I'm feeling much better, and even got to see the new Harry Potter movie. (Spoiler Alert, unlike last week's Nyquil induced hallucination, John McLane was nowhere to be found.) Anyways onward and upwards as we explore part 3 of my 4 part series on addon compilations with Mazzle UI. To paraphrase Optimus Prime, "a user friendly interface is the right of all sentient beings." Is Mazzle's unique blend of functionality and eye candy more than meets the eye? Let's find out!

This week, Krool (of the guild Heartless, on Daggerspine US)shows off his pre-TBC UI, so think of this as one of those flashbacks you may see in LOST or Jericho or whatever show is doing flashbacks this week. I remember using Charcoal's unit frames and fonts way back, but could never develop an appreciation for, or understanding of, Discord Unit Frames. I'm really digging the borders around the UI elements, separating them from the rest of the screen. Is there any way to do something like this without Discord?

Anyway, I digress, and here's Krool to tell you about his UI:

Here's a screenshot of my UI. Unfortunately Charcoal isn't working any more and I'm so sad. It was my favorite bar auto-configurator of all time. As far as basic action bar, player and target bar geometry flexibility, Charcoal pwned everyting else I've ever seen. Crash said he's working on it, but it's going to take some time. But having said that, the screenshot enclosed is my UI the way I like it best of all at any time since the original beta when I started playing.

This is a big one, and one I've been waiting for for quite some time (about six months, I'd say). I don't usually bother even looking into compilations of mods, since I've found I can always put together a more satisfying solution myself, but MazzleUI may well prove to be the exception. Here's how Mazzlefizz, the author, describes it:

• MazzleUI is a comprehensive, customized user interface for the World of Warcraft that attempts to be clean, symmetrical, provides lots of information, use minimal space and be highly efficient.

Sounds great, right? However, for most of MazzleUI's life, it's been in closed beta. MazzleUI 1.0 was just released today -- I saw the news when I woke up, and haven't done anything but install and play with it since. I'm just taking a break to tell you all about it, and then I'm sure I'll be diving right back in