[copypasta from my WoW Forums post]
Okay, I've recently picked up addon programming by upgrading an old mod that was discontinued to work with the new 2.4 combat log. It has kinda gotten me hooked, and LUA isn't as difficult as I had previously thought since I already know how to program in VB.NET, so it's just a matter of learning the LUA syntax, WoW API etc.
However, one thing that has really kinda stumped me is making GUIs for addons. I have no idea where to start. I'm used to having an IDE such as Visual Studio autogenerate a form and its controls, and I've tried similar tools such as WoWUIDesigner/VB2008 WoW Addon Studio etc. but they've all been discontinued and/or are really buggy.
Do you guys (addon authors) write your GUIs in Notepad or something and manually type out all of the XML for frame appearance, control properties, etc.? Because that seems really REALLY tedious, and something I really don't want to deal with...
Basically my question is are there any easier ways to design addon GUIs than actually writing out the XML, other than WoWUIDesigner and Addon Studio for WoW, which are both really buggy/outdated? If not, do you have any tips for writing the XML out in Notepad/SciTE-WoW or whatever. It just seems like a
huge pain in the ass... reminds me of when I started learning programming with Liberty Basic, aligning controls and designing GUIs using code was terrible.
Thanks, I'll be sleeping now so I'll reply tomorrow.
