Describe the feature

Hi everyone,

AdiBags has had an amazing 15 year run or so as the best darn bag addon for WoW. However, over those 15 years, past design decisions fundamental to the operation of the addon have made it increasingly difficult to support new features and fix the constant slew of bugs that have risen over the years.

With that, we are announcing the soon-to-be deprecation of AdiBags, with an eventual sunset in Q1 2024 as we focus our efforts on the next evolution of AdiBags: BetterBags!

BetterBags is a complete replacement for AdiBags, and is still a work in progress. BetterBags is available today in alpha state in the github repo, github.com/Cidan/BetterBags. The codebase for BetterBags is 100% original and a total rewrite of the AdiBags concept, with newer software engineering principles applied, making the addon much more stable and easier to extend in most places.

That being said, BetterBags does not yet have all the features of AdiBags, and it is a work in progress. AdiBags will see continued simple maintenance until BetterBags is up to speed, but no new feature requests or bugs will be fixed unless they are game breaking, i.e. a new patch breaks the addon. After BetterBags has most of the useful features of AdiBags, AdiBags will release a version that disables the bag and directs people to install BetterBags.

I encourage everyone to give BetterBags a shot today, as it's already fully usable as an AdiBags replacement and is significantly less buggy overall. Over the next few weeks, we'll put out major updates that will bring a majority of AdiBags features to BetterBags.

Thank you everyone, and here's to a better bag future!

EDIT: This message is now 4 months old, and BetterBags has implemented a vast majority of the features in AdiBags. BetterBags should be a suitable replacement for most use cases, however work continues on more features.

Describe the implementation

:)

I will be adding an import feature, as it's clear this is a critical feature for many folks. Stay tuned.

I have created a ton of manual sort categories in AdiBags over the last several years... is there an easy way to convert it to BetterBags or do I have to manually have to reconstruct it?

As a long time user of AdiBags it's sad to see the name go away even if you are replacing with a complete rewrite, I look forward to trying out Better Bags <3

Can't wait for the import feature so that I can switch to BetterBags :-)

Deprecating AdiBags is a bad move since BetterBags doesn't yet have feature parity with AdiBags and is missing quite a lot of functionality that AdiBags already has.

Deprecating AdiBags is a bad move since BetterBags doesn't yet have feature parity with AdiBags and is missing quite a lot of functionality that AdiBags already has.

Please re-read the announcement -- deprecation does not be shut down. AdiBags will continue to work until BetterBags is complete.

Adibags has completely stopped working now. Was working earlier today but now is not working at all showing the separate bags and the addon had not been disabled. I use a lot of the sorting modules from Adibags and if we have to switch to Betterbags then make the Adibags modules compatible with Betterbags until you have a similar module for Betterbags. I had to revert to the Adibags version Adibags-v1.10.24.zip from the Adibags version Adibags-v1.10.24-nolib.zip dated the same release date of 2/18/24 as the one I reverted to. The core has a lot of errors popping up and crashing the addon. Cannot access in game settings for the addon too.

Howdy, AdiBagman! Have you had a change to make the import feature from AdiBags to better bags?

@Michael-Cooney See the issue here: Cidan/BetterBags#122

Thanks! I take it that this is still yet to come?

Howdy, AdiBagman! Have you had a change to make the import feature from AdiBags to better bags?

Howdy, AdiBagman! Have you had a change to make the import feature from AdiBags to better bags?

@Michael-Cooney See the issue here: Cidan/BetterBags#122

Would it be possible to not 'disable' adibags but just stop providing updates for when all features are transferred over to betterbags? The 'disable' part of this sentence: "After BetterBags has most of the useful features of AdiBags, AdiBags will release a version that disables the bag and directs people to install BetterBags." will probably not be met with enthousiasme by most people. It's fine to have people switch over to BetterBags (personally I still can't switch over, because of how I'm used to Adibags, but's that's just my preference), but it would be met with a lot more enthousiasme when done voluntary. So I rather have either BetterBags have all features that Adibags give before I get to choose to switch over.. or not switch over at all, but don't want it to be forced disabled.

I do hope BetterBags will eventually feel or at least work like Adibags does, so I wish you the best in working on that <3

Right. I know of at least 2 changes coming in War Within that will completely break AdiBags. It's also extremely unlikely that warband banks will ever be implemented directly, as the codebase is not built to support anything beyond the two main bags.

When War Within comes, AdiBags will completely and totally break down on load. What will happen is, a small popup will appear letting folks know the addon isn't currently in a working state, and then do a very simple halting of execution to prevent lua error spam. This will be easy to reverse if someone would like to come along and send PR's.

I know The War Within will affect the bags and banks with the Warbands. I am looking forward to using Warbands. According to the 2024 roadmap, the Warbands will be coming with The War Within pre-patch content! I am planning to add all my toons to a Warband. I have to yet make the transition to Betterbags because I use many of the addon sorting modules for Adibags. That is the biggest issue for me is having the sorting modules that Adibags has. It would be cool if those sorting modules were backwards compatible with Betterbags or new ones made for Betterbags to replace the ones from Adibags.

I know The War Within will affect the bags and banks with the Warbands. I am looking forward to using Warbands. According to the 2024 roadmap, the Warbands will be coming with The War Within pre-patch content! I am planning to add all my toons to a Warband. I have to yet make the transition to Betterbags because I use many of the addon sorting modules for Adibags. That is the biggest issue for me is having the sorting modules that Adibags has. It would be cool if those sorting modules were backwards compatible with Betterbags or new ones made for Betterbags to replace the ones from Adibags.

There are already several plugins for BetterBags that add all kinds of things to categories. The two big features that are still missing however, are:

• Themes
• The ability to set the priority for categories

This is a work in progress and will be complete before War Within.

Please if BetterBags is intended to replace AdiBags, make a theme for BetterBags that makes it looks exactly like AdiBags, at least for the customization and backgrounds transparency. Make it smaller, anchorable with right click, make sorting bags possible, customizable filters, etc.

Also the way BetterBags looks right now out of the box is not so good.

Thanks for the development of AdiBags while it lasted, it was and still IS the best Bag addon EVER made for WoW.

@RenanIsola Both AdiBags and BetterBags are massive projects. They're not at all trivial. BB has a huge list of things still to implement, one of them being themes. Any time spent fixing AdiBags is time lost from getting those additional BB features implemented. If you spent a little time reading Cidan's answer just above yours, you'd know this.

Good news ! Thank you for your dedication.

P.S : new logo is awesome !

Look forward to it being on curse so I can update through wowup and check progress

Good news! TY for the effort!

"AdiBags will release a version that disables the bag and directs people to install BetterBags."

Please, please, please do not do this.
Purposefully breaking functionality has been received VERY POORLY (see Altoholic vs TotalRP3, the MDT cluster or even the gshade logic bomb) and could annoy enough people to trigger TOS complaints to Blizzard.
A chat message upon login about BetterBags or a nag screen when opening the Adibags config would be sufficient. Or just let it rot like almost every other broken addon does.

Get people to move by actually being better and not by disabling their choices. Wowhead is always looking for content and I'm sure an article about the transition would be widely seen.

Purposefully breaking functionality...

This addon will completely stop working with the next API change, and this repository will be locked. It will break either with a massive amount of Lua errors, or by my hand gracefully, notifying people to move on. I will offer an override, but when it does break in-game permanently, I will disable the addon permanently as well.

Or just let it rot like almost every other broken addon does.

This is unacceptable and I will not do this. I will be gracefully sunsetting the addon over time.

and could annoy enough people to trigger TOS complaints to Blizzard.

Wowhead is always looking for content and I'm sure an article about the transition would be widely seen.

Please refrain from using scare or intimidation tactics with us.

Thanks!

Can you add something to the init code that shuts it down if BetterBags is detected? This would make it easy to switch back and forth by simply enabling/disabling the BB addon and reloading. It would also make it possible for me to write some Lua to "steal" the settings from the shut-down AdiBags and inject it into BB's settings.

Can you add something to the init code that shuts it down if BetterBags is detected? This would make it easy to switch back and forth by simply enabling/disabling the BB addon and reloading.

AdiBags will eventually completely and totally break, as the API will certainly change for 11. As I mentioned above, I will have an override so the bag can be enabled until the API changes and the addon can no longer load, at which point I will permanently disabled AdiBags as distributed.

What a rollercoaster of emotions in a single post..
Adibags EOL .. WHAAT!! .. but wait, we're continuing with Betterbags YAY!

Thank you for making AdiBags, I'll surely checkout BetterBags (btw don't forget to add the keyring! ;))

BetterBags lacks a lot of visual config compared to AdiBags :)

BetterBags lacks a lot of visual config compared to AdiBags :)

Yes, I'm well aware. If you read the post again, BetterBags is not in any way complete or ready for general use. It is under active development, though you are welcome to use it in its current state.

(btw don't forget to add the keyring! ;))

Definitely won't forget it :)

Is it intended to work with Classic and Classic Era?

Is it intended to work with Classic and Classic Era?

Have you tried reading the README of the page https://github.com/Cidan/BetterBags ?
Hint: scroll down :)

AdiBags has compact layout, which reorders the items to achieve a more compact window. I have messed around with the settings of BetterBags and have yet to find a reliable outcome that doesn't mess around the window size;

This is an intentional change, as it was by far the #1 complaint about AdiBags. I've thought about adding an aggressive sorting mode in the future, but for now, stable bags are a more important goal.

I might be misunderstanding this. To me, it seems backwards. AdiBags had a pretty stable layout, and I rarely had items moving around on me (much). In Better Bags, things move around constantly. Sell a couple items, close bags, reopen, the position of literally everything has shifted. I've had situations where I sell or transfer the wrong items to the bank, because the bag shifted everything between clicks. (For example, if I have five items next to each other horizontally, and I go to bank all five, after banking the first one and moving my cursor one over to the right, the bag structure might shift so that the remaining 4 items I want to bank are now in the row below me or above.)

Judging from your comment, that Better Bags was designed specifically not to do this, I think I must have my settings really f'ed up and/or made too many separate categories. How should I fix this? Uninstall all the Better Bags addons? Uninstall and reinstall the whole thing and just keep the default settings? Any help would be great!

(I also second the guy above mentioning the bag window becoming too big for my screen. Though, that might also be due to too many categories.)

How necessary was it to release a version that specifically breaks a working addon? 1.10.27 is not working at all except your "warning" window.

BetterBags is worse in every option - its laggin, it have a lot of bugs (like not refreshing "recently recieved block" ever), it have even worse design then AdiBags.

I understand its easier to maintain only one version, but what the point to destroy previous working addon? Are you sure you're sure the community would approve of this behavior?

@omggga You should create issues to address the problems so they can be addressed. I also liked AdiBags and currently the new addon doesn't provide what it's name suggests. We can only support the author and provide good feedback on issues, so they can get fixed. You could of course give it a try and try to fix some of the issues yourself, there's tons of lua/wow addon tutorials to get you started if you lack the knowledge at this point in time. If you don't feel like doing that, providing constructive feedback to is the way to go for you, .. or use a different bag addon.

I understand the choice to make one for all wow versions, and new software always has issues. You can't write a 100% bug free program from the get go .. it's a process that takes time and which will only succeed with feedback.

Cheers!

You could have just left this project to wither and die, or let someone else take over. I think it's very rude to release an "update" that just breaks the addon. Not cool.

Apart from the Warband bank not being implemented, AdiBags was working just fine in 11.0. I even locally updated it for 11.0.2, there are only minor fixes needed as some APIs have been moved into the C_Item namespace.

EDIT: This message is now 4 months old, and BetterBags has implemented a vast majority of the features in AdiBags. BetterBags should be a suitable replacement for most use cases, however work continues on more features.

No, it's still not a good replacement. It's missing a lot of features.

• BetterBags does not dynamically resize, making it frankly, useless, to me. With its default settings of 2 columns it is taller than my screen when my bags are full. If you manually increase the number of columns, you will get the opposite problem when bags are empty making it extremely wide. I don't understand how this is not a top priority for BetterBags.
• You still can't drag and drop items to move items to a different section
• Equipment is split into one section per item slot, with no options to change the behaviour. I prefer having one large section. This is not something you can fix easily with custom categories AFAIK.
• Section headers have text that is difficult to read. There's no text shadow, and you cannot change font or text size. It looks terrible, especially when the text is colored.
• I prefer the way AdiBags looks aesthetically. BetterBags default skin has unreadable text, and the dark version is just pure black. This is a minor issue but BetterBags still feels like a huge downgrade.
• Sections don't have a priority system like in AdiBags. Dealbreaker.
• I can't stand the way BetterBags handles "recent items" compared to AdiBags. Not enough options to control how it works.

This is just off the top of my head. And if I couldn't use AdiBags any more I think Baganator is a much more feature complete replacement than BetterBags.

I'm not expecting you to spend time on AdiBags, but releasing an update that just breaks the addon is shitty.

I have to thank everyone involved in the AdiBags & BetterBags projects beforehand. You're work has been amazing so far.

While BetterBags may be leaps and bounds when it comes to the codebase, it's still severely lacking core features of AdiBags which makes it an absolute no-go:

• AdiBags has anchor (to the lower right), expanding upwards and to the left (by default). BetterBags has no anchor and it's driving me crazy since whenever I loot anything, the bag position changes by itself. AdiBags has the same anchor point so it reliably opens up exactly in the same place. Window size may differ, sure but it's much cleaner;
• AdiBags has proper layout of the item categories, as well as priority manager for the categories. Quest Items go first and junk items last. If there are new items, they go first before the Quest Items. Pretty straightforward and much better than the ordering of BetterBags;
• AdiBags has compact layout, which reorders the items to achieve a more compact window. I have messed around with the settings of BetterBags and have yet to find a reliable outcome that doesn't mess around the window size;
• AdiBags has a button to manually clear the recent items. BetterBags relies on a timeout value instead;

While BetterBags has other features, like themes and other layouts (Bagnon-style and list), I believe AdiBags should not be discontinued until BetterBags has at least the first 3 features I've listed above.

I will be using AdiBags for now with hopes that BetterBags will indeed become ... better.

I am missing Adibags, My version has been broke since pre-patch started. Still a struggle with Betterbags. I still miss the adjusting the font size and color, the ability to choose the background and border color myself even separate color schemes for the bags bank and regent bank; the theme module has been somewhat ok, the anchor, and my most favorite part from Adibags, the priority system it had, the ability to adjust the priority of each module with the percentage bar. The priority plugin for Betterbags doesn't even come close to what Adibags had. The new popup today telling people to change to Betterbags is a bit annoying since it even pops up on reloads. One current module for Betterbags, Adibags importer requires Adibags being enabled. I currently only have the core enabled with the modules disabled. I know it will take time for you to implement stuff Adibags had and am willing to be patient to wait for that to happen, have a blessed day!

I think it's very rude to release an "update" that just breaks the addon. Not cool.

I'm assuming you're on Era/SoD/Cata -- just roll back. If you're on retail, the addon has been broken since pre-patch. Soon, it will stop working in Era/SoD/Cata as well.

BetterBags does not dynamically resize, making it frankly, useless, to me. With its default settings of 2 columns it is taller than my screen when my bags are full. If you manually increase the number of columns, you will get the opposite problem when bags are empty making it extremely wide. I don't understand how this is not a top priority for BetterBags.

Do you mind leaving me a bug on the BetterBags issue tracker with examples here so I can take a look at this?

You still can't drag and drop items to move items to a different section

Yes you can. Drag/drop it to the header of a section and read the tooltip closely.

Equipment is split into one section per item slot, with no options to change the behaviour. I prefer having one large section. This is not something you can fix easily with custom categories AFAIK.

This is being addressed this week/this weekend with a new feature that will let you put items into categories via any property or set of properties.

Section headers have text that is difficult to read. There's no text shadow, and you cannot change font or text size. It looks terrible, especially when the text is colored.

This is in the works as well. I was the one that implemented themes as you know them in AdiBags, and will do the same to BetterBags in a few weeks.

I prefer the way AdiBags looks aesthetically. BetterBags default skin has unreadable text, and the dark version is just pure black. This is a minor issue but BetterBags still feels like a huge downgrade.

See above.

Sections don't have a priority system like in AdiBags. Dealbreaker.

Do you mean pinning sections? You can manually pin sections. As for priority of which section an item goes into, will be addressed this weekend.

I can't stand the way BetterBags handles "recent items" compared to AdiBags. Not enough options to control how it works.

Please leave an issue so I can take a look at this with you.

Thanks!

• I prefer the way AdiBags looks aesthetically. BetterBags default skin has unreadable text, and the dark version is just pure black. This is a minor issue but BetterBags still feels like a huge downgrade.

There are plugins for BetterBags that add themes. BetterBags - Themes, that I made, for example. It's got like... 16 additional themes currently, with more to come.

@Cidan Cool of you to respond to my angry comment. Respect. Maybe I will take another look at BetterBags in the future once it gets some more features back.

I'm assuming you're on Era/SoD/Cata -- just roll back. If you're on retail, the addon has been broken since pre-patch.

@Pegoth actually fixed all errors for retail (see #1013) and the errors in 11.0.2 are trivial to fix (already working in my local copy that I use on beta), it was mostly renaming some C_item functions

Of course no support for the Warband bank but AdiBags as a whole is far from broken on retail.

@Soromeister

AdiBags has anchor (to the lower right), expanding upwards and to the left (by default). BetterBags has no anchor and it's driving me crazy since whenever I loot anything, the bag position changes by itself. AdiBags has the same anchor point so it reliably opens up exactly in the same place. Window size may differ, sure but it's much cleaner;

This is coming in the near future and is being tracked.

• AdiBags has proper layout of the item categories, as well as priority manager for the categories. Quest Items go first and junk items last. If there are new items, they go first before the Quest Items. Pretty straightforward and much better than the ordering of BetterBags;

You can do this today in BetterBags. Configure categories has a manual sort order.

AdiBags has compact layout, which reorders the items to achieve a more compact window. I have messed around with the settings of BetterBags and have yet to find a reliable outcome that doesn't mess around the window size;

This is an intentional change, as it was by far the #1 complaint about AdiBags. I've thought about adding an aggressive sorting mode in the future, but for now, stable bags are a more important goal.

AdiBags has a button to manually clear the recent items. BetterBags relies on a timeout value instead;

Incorrect. Right click the bag icon in the bag to clear out recent items.

I am missing Adibags, My version has been broke since pre-patch started. Still a struggle with Betterbags. I still miss the adjusting the font size and color, the ability to choose the background and border color myself even separate color schemes for the bags bank and regent bank; the theme module has been somewhat ok, the anchor, and my most favorite part from Adibags, the priority system it had, the ability to adjust the priority of each module with the percentage bar. The priority plugin for Betterbags doesn't even come close to what Adibags had. The new popup today telling people to change to Betterbags is a bit annoying since it even pops up on reloads. One current module for Betterbags, Adibags importer requires Adibags being enabled. I currently only have the core enabled with the modules disabled. I know it will take time for you to implement stuff Adibags had and am willing to be patient to wait for that to happen, have a blessed day!

Thank you for the kind words and feedback. Themes are a work in progress and you will be able to customize your theme in-game soon, as well as anchor and a few other key features.

I might be misunderstanding this. To me, it seems backwards. AdiBags had a pretty stable layout, and I rarely had items moving around on me (much). In Better Bags, things move around constantly. Sell a couple items, close bags, reopen, the position of literally everything has shifted. I've had situations where I sell or transfer the wrong items to the bank, because the bag shifted everything between clicks. (For example, if I have five items next to each other horizontally, and I go to bank all five, after banking the first one and moving my cursor one over to the right, the bag structure might shift so that the remaining 4 items I want to bank are now in the row below me or above.)

Judging from your comment, that Better Bags was designed specifically not to do this, I think I must have my settings really f'ed up and/or made too many separate categories. How should I fix this? Uninstall all the Better Bags addons? Uninstall and reinstall the whole thing and just keep the default settings? Any help would be great!

(I also second the guy above mentioning the bag window becoming too big for my screen. Though, that might also be due to too many categories.)

I think @Cidan is responding to a question about a compact layout, which is another issue.

The problem with BetterBags moving around is because it is anchored to the bottom left, instead of bottom right like AdiBags. BetterBags is also not dynamically resizing depending on your screen either, it is always fixed to a set number of columns (default 2), where AdiBags would adjust and add more columns as needed.

I might be misunderstanding this. To me, it seems backwards. AdiBags had a pretty stable layout, and I rarely had items moving around on me (much). In Better Bags, things move around constantly. Sell a couple items, close bags, reopen, the position of literally everything has shifted. I've had situations where I sell or transfer the wrong items to the bank, because the bag shifted everything between clicks. (For example, if I have five items next to each other horizontally, and I go to bank all five, after banking the first one and moving my cursor one over to the right, the bag structure might shift so that the remaining 4 items I want to bank are now in the row below me or above.)

BB doesn't redraw the source bag when transferring items, i.e bag to bank, bag items don't shift. If you close bag, Adibags and BB as well will redraw everything when reopening.

(I also second the guy above mentioning the bag window becoming too big for my screen. Though, that might also be due to too many categories.)

I just reinstalled Adibags just for fun, opened bank and the window was too big so …

The problem with BetterBags moving around is because it is anchored to the bottom left, instead of bottom right like AdiBags. BetterBags is also not dynamically resizing depending on your screen either, it is always fixed to a set number of columns (default 2), where AdiBags would adjust and add more columns as needed.

The dynamic resize would sometimes break and I would need to reload. Also, it's way harder for me to find items with it or with compact layout. With BB, it's much more deterministic, i can find items faster.

Not saying AdiBags is perfet - it's especially problematic with a large bank - but BetterBags is just 100 times worse for me. Using my regular bags I never have to reposition my bags. I've never had the dynamic resize break and I've been using the addon for 10 years.

My ideal would be AdiBags style anchors and maybe give me a scroll bar if the window becomes too large. I would actually love a 1-column layout that can scroll.

Locking this thread now. If you have feedback for BetterBags, please submit an issue there so we can work on it.

AdiBags is unsupported and not actively worked on.