Forever Fone

A goblin-made brass phone that sends links and small pictures to your friends, by whisper.

Just an experiment, made for fun. Forever Fone is a fun project that tries out how far addon whispers can go, not a polished or supported tool. It has not yet been tried between two players in the live game, so pictures may arrive slowly, break, or not arrive at all. Please don't rely on it for anything important. If you try it, tell us on Discord what worked and what didn't; that is the whole point of the experiment.

WoW addons cannot open files, read the clipboard or show a picture from the internet. Forever Fone gets around that in a goblin way: a small web page that comes with the addon turns your picture into text, you paste the text into the phone, and the phone whispers it to your friend in small pieces. Their phone puts the picture back together.

What it does

• The Forever-Fone MK II: a clamshell phone of brass, copper and gears, painted by hand, with a screen for Write, Inbox, Friends and Setup. The keys on the keypad work: green sends or opens the newest message, red goes back or closes, 1-4 switch pages, * and # scroll, and the green gem glows when something new waits.
• Links: paste a link, your friend gets it in a box to copy (Ctrl+C) into their browser.
• Small pictures: 64 to 160 pixels across, 16 to 256 colours. A 96 × 54 screenshot travels in about 14 whispers.
• Friends: your friends, Battle.net friends, guild, group and the people you wrote to, online first with class colours. A click fills in the name.
• Nothing pops up unasked: a small notice says something came; it waits in the Inbox (last 50 messages) until you open it. Friends, guild and group can send to you by default, strangers only if you switch it on, ignored players never.
• Open it from the addon list by the minimap, which also shows how many messages are new.

How to send a picture

1. Open the picture maker at https://addons.tomlabs.cz/addons/forever-fone/#picture (the phone shows the address to copy). The same page ships in the addon folder as ImagePage.html and works offline; the picture is not uploaded anywhere.
2. Drop a screenshot, drag the frame over the part you want, pick the size and colours, click Copy for the game.
3. In game type /ffone Name, click Paste and press Ctrl+V, then Send.

Commands

Ctrl + mouse wheel over the phone makes it bigger or smaller.

Good to know

• Only WoW Forever. Your friend needs Forever Fone too.
• Addon whispers reach only players of your own faction.
• The game lets addons send only a few messages a second, so a picture takes a few seconds; fewer pixels and fewer colours are faster.