Originally Posted by topojijo
One thing I know alot of people say is having information at the bottom but that is really a preference also. How my monitor is on my desk with my chair, when I'm sitting my eye level is actually about 1 to 2" above the top of my monitor, so that I'm actually looking at a downward angle.
This makes things on the top of the screen for me significantly more apparent and quick to grasp, where as information on the bottom of the screen I have to look way down to see it.
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I work along that same principle as well, though not for entirely the same reason. I prefer having as much of my 'Must know fast' information on the top area of my screen; the only exception being my chat, but that's why I've enabled auditory warnings when someone says something in a channel likely to be important mid-raid.
Here's a crude ASCII represenation of the basic layout I use:
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Than I just fill it from left to right like this...
First Row:
- Player, Player Cast Bar, Target, Target Cast Bar,Target's Target, Target's Target's Target frames. These are stacked from top to bottom in that order. And yes, they do approximately take up that small amount of space.
- Target's Buffs/Debuffs
- Threat Meter
- Boss Timers (These move and get enlarged to the center of my screen when the time is nearly up)
- Recount
- Minimap
Second row:
- Party/Raid Frames
- Player Buffs/Debuffs
Third row:
- Main Tanks
- Raid Cooldown monitor
Fourth row:
- Paladin buff mod
- Eavesdrop
Fifth row:
- Chat Window 1 (Not too important stuff + loot)
- Action Buttons (I don't technically need them to be there, but I'm just more comfortable with them being visible, plus I actually reasonably often make some changes to what action buttons do what depending on the fight)
- Chat Window 2 (Party + Raid + Whispers + Officer)
Other:
- Two seperate FuBars on the exact top and bottom of my viewable area. This is mostly for misc. information, configuration and resetting buttons. I disable FuBar plugins of mods I'm done configuring usually (So despite using Grid I don't have the Grid icon on my FuBar because I've already configured it to my liking). This is mostly to get rid of minimap buttons, because I don't think they work well on a square borderless minimap... Not to mention they clutter up your minimap like mad.
That's all on a 1280x1024 resolution.
The upper and bottom portions are covered by a viewport, the sides aren't but would only potentially benefit from being hidden when I'm in a raid, and are basically free of UI clutter when I'm not raiding. I should potentially experiment with trying to cover it through eePanels or something similar when I'm in a raid, but I can't say it bothers me.
SCT takes care of most of my 'on the spot' knowledge of damage taken/done, and thanks to Cooling also shows when my abilities are ready.
The purpose of arranging my UI like this is that information is basically arranged in importance from top to bottom and left to right, while keeping the center as clear as possible so I can see what's going on. That's a different approach from what a lot of people try, but I find it works far better; I also don't like HUDs for this reason myself, some people find them nice, but I find them more clutter than anything.
I've stacked the 'big' unit frames all in one place with it going from top to bottom on purpose as well; I find it more intuitive this way. I look at it and I see: This guy on top is me, than the one below that is my target, than comes his target, and finally the target of the third guy. It also takes up as little space as possible on purpose, when I'm tanking I want to be able to see the status of my own health as well as what my target is attacking as quickly as possible, while when I'm healing I want to see the status of my own health/mana, my target's health as well as whether my target matches the target of his target in a single look. I've tried varying other setups, but this is what eventually turned out to be the most intuitive and clear.
I used to follow the same basic setup except from left to right with the unit frames having too much information attached to them, since that time I've heavily reduced their size and information display. All I really need from the majority of frames is a name, class (Or type in case of mobs), level, and for myself and my target I enjoy having a power bar. There's also a cast bar attached to only my own frame and my target frame for that same purpose.
That also puts me at why I have my cast bar there; that was a gradual evolution. I used to have the standard bottom centered cast bar, but I've always had my player frame in top left. Then the 2.0 patch came, and I had to install a plug-in for AG_UnitFrames (Which I used at the time) to get a target cast bar, it also came with a cast bar attached to the player frame, which I gradually noticed paying more and more attention to. Some time later I just got rid of my old bottom centered cast bar; I never watched it any more anyway.
The same happened with buffs/debuffs. I found out that I generally only cared about the ones on my current target, and I had timer mods for showing me my own buffs/debuffs on different targets. So I disabled those on the target's target and target's target's target frames, found out how much space that saved, disabled their power bar a few minutes later, and put them close together with the one earlier in the 'sequence' on top.
I'll replace the crude ASCII image with a proper screenshot link later tonight.