Originally Posted by Benegesserit
Could anyone explain to me how VisualThemes brings anything to actually benefit the player? I don't see anything on how it saves screen real-estate, improves processing performance, parses data in a more human friendly manner, help with organization, etc.
I mean mods like Baggins beautify the bag frames if you wish, but would that be the main draw for the development of the mod? It's primary features involve how it actually improves the user experience. Would we not consider mods that make your client look like your toon is wearing max gear with some model swapping as "big thing" as VisualThemes? Not only that, but it really only does one simple thing to windows...a fade and resize transition.
I'm all for tiny addons that implement simple things that are great...like auto-vendoring greys, auto-repairing, removing useless gossip, and the like, but generally an improvement to the blizzard UI that is significant is likely going to require either a full-blown UI mod, or lots of time customizing your UI with many small mods (that don't only run in the background).
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There are entire categories of mods dedicated to visual appeal, such as eePanels, DArt, and every texture and font in SharedMedia. It's not a small thing in UI design these days; people want UIs that are not only functional but pleasing to look at. We are staring at these interfaces the entire time that we're playing WoW, so they should look good.
If all we were after in terms of modding was function, then we'd probably not be very much beyond the UIs of a few years ago that consisted almost entirely of CTMod, Cosmos and the like. As it is, what people go for these days is style as well as substance.
In that sense, I think VisualThemes can very much be classified as part of a series of mods that are revolutionizing how players view their UIs. It's simple, doesn't take up too much memory, blends well with other skinning-type mods, and in my opinion, improves the user experience.
It's the same thing as comparing the visual elements of, say, Apple OSX with a generic UNIX command line. Sure, they have the same framework and are basically equal in function, but OSX looks damn pretty.